I Love You

Sam,
I have only ever wanted the very best for you and your sisters. I worked so very hard to keep a roof over your heads, good food on the table and clothes on your backs, to teach you well and prepare you for life. Please understand that being a parent is not at all easy and having the stress of a business (where I am responsible for so many other people also) to contend with makes a difficult job even more challenging.

I don’t know how many times I asked for your help and was denied it. I don’t know how many times I explained to you how your lack of (collective) help made things even more difficult. It never seemed to get through; I was always at a loss as to how to engage with you.

Once, when your college class-mates utterly refused to co-operate on a project, you told me how you had begun to understand my frustration. I want you to remember that and then magnify it by 13 years. I want you to reflect too on how you valued your “friends” on the other side of the world, connected only by datastreams more than you valued your mother and I. Perhaps you will wonder how that feels.

Now, of course, our lives are in tatters. I have attempted suicide twice in my life, once when I was younger than you are now and around this time last year. I feared on many occasions that you might too as I saw so much of my teenage self in you; lost, not understood, no particular direction.

We aren’t that different, you and me. You just haven’t grown up or found a vocation. The problem is now that you appear to have stopped looking because the challenges you needed to overcome seemed impossible to you – at least that’s my take on it. I have tried and tried to help you, but you never wanted help. You always turned away from help. From what I can see, you still are.

I still want to help you, but you refuse to speak to me. I understand that you barely even talk to Mum and need substantial encouragement to even go and see your friends. This is really bad for you. I shouldn’t have to say this. I don’t know whether it’s anxiety or depression (they can be separate things but are often interlinked) but for the most part, our anxieties are often not played out. Few things are ever as awful as we convince ourselves that they will be. One route out of this is to just keep flexing that muscle – push yourself to do things and you’ll quickly find it’s not that bad and you’ll probably enjoy the things you worry about. But I don’t know if it’s even worry as you don’t talk to people. You are unlikely to find a solution if you keep all your troubles to yourself.

I am sorry that I have scared you in the past. Shouting was a pressure relief valve – everyone has their limits – limits as to how much cohesive living resistance people can take, for instance, it is hard to try to explain these things without it sounding like I blame you or others. My reactions were entirely mine, that is clear, but without understanding the background, it’s very easy for others to simply apportion blame. It’s always easier to blame others than to look at oneself and ask what impact your own actions or inactions had. Responsibility is always easier if you refuse to acknowledge it yourself.

I don’t want us to be strangers. I don’t want any of us to be strangers. The situation with Amelia is desperately sad and she needs to know that what she believed happened is totally wrong. You know that I was beside myself worrying for her safety that day. It look me a long time to appreciate how she could have come to the conclusion she did and, taken out of context and especially having been told by Freya that I was furious and with Freya coaxing both mum and Amelia on the phone in real time, I absolutely understand how the wrong end of the stick could be (as was) grasped.

But it is the wrong end of the stick and now Amelia’s relationship with mum is so damaged too and all mum did was go along with the lie, even when she knew it was falling apart. Mum does not deserve the hell she’s being put though, she needs love and hugs so much but she’s not getting them. It seems to me that nobody gives a toss about her.

Sam, there’s more than one side to any story and the truth often lies somewhere between the blurred lines of each story as told by different people. If you only ever listen to one side, you will never know the truth but you might be fooled into thinking you do.

I want us to be friends. I never wanted anything else, but you have to want it too and you need to work at it because the longer we all stay apart, the harder it becomes to heal. Talking is always a path to resolution. Conflict begets conflict – always.

Let mum and I help you find something you want to do – something that you find fulfilling. You need a reason to get up in the mornings: we all do. Why not make that reason family?

Take care of yourself and I am here if you want to talk. There is much you do not know about how things turned out – it might help you understand things more if you were to talk.

There’s a video of the making the photograph for your card. It was a real scene in the woodland that I went out specifically to make for you. I would like you to watch it.

https://geni.us/for-sam