Chapter 57
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Samuel,
I’m writing this because I have nowhere else to put the rage burning through me.
You left without an explanation as to why you’ve withdrawn from this marriage. I asked you a thousand times. I wish you had called this relationship off if you weren’t happy. Maybe you’d still be here. Maybe not together with me, but not gone forever.
Because I can’t deal with this grief. The guilt. I can’t heal or get closure. It feels like you tore open my life and walked away as if none of it mattered.
You knew I was trying. Every day. I kept trying to reach you while you shut me out, while you hid behind silence and excuses and long nights in the other room.
Avoiding our problems wasn’t the solution, Sam.
Do you have any idea what that did to me? What it still does?
I’ve spent nights wondering why I wasn’t enough—if something in me pushed you away, if something in me killed you.
You left me raising Mila alone.
You left me to hold everything together while pretending I wasn’t unraveling. You left me with questions I had no way to answer. And the worst part? You left her. She deserved better. I deserved better too.
I’m furious with you for never trusting me. I’m furious that you walked out as if that was easier than speaking to the woman you married. Easier than fighting for our family.
I know you were hurting that night, or at least you pretended well enough for me to carry this guilt for so many years. I can’t forgive myself.
I wish you had told me everything that was going on that made you so absent. I wish you had given me the chance to stand beside you instead of leaving me in the dark. I wish you hadn’t made me feel small, confused, and abandoned. I wish you hadn’t taught me to expect loss from every person I love.
This letter won’t reach you. But the fury has to go somewhere, and today it goes here.
Maybe this is how I finally stop letting your choices define what I believe about myself.
Maybe one day I’ll write another letter to let you know I’ve healed and that I hope you rest in peace.
For now I can’t wish for anything but a way out from these emotions that keep me trapped in a place where I can’t be the mom our little one deserves.
—Mara