No response to kindness May 16, 1985

 


I knew she would misinterpret my letter; knew she is incapable of seeing anything except that with which she already agrees.

She is coded. The mention of welfare automatically brings up her defenses.

She is bitter, hostile and full of fear, and assumes that any letter I send that mentions welfare is an attack on her.

I should have known from years of experience in dealing with her that she would not take my last few letters well, no matter how well-intentioned, no matter how kindly phrased. No kindness is ever enough.

My first letter simply said that welfare had contacted me. But since I knew from the last time around, and that she still wanted me to send her money on the sly.

I tried to express my flash back feelings to those days almost a decade ago when she still lived in North Scranton, when family court notified me then to pay child support, while I argued with the court that I wanted visitation rights Louise was not granting me.

I had to sneak into Scranton to get glimpses of my own daughter, only to have Louis pick up and leave each time I found where they lived. One neighbor told me how my daughter was growing up wild, suggesting maybe I should take legal action to take my daughter from her.

I did not. I never said anything about this to Louise. Eventually the court agreed and ordered Louise to provide visitation. At which point, Louise picked up and moved out of state with my daughter.

Now we seem to be going back in time, picking up the same hostility I thought we had gotten over when Louise moved back to Scranton and we were able to reconnect, putting all that crap behind us.

I had changed, matured, become wiser and more tolerant, and seeing Louise again made me realize just how much she’d gone through, trying to make sense of her life as a single mom.

But I also came to realize that it wasn’t just me; I was part of a pattern of self-destruction in her life, the kind of man that fit the kind of men she needed in her lust for self-destruction. She only wanted men who would hurt her, and if she can’t find a man like that, she turns whatever man she’s with into one.

I’m just not like that anymore. I no longer fit the pattern. I’m not the father figure she so desperately needs to punish her for all of her misdeeds.

Yet, she read my letters as if I was; she so full of guilt she can’t stand kindness.

The code words send her into a rage – and my second letter, which was much more to the point, scared her. She didn’t want to hear the words “jail” or “Forester home.”

My letter was like the word of God condemning her to an eternity in hell. Perhaps I’m guilty of that, pushing her into a corner in which she has no escape.

Perhaps I’m being harsh because I’ve not done a great job helping my uncle, who tries to kill himself every time they let him out of the hospital, and I have no way to stop him, unable to do anything but lecture him, or plead with him to not be insane.

I keep thinking all this is karma for my own past sins and that this bolt of lightning strikes me as hard as it does her.

 

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