Dear Woman I Never Knew

I don't know what to say to you except perhaps well, you got out. Sure you had to die to do so, but on some level I have come to see your passing as a kind of mercy, a severe one, but a mercy nonetheless. I've supposedly gotten out but alas it doesn't end. Your son, the one I was tethered to all those years, well it just doesn't matter that I moved away to escape, he continues to entangle me. And this, this is the sticking point. I've certainly thought about death, more as a means to escape than anything else. I don't necessarily want to die, its just I'm so tired of the endlessness of the emotional and psychological abuse. Hope as it turns out seems to be a terrible thing. For in spite of all the terrible things he has done to me over and over again, my brain stubbornly refuses to comprehend that someone like him can exist entirely without any compassion or empathy. He grows worse by the day. And in spite of me losing almost everything, he wants to suck more life out of me like a dementor. Why? He has already won a million fold over and over. He now has my children full time. Even still he wants to take more. He bullies. He stabs. He wishes me harm. All that to say, your murderer (your ex) whom fathered this thing that I was tethered to for so long, in so fathering spawned another alien just as his father spawned him. I wish I could say that your tragic death changed him--that he was able to rise above it and break the cycle of narcissist creating more narcissicism. But, I have no such news to write you. I fear for my children. I am hoping and praying that in spite of my not being able to be in proximity to them that they will somehow see through all these narcissistic enchantments and mirrors. I am hoping that I have somehow burdened them with overpowering tools that help them separate wheat from chaff, truth from lie. I pray that the narcissistic propaganda does not penetrate their spirits and souls. I pray that they hold onto compassion, empathy, hope, and kindness toward humanity and that they begin to recognize that there are things in proximity to them that are more alien than human. I'm so sorry that I failed you. When I first met him, I only wanted our relationship to be a source of healing from all of this shit for him. It still grieves me that he ultimately chose this path. They say that the narcissist cannot ever recover. But, alas I am cursed with microscopic hope that somehow this new mother figure in his life will somehow trigger healing in spite of the damning odds. And regardless of what happens with your son, I am hoping that the pattern ends with him.