Lucie Maren

TRIGGER WARNING for descriptions of parental abuse, emotional and physical.

My darling baby sister,

You will hear countlessly in your life that it is easier to have loved and lost than it is to have never loved at all. I’m not sure how much of that saying is meant to apply to parents. But I know that I watch you now, terrified, as you love him the same way I remember loving him. I feel an incessant never-ending urge to grasp you by your shoulders and shake you, make you listen, make you understand. He will never be who you think he is. Who he believes himself to be. 

You don’t know him yet, but you will. You will meet him slowly. Like a boiling frog, you won’t realize until the water is bubbling and you don’t know where the fire is coming from anymore, let alone how to turn it off. 

You will meet him anew, the first time he makes a critical comment about your body and you ask him to stop and he calls you ridiculous. You will know him when none of your siblings show up to Christmas and he calls us ungrateful. But you remember. You remember the scars along the inside of our brother’s mouth and that wonky, crooked knob at the top of his spine; and you remember the nights you spent crying in your crib, begging for the yelling to stop before you even knew words. 

But you will know him most as you watch him lie. Lie about how he treats you, lie about his job, lie about his competence, his memory, lie about your mother. Mostly you’ll watch him lie about nothing just for the fun of it. This is when he is most himself, teeth rotting with untruths.

Watching you develop a love that I will have to watch get beaten out of you slowly is the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. You light up when he walks in, it pains me to miss seeing you at your happiest when I have to leave the room or look away.

Now, our father is not a violent man. He will never lay a hand on you. But he won’t have to. The beating will come periodically; in forgotten birthdays at doctors appointments and never being allowed to finish a sentence. And these blows will seem small, until you’ve gathered 16 years worth of them on your chest and you don’t remember when it got this hard to breathe. And I’m so sorry.

I am so sorry, my love, that you will feel the light in your eyes dwindle each time more of him is revealed to you. So sorry that incrementally you will shift from running to the front door when you hear his car, to locking your own door. I’m mostly sorry for the way that you will think you’re crazy because he teeters a line in his treatment towards you. It won’t be bad enough to do anything about it, but you will know something is not right. You will always be afraid.

He is not violent, but that only serves to confine his anger. You will find that the words hurt worse anyways. They linger longer than any bruise, and he won’t even remember saying them. 

I can only hope that you find solace in the knowledge that it’s not intentional cruelty, mostly it’s stupidity and frustration at his own inadequacy. Though he will never admit it, he will know that you deserve better, but that knowledge will only make him worse.

It will always be more about him than it is about you; his anger, his attention, his priorities. Learn to make his lack of consideration a tool.

It’s harder to anger him when he knows nothing of your life. Create one. Give yourself the gift of a routine that involves him minimally. It’s hard, so hard, to feel so alone everyday. You may yearn, as I yearn, to be taken care of. But we have been dealt our hands, and there will be no one to do this for you. I will never lie and tell you that it’s easy to survive him. But that is what we must do: survive. The world is waiting for you. 

I can’t stay. Forgive me, I have to leave. I will go nowhere and do nothing if I don’t go now. My dreams are bigger than him, bigger than this place. I don’t know that I will ever know peace here. I really am so sorry, you are the only thing that makes me second guess. I wish I could say I have no choice, that I NEED to do this. But I don’t. This is my choice. On my 18th birthday, I will choose me for the first time in my life. Just as I desperately wish you will.

As you come to know him, I have no idea if it will drive your anger towards me, or your understanding. Probably anger. I was very angry for a very long time. I’m still angry, I worry sometimes that my life might always feel this hostile. Go ahead and be angry, but do not become your rage. You are a soft soul and you deserve a soft life. 

Happiness in our house is a bloodbath. You must fight, kick, and scream your way to it. You can do it. It took me so long to realize I could. I need you to understand now: the door is there. Force it open. As the hinges lock, let it drag the rabidness out of you that I see in your eyes now. 

In two years, I will kiss your chubby cheek, tuck a drawing in my back pocket, pack my room into a car, and run. Not away from you, but towards my life, towards all the things that wait for me, just as they wait for you. I can only hope that as I leave you with this, it is enough that you navigate this better than I did. Do not let him steal your life from you, your joy.

I am waiting for you.

Love,

Your sister

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Lucie Maren was born and raised on the coasts of California where the sun never stops shining and the birds never stop singing. Her dreams of being a writer can be traced back to love, and how much of it she wants to put into the world.