The Lost Letter
written by ✧Aurora Lovecraft✧
Aurora Lovecraft's second short story: A heartbreaking letter that was never sent. The wounds of a dysfunctional family. A boy finding his reckoning.
Last Updated
05/31/21
Chapters
2
Reads
389
The Letter
Chapter 1
January 16, 2016
Dear Mom and Dad,
The merciful side of me hopes you will never find this abandoned letter amongst my lost childhood so you can continue to live peacefully in your selfish oblivion. The other half hopes you do because as selfish as this may sound, you need to know and feel the pain of the absolute truth. Parents always believe they know their child inside and out, but that is a complete lie – especially when it comes to both of you. You don’t know as much as you think you do. You continue to hold the belief that I left to fulfill the wistful lust of teenage freedom, but that is most definitely your most flawed lie about me. And you have told a lot of lies. I think it’s time I set you straight about several things:
Mom, you can’t control and manipulate someone solely to squeeze out what you want. The ticking bomb you’ve planted in them will eventually hit 0 and detonate with you in range. Dad, you can’t say you love someone and simultaneously rip yourself out their life, abandoning them. When the guilt finally hits you, even if it’s after years, your pre-determined expectations may still lead you to the belief that they love you and want you back after years of heartache. But that also could not be farther from the truth. You can’t use a knife to slice open a wound, let it bleed until there’s nothing left to bleed, and then suture it back up and expect it to have healed all the harm.
Maybe you remember October 29, 2011, and maybe you don’t. Regardless, 12-year-old me recalls it very vividly – more than I would like to because it was when I believe my childhood ended. I was upstairs, in my NASCAR-themed bedroom – abandoned, undone homework stashed in the closet to be forgotten. You two were where you always were at approximately 10:48 p.m. Yelling the crap out of each other in the kitchen concerning the dispute of the day. Slamming thuds and screams of derogatory nonsense aren’t exactly beckoning sounds to a child. But being your young, naïve son who didn’t know the first thing about how too many relationships turn out, I ran downstairs anyway interpreting the screams and banging as one of you falling on the floor and hurting yourself badly. Instead, the minute the atmosphere of the kitchen slams into my body, my skin became clammy and my sweat grew cold. I dropped the pair of bandages and first aid kit to the floor. Instead of finding one of you on the floor slightly injured, I found a scene that has quite the reputation of scarring a very much still-impressionable child for life. An inflamed outline of a hand on Dad’s cheek accompanied by a fresh, discolored bruise across Mom’s shoulder. Red faces a breath apart filled with hatred I’d never seen before. A phone with a shattered screen tossed across the tile floor. Instead of conveying flustered faces and apologizing for what I had seemingly walked in upon, you funneled all the hatred onto me – screaming at me to go back to my room. Wide-eyed and petrified, I did exactly as you said with no hesitation whatsoever.
Do you know what happened after that? No, not the next morning – everyone knows what happened then – but strictly after my blissful ignorance and naivete were nullified? After hastily stumbling into my room, I grabbed the shiny handle of the door and flicked it to the right – restraining any efforts I was terrified you might do to me what you had done to each other. I sank down to the thinly carpeted floor and clutched my head, desperately trying to hold on to any rationale I had left in my mind. I sobbed for hours into the night, rocking my knees back and forth, letting the tears cascade from my eyes and soak my Dodgers t-shirt. My world had suddenly capsized. I started asking myself questions no one my age should have to, even contemplating the thought of running away. What had I done that made them hate each other so much? Why was I not good enough for them? If I was gone, would it make everything better for them?
Why can’t they simply apologize and move on as they’ve always taught me?
Why can’t my family be happy and perfect like my everyone else’s?
…Why am I so alone?
This is what flooded my mind as I clenched the sill of the single window of my bedroom, eyes forever locked on the right side of the stone driveway, dreading the thought of a Toyota Corolla sliding out into the night departing for eternity – until the weight of it all disintegrated into a light doze for the remaining hours of the early morning.
Even after many more nights of interrogating myself of these, I still don’t have the answers to these questions. Maybe you do – and I’d be extremely appreciative if you could entertain me with those answers – but I highly doubt so, because you don’t have the unknown answers to the universe, do you?
When I woke the next morning, I realized, Dad, I had not seen your car pull out, so with a rush of excitement, the thought hit me that you might still be home. With a rush of excitement, I raced to your room only to find mom sitting on the bed, clutching your phone, the one she’d hurled in her anger. Her tears filled the cracks of the screen. Half the drawers of the dresser were swung open. There were no contents left to be emptied. So, I guess I could say thank you, for helping me remove the blindfold glued via by childhood a little earlier than other parents’ original intentions.
Every day for years, I gazed at the driveway at 10:48 p.m., longing for your car to pull back in the driveway. I never gave up the first few months, for I fervently believed that you loved me just like you had said, so you would come back. Every day, I was disappointed.
After I slowly gave up, I thought, despite losing dad, that life might be a little easier without having to deal with the daily screaming and fighting. Mom, you really are good at proving people wrong. You should have continued law school after dad left. I like to imagine that you started going mad, with no one worthy enough left to assert your dominance over. Of course, there was me, and you certainly did take advantage of it, didn’t you? One day, when I was 15, and I had to make up a lie to my coach about the red welts on my back and arms, I almost started thinking that I would rather have to endure you and Dad than you and me. Not to mention the love/hate relationship I had with the evenings you brought someone home from the bar. On one hand, you were definitely occupied enough to leave me alone – I was even able to sneak out the majority of the time. On the other hand, it sickened me to think of you replacing Dad with these losers – some of who, possibly due to intoxication, tried to have some fun with me as well. Bet you didn’t know that part either, did you? As if you would have cared if you had known. The only thing you did seem to care about was me dropping out of school as a held-back 17-year-old sophomore. And, of course, finally rising to the occasion to leave, once and for all, without turning back just as Dad did. But the only loss you cared about was the income from my part-time job – your drinking money.
Afterward, Dad, I began to understand why you did it. But, then again, I didn’t leave a young, innocent son sobbing at home, left alone with her. You did. After finding the love of my life, receiving a college education, and starting a family of my own – one of which I have promised not to become like either of you, I was beginning to heal from it all. And you walked in. Just like that. You expected me to run and cry into your arms, happy to see you after 13 years. I’m sorry those were your expectations, but the world is not a wish-granting factory.
I hope I can eventually find it in my heart to forgive you both, but the human heart is far from perfect. As is mine.
I’ve found my reckoning. I hope you find yours.
Your son,
Ricky
