DATE: May 10,2004

I don’t know why I am feeling like this lately. I think of all the ways I’ve messed up, all the ways that I’m useless. My brother threatened to send my puppy to the pound. My first thought was that I would kill myself and that thought hasn’t left me.

I have thought of different ways to die, different ways to kill myself but I know that I am just pleading with people to help me. I don’t really want to die.

But no one can help me because there is nothing wrong with me. I am just a single girl living with her mother, broke all the time, failing at everything. I have realized that there is really no point to my existence.

The one thing I can admit is that my mother and friends would be very sad if I died. I wouldn’t want to cause them any more pain than I already have.

I thought about flowers today as well. I wondered if a man would ever send me flowers, if I would want them. I ponder the fact that my friends and I are still single and I know that I am meant to be alone. I am not the marrying kind.

My future has stretched out before me, bleak and dark, and I feel tears gathering in my eyes.

I prayed earlier, told God to help me, to remove the depression. I was doing rather well after that but then my mom called.

I know I need to move out but it seems as though God holds me where I am so that I can get out of debt. I understand the logic and I know that I can make it through but I don’t want to go home.

If my brother got rid of my puppy I don’t know what I will do. He is just cruel enough to do it or to make me think he did it. He always says hateful things, always makes me look in the mirror afterward and debate my worth, like most the men in my life. They don’t understand me.

They just don’t understand how lonely I am, how miserable I feel and I can’t tell them because there truly isn’t a reason for it. God showed me today how blessed I am, although it may not appear that way, and yet I feel like weeping uncontrollably.

I don’t expect you to understand or sympathize. In fact, I don’t expect anyone to read this at all. I waited all day, waited to see if I’d feel better and I admit that I did for awhile. It’s just that its back and I’m going home in twenty minutes.

The one upside is that I’m walking now so it’s not like I’ll be home right away. I don’t know what I’ll do if his car is there. I just don’t know where I can go or what I can do if he’s home. I don’t want to see him.

I don’t want to see anyone.

This is the pain I recall so forcefully…I haven’t got a way to express how I feel and so I will keep it inside, as I always have, and pray that tomorrow I’ll feel like me again.

JUST JUL LEE
 

Dad,

First, before this gets all heavy and insane, I wanted to tell you that when I saw this card I just had to get it for you. I am so glad that I got my creativity from you. You can think of a solution to anything and you are so giving to those in need that it makes me proud to be your daughter.

I decided to write this letter instead of writing inside the card. I just want to apologize for not being the daughter I should be. It seems to me that I will never be able to do all it is you and mom expect me to do. I shouldn’t feel guilty about it but I do.

I didn’t want to write this letter and send it to you on Father’s Day but I figure that if I just gave you a card you would think of how I never call and I will know that you are thinking of how I never visit.

I guess, basically, I am just rambling my feelings. I figure if you and mom can tell me how much I upset you that I should be able to say the truth to you. I am, after all, your daughter even if I fail to make you proud.

I know you love me, dad, and I love you too. Very much. I’m just selfish, I guess. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to think about things without this jaded outlook covering my thoughts. I am not sure I can make you understand what I’m feeling.

When I thought about writing this letter to you, I wondered if I should. It has been a long time that I have felt the unhealthy pressures of guilt weighing down upon me, pressing me into a mold that I don’t fit in. It isn’t my fault that life hasn’t worked out the way it was planned. I can’t be someone I’m not.

It seems as if I can’t truly go to anyone and be myself, as though I have to guard who I am. I am thinking of leaving New Mexico and moving somewhere by myself. I just want to tell you that. It’s not your fault or mom’s or anything, it’s just that I might as well be somewhere else, as alone as I am.

I told mom that there was a wall between her and me and that there was also one between you and I. The things I am going to say here are the things that I cannot put to words when I am talking to you.

Don’t condemn me, dad. I could not believe it when I discovered that you hadn’t forgiven me for a past error. It had been over ten years and you hadn’t forgiven me. I don’t think anything hurt more than finding that out.

Just recently, I wrote a letter to mom and expressed some of my feelings. I know you once told me to never write letters because they can always come back to haunt me but I express myself so much easier when I’m writing instead of talking.

Every time I visited you, I felt out of place and guilty that I didn’t spend more time with you. When I lived with you, mom made me feel the same way. At least once in my life, both you and mom have called me a user and selfish. It hurts to realize you feel that way, or did at some point, and made me wonder if I truly am a user and selfish. I am, I guess. Why would my parents say it if it weren’t true?

I wrote this poem last month.

Do you love me, Daddy?
Despite all I’ve never said?
You don’t see me when I cry,
You don’t hear me wishing I were dead.
It’s lonely without your love,
And I’m falling away from life.
Your silence is like a violent shove,
I’m afraid you’re holding the knife.
Do you remember me, Daddy?
I’m your daughter, your princess,
I’m trying so hard to be,
What you expect, the best.
She doesn’t understand me,
Even when she claims she does.
I can’t call her Mommy,
Or say, “I love you” just because.
Do you love me, Daddy?
Even though I’ve failed you?
It’s so miserable being me,
Destroying everything I try to do.
If I died tomorrow would you cry?
Alone or openly would you weep?
Would I be missed or would the world pass by,
As though I were only asleep?
Do you miss me, Daddy?
Miss my face, my voice, my smile? A little or a lot?
Do you think of me, Daddy?
Because it kills me to think you don’t.

I’m sorry I don’t visit more often, dad. I’m sorry I haven’t called. But allow me to tell you the reason of my latest lack of attention.

I realize, dad, that drinking and cursing is not something you consider a sin and I’m not here to preach, especially since I have fallen away from salvation myself recently. I gave up. I don’t see the point to fighting the fight any longer. Currently, I am trying to realign myself with Jesus but it is so difficult to discipline myself.


On New Years you called me and told me not to bother to come over, to just do what I had planned for the day and forget about visiting you. It was early in the day and you were already intoxicated. You may not even remember calling me. The thing was that the only thing I had to do that day was visit you. I had been looking forward to spending the day with you. Instead, I spent the day in my room crying.

You see how it works both ways, dad? I decided on that day to stop feeling guilty about not calling and not visiting you as often as I ‘should’ and that is why I haven’t truly gone out of my way to call you and say I love you as often as I used to.

I do love you, dad, no matter what and I will always be your daughter. I just need to know that I’m not going to feel guilty whenever I see you. I hope you and Michelle are happy and I hope that one day you will honestly seek God again and hear His voice. I hope that I will do the same. I know that I’m backsliding and I’m so scared of going to Hell.

I don’t think I could ever tell you enough that I love you. I want to tell you to return to Jesus and turn your back on your sins but I can’t because I am automatically accused of judging. But, you see, I’m there now. I’ve drunk, I curse and I know that I’m doing wrong. If I’m doing wrong, how could you not be?

Anyway, dad, I’m sorry that this letter had to come to you on Father’s Day and that you had to read it but if I didn’t write it, this would have been a card sent to my dad on a day that it was expected. It would be the same attempt to pretend nothing is wrong even though we haven’t spoken for over six months. I hope you understand.

Mom,

I didn’t want to write this letter and hopefully you never see it, but I needed to tell you how much it hurts to be who I am. I can’t be Julie anymore; I can’t live with the failures and the guilt, the anger and the bitterness, the debt and the depression. It just isn’t working for me. I need to escape.

It would be so easy to fall away, Mom, to just walk away from all the responsibilities that haunt me, to fall into the well of self-pity, but I fight the pull. I am friendless, Mom, but you don’t realize it. The Crespin’s are the most loyal friends I have found in my life. It is sad when you think about it. I sleep better on a pull out sofa sleeper in their house than I do in my own bed. I have more fun spending time with them than I do on my happiest day anywhere else. I feel closer to God, I hear Him speaking and I actually long to do as He tells me when I am with them.

Deep inside, Mom, you must always know that I love you. I have never wished you ill, never wished you weren’t my mother. There are things I wish had never happened but I am glad that my Mom is still alive and with me. The thing is that we can end up hating each other if life continues this way.

I am all alone in a large house surrounded by family and always frowned upon. I can’t seem to please anyone and I am sick of trying. It has occurred to me, more than once, that I am not the most important member of this family. I don’t contribute and I seem to do more harm than good in my daily living. So, I need to discover my worth and value and I can’t do it here.

I also can’t leave. My weekend escapes to Albuquerque help me to feel stress-free and calm but there is always Monday. I am not telling you this to hurt you, I am telling you this to see if there is anyway you can understand what I feel.

You always complain about you, about how much debt you’re in and how depressed you feel daily. You make me feel guilty about everything I do and say, make me doubt myself, and make me wonder if I will ever be the person I want to be. It’s just the way you are, Mom, just like I’m the way I am.

I am rude, I do have an attitude and I am currently putting me first. The reason I am doing this is because I can’t deal with all the responsibility of worrying about others. The house is the bane of my existence.

I never should have moved back in with you and Joey. I should have stayed at Dad’s house but that just goes to show you that I can’t tell what the future will bring. We communicate and get along much better when I am not living with you. I hope you understand what I am saying.

This feeling of hate and anger, frustration and depression, is slowly destroying me. And it is destroying you too. That is why I don’t understand why you cling to the house that is more of a burden than a blessing. I know that God told you that you could keep the house but don’t you think God also wants you to live happily? He wants us to be blessed and we can’t be in the house.

I can’t escape, Mom. My credit is so bad right now that I can’t even get an apartment. I am so desperate to get out that I am living with the Crespin’s and paying them rent so that I can file bankruptcy. I’m 23, Mom. Bankruptcy shouldn’t even be an option for me. I should be enjoying life but I’m not.

It’s hurts that you don’t know me. You pay lip service to me, claiming that you know me, but you don’t. To think that I would drink when I’m not around you hurts me. You probably don’t even believe me when I say I’m a virgin. I could be lying to you. These are the feelings I get.

I know you try, Mom, and I know you love me. I love you too but I need to think about all that I suffer through in the house that you refuse to sell. You lie and tell me that everything will be fine yet we are living stressful and hateful lives together. We don’t even behave like a family.

So what? Am I rebelling? I guess I am. It’s just too much for me to feel guilty everyday and hide in my room every night. I can’t stand for us to be this way but there is no other way for us to be. It is time for us to let go of everything. It is time for us to live apart from each other before I say something I will regret.

Every time we argue, I bite my tongue and hold back all that I long to say. I think if you were to look at this fairly, you would see how much I’m hurting. Of course, you and Joey will join sides, as always, and insist that I am just spoiled and selfish.

So call me that and I will accept the fact that you don’t know me at all.

It matters not to me if you yell at me for this letter or if you cry or if you don’t feel anything at all. I just needed to let you know. I can’t forget all that has come before and there is a great wall between us that will always be there. I can’t help it.

Don’t be overly holy and say that I have to let go and move on. I am in a place where all I can do is dream of leaving you far behind and being on my own. The wall needs to have distance between us before I can start pulling out the bricks.

Mom, I have tried to move on but every time I pull a brick down another one is handed to me by you and the wall stays the same. It’s not just you, there’s a wall between me and Dad as well but it is a different wall. I can’t get close to either of you; I can’t hug either of you or tell either of you I love you even though I do love you both. I love you both so much that it hurts to feel this way. I can’t help the way I feel…I can’t help the walls that remain.

That is the Julie neither of you know and therefore I am called selfish and guilt is heaped upon me for no reason. I can’t feel guilty anymore. It hurts too much.

I don’t want you to tell me anything after you read this letter. I don’t want to talk about it; I don’t want you to try to open the doors that have been shut. I want you to know that there have been wonderful times as well, my life with you hasn’t been awful. It’s just that the baggage from our past is terribly heavy.

I know that you’re probably going to show this to Joey and he’ll come to me and yell at me and make me feel like crap, just like Albert did that night when I left. No one wants to know what’s inside me, what’s hurting me. They just want me to shut-up and blend into the life offered to me. I have never told you how I feel before.

If Joey doesn’t come to me I know that enough guilt will come from you, leaving me depressed and hurt once more and nothing good will come of this letter. That is why I hesitate to give this to you. I know you are going to say that I need to be there for you, that I need to be strong for you, but I can’t. I can’t.

If I give this to you it is because I finally decided that it needed to be said and I would never be able to say it without crying. I can’t show weakness in front of you, Mom, because I don’t want you to attempt to comfort me. It is so awkward to feel pity or remorse from you that I just can’t stand it. I don’t want hugs or apologies, I don’t want promises or arguments. I just want to be free.

I know you can’t give me that. Not without giving up the one thing you treasure more than my happiness. I know you are so glad to have a house, I know that you have always wanted one, but a house to one can be a prison to others. My cell may have books and my belongings but it is still a cell.

This isn’t all that makes up Julie, Mom, bitterness and spite, depression and fear, there is much more. But I can’t discover me until I get out from under these things. I can’t feel sympathy for you, Mom, so please don’t tell me again how much you’re struggling. If you were truly feeling what I feel, the house would already be sold and we would all be better off.

I can’t let go if you can’t let go, I can’t move on if you can’t move on. The sad fact remains that I am stuck in a very unhappy place and all people can do is make me feel guilty and selfish. I hope you understand why I have written this letter, why I have decided that I must tell you this. I debated and thought that a letter would not be the best thing but I can’t speak well enough to get what I’m feeling across.

I love you, Mom, I do and if you love me you will honestly consider letting me go. I can’t leave until you do something to cut the binds that tie me to the house and to you. I need to be set free. I need to leave.