Tell Him

Your son knows me, knows my children. Why don’t you tell him how you ruined my children’s family, how you used their mother and made a lie out of her life.

Tell him how I loved you, treated you with respect and care, how you always told me I made you feel like a man.

Tell him who taught you to be kind, generous and thoughtful.

Tell him who thought of and got the website for his birthday and told you to put it from his mother too.

Tell him who showed you how to use a video recorder, bought tapes and set it up every time.

Tell him you did this to me because she would have made your life miserable and kept you away, that you said over and over that she would turn him against you, that she told you repeatedly how you had ruined his life.

Tell him how you let me take time away from my children while you cheated on me and then begged me to stay with you, how I forgave you and supported you.

Tell him how I cared about his heart and his happiness, thought about it, talked about it, how I spent the day looking for crosses for his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, called all over for bats, made a place for him at your house.

Tell him how many times you cried with me.

Tell him how I gave you the doctors name for his acne and insisted you take him after you told me he said, who would want to kiss this face.

Tell him how I told you to stop using sarcasm and teasing him, gave you books on building a real relationship with him, how to get him to trust you and why he didn’t, how I told you he needed friends and coached you through helping him make them, that you had to buy him a car, and clothes and things.

Tell him that when he told you this was what he wanted to pursue it was me that suggested you get him working with a professional, letting him change programs because their philosophy didn't fit his, to work on his mind.

Tell him how I pushed you to be close to your family, for him as well as you, and how happy you made your mother before she died.

Tell him who encouraged you in investing, owning a business, being generous with money, being kind, nonjudgemental and positive.

Tell him how desperately you pursued me and how desperately I asked you for truth.

Tell him I accepted you just the way you are, and gave you the chance to be whatever kind of man you wanted to be.

Tell him how you told me to trust you, and then betrayed me, lied about me, degraded me, blamed me, you did this for nothing more than pleasing someone else, instead of protecting and defending me, instead of accepting the responsibility yourself, like a man should.

Tell him out of all the alternatives that exist, you chose to be cruel and hateful, chose to attack and humiliate me, but how I stood beside you, let you keep your dignity, built you up through your depression, addiction, betrayals and selfish, hurtful behavior.

Tell him how I got up early to be with you and drove home in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold, how I cut everyone and everything out to make time for you, how I sat on the floor, made do with nothing and never complained.

Tell him it’s no big deal, I deserve it, my family deserves it too, all that matters is you.

Tell him to the very last day you said you had made a mistake, that you loved me.

Tell him you did this, you seduced and deserted, hurt and betrayed, someone who never once lied to you, never judged or mistreated you, who trusted and believed in you……….. all for a ball.

Tell him how proud you were of yourself when you moved out, how respectful other men were, how you did it in part for him, to set an example, so he might have some chance of not having disastrous relationships and plagued with the same anger and addictions.

Tell him how I always had to put my children, my life, last, could never plan, because of the control through fear his mother wielded, and because no one cared about your schedule, wants or needs.

Tell him the only way you felt like a man before was to seduce other men’s wives, which you could only do by lying and pretending, but now you think you are going to feel like a man, be somebody, because of his success.

But no, you won’t do any of that, you’ll do what you’ve already done, tell him it was all lies, just a little mistake, you were temporarily insane for four years, tell him I was nothing but a convenience like all the others.

Tell him I was just someone who helped you out with your house and talked all about your work, while you got yourself together all by your lonesome, that twenty five years of a double life and seeking any shred of affection from anyone was nothing, that you had an epiphany and living without dignity, love or sex, was what you wanted, but please, please, whatever you do, when it comes to me - DON’T QUITE USE THE WORD LOVE!

Better to betray yourself, betray me, negate, make a joke and a lie about everything that passed between us, steal and destroy my dignity, my truth, and my worth, as well as yours.

While you’re at it, better tell him you’re sorry, for all the damage and disappointment, the legacy of shame, depression and failure you are leaving him.