[ WP ] Write the letter that you always wanted to , but never did .

Dear Mom, 
 
 I spend a lot of time thinking about our relationship. If I'm being honest, some days I hate you. Some days I picture you in my head and all I can see is a weak, selfish, and ultimately stupid person and I know that you're afraid that's how I feel about you all the time, because you're very perceptive and you can see it behind my eyes when you start to get drunk. 
 
 I probably have n't told you this, but my first memory is of the first time we left my father, we were in the car. I did n't really understand what was going on, but you had a black eye and you were crying. I told you everything was going to be okay, and you tried to smile and held my hand for a moment. Sometimes when I was still in highschool and living with you, I would think about that moment and how it seemed to completely define all of the bad parts of our life. I always seemed to have to hold YOUR hand and tell YOU everything was going to be okay. 
 
 Eventually you brought Bill into our lives, he was a wonderful father to me and husband to you. For seven years we had a family, and then you left him. I used to think you could n't stand being happy, I ca n't hear the sound of your laughter in my memories. I did n't understand then how it's possible to fall out of love, to become a different person than you were, I just thought you'd gotten bored. 
 
 The next few years were hell for both of us, puberty and isolation for me, and you went from someone who usually had to much to drink at parties, to a full on alcoholic. It hurt my heart more than anything to see such a strong intelligent woman drink herself into a coma every night. How could that state of being be acceptable or preferable to anyone? 
 
 That's when I truly started to resent you and think you were weak and stupid. I did n't start to think you were selfish until I was older, and you began to leave me home alone for days at a time while you went to Florida or Maine or New York City, with your new boyfriend and the next one, then your fiance. Do you remember that time you left for Florida and I called you because there was no food in the house for me to eat? It was a Friday and you were n't supposed to be back until Monday. I spent the weekend at my best friends house and his mother fed me. I did n't tell them you were n't around. When you got home and noticed I was n't starving you said `` See! It was n't so bad after all.'' 
 
 The worst though, was the visits from the police. The time your brother called the cops on you for getting wasted and screaming at him in his house at two in the morning. The time you showed up at 2am driving your car almost too drunk to talk and demanded I call the police because your boyfriend had pushed you down in a parking lot and kicked you, when the police arrived they took your statement and spent more time threatening you about DUI than helping you, the fucking bastards. Or the time in California, when we went to visit my grandmother and you got drunk at the hotel restaurant and I decided to head back to the room early to prevent a scene. Best laid plans of mice and men huh? We've never spoken of that one again, I'm not even sure if you can remember all of what happened. How you burst into my room and screamed in my face about how selfish I was being and how I needed to put aside my issues with you and spend time with my grandmother, how I told you to leave me alone and left walking up the beach in the dark of night sitting in the sand until you came stumbling up the beach and found me in the dark to continue screaming at me. How you pushed me down when I stood up and told me if I could n't get over myself you'd walk off and never see me again and then the police came and asked me if you'd hurt me. You had n't, but I almost told them you did just to see you spend the night in a jail cell in a strange state. I did n't though. 
 
 I did n't because, no matter how much I can hate you sometimes, I love you more. You've done so much for me. So much more effort and cost than most of my other friends parents ever even bothered to try to do with them. You supported me and you actually listened to what I had to say in everything ( except your drinking ) from the day I could talk, because my opinion and my happiness matters to you. I think I started smoking just to spite you, and to try to give myself a better grasp on addiction, it did n't really work, I smoked for a year and quit just like that, but I'm not you. I have my own flaws. Like dwelling on all the bad memories, the five or six major events interspersed over a good ten years, they stick out in my mind like patches of burned forest from an airplane, but the rest is still there. Without you, I would n't be anything close to the person I am today. 
 
 So anyway, I've kinda rambled on in this letter, but I'm about to get to the point because I think this is the part you really need to hear from me. I know you did n't want to read the other stuff, but that part was more for me. I needed to remind you why this next part is so important, for both of us. 
 
 Mom, I forgive you. I love you. I'm so thankful for every good thing you've ever done for me and those things far outweigh the bad parts even if I ca n't come right out and list them like the bad ones. 
 
 Your loving son ~thedarkpurpleone
