Keep watching over me, and I will always do my best to make you proud.

It’s been fifteen years.

Since that day you were supposed to pick me up. But you never showed which was typical.

I remember standing by the window watching the snow hit the ground. I was so excited to go Christmas shopping with you. I went to bed that night understanding that you were a busy person, and that there would be other days we could go.
But there wouldn’t be another day. Waking up to my mother crying, explaining that I was never going to see you again was something I didn’t expect, or understand. I didn’t get why God took you from me and why there were so many people crying. Four year olds don’t really understand the concept of death, and it took me years to truly understand it.

The wake was hard. I remember sitting on sissy’s lap and being told to remain quiet. I wanted to run around and play, but was told to sit there. Tears were running down everyone’s faces like a waterfall. Everyone was hugging me and telling me how sorry they were. Sorry for what? They aren’t the one’s that took you from me.
They told me that your heart had stopped. Mommy said it’s because you smoked too much. That doesn’t stop me from smoking a pack a day now though. Like father like daughter right?

You were only 42. You had so much more life to live. A life with me, and the rest of your family. It fell apart; the whole family stopped talking when you died. I saw you sister the other day; she didn’t even know it was me.

So my question is why, why did you leave? You left me with her, who reminds me every day that I was a mistake. And that she wishes you were here and she was gone. Well, I wish you were here too.

No one ever told me I wasn’t allowed to date, no one gave me my first boyfriend that “shotgun” lecture. You weren’t here to see me graduate or help me pick out my first car. A psychiatrist once told me that I felt uncomfortable around men because you weren’t in my life. I was never athletic; mom told me playing inside was more fun than going to parks. I thought that as years pass mourning is supposed to go away, but why is it that I mourn more now than I ever have? I miss you every day.

I go to your gravesite a lot. I play songs that mom told me were your favorite. I don’t have much of yours, a few pictures and a raggedy flannel. Sometimes I forget what you looked like, how you smelled, what you personality was like. People say I look like you, I wish we could compare face to face.

Who will walk me down the aisle when that time comes? Who will give my husband-to-be that “if you hurt her I know where to bury you” look?

I wish I could have a conversation with you, one last time. I’m older now, and I think we would get along great. I miss going to work with you, and spending the night at your house. I remember you used to make me giggle a lot, and that I was always happy when you were around. I remember the birthday where you smashed the cake in my face, and mom got mad because it ruined my dress.
I miss you more than words can explain.

Keep watching over me, and I will always do my best to make you proud.

To the one that I still love:

To the one that I still love:

I am writing to tell you how I feel even though you may never read this. I just need to put it all down on paper as sort of a closure thing for myself.

You were the first guy I said “I love you” to and actually meant it. I felt love within myself that I wanted to share with you so much and I know you had it within you too. You expressed your love in so many ways and always made me feel more beautiful than any guy ever had. Things were great for the first few months and I thought our relationship would never end. After the first few months everything went downhill, and it has taken me a long time to realize why. We were fighting every day. We would call each other up and within the first five minutes we would argue about the pettiest and most childish things. I know realize that we never talked about anything that bothered us until we started fighting. It was like a war, everything we really thought would come up in harsh ways when we were fighting, and this was the wrong way to “talk” about these things. I truly loved you even if it didn’t seem like it when I said the harsh things I did. I was wrong. I will admit and I am truly sorry for all the things I said to you to make you feel so down. I know you are sorry for the things you said too as you have expressed that many times, an I have grown to forgive you. When we were together I felt so secure and happy and even when we fought so much I didn’t want to end things and let you go because I was already attached. When I finally let you go, it was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but I knew it was the right thing to do because you weren’t getting any better at telling the truth. For so long I hated you for lying and I blamed you completely for our relationship falling apart, and now I know I had a big part in it too. I never should have let you go because you only got worse. I blame myself today because I feel that if I had not let you go then you wouldn’t have spiraled downward so far. It took me so long to get over our relationship and be happy again with someone else. I have not yet had another relationship as long as ours and I will tell you I miss it a lot. I still miss you tons and wish everything was back to the way it was in the first month we were together, but sadly the past is the past and there is no way to change it. I always thought we would never speak to each other again after our relationship ended so dramatically. I thought I would never be able to forgive you or be friends with you because of how devastated I was over what happened. It took almost a year for us to both be able to be friends after all that had happened, but I’m glad we got past everything. We finally became cool again at the end of last school year. I was having a really good day at school and I was waling in the hallway and I saw you I knew that I had finally forgiven you and moved on completely, I couldn’t help but smile at you. Surely enough at the end of the day you sent me a text and it was nice to see a friendly compliment, instead of the harsh insults we used to send back and forth. From that day we were sort of friends, but summer came around and we hung out and had tons of fun just like we used to.All the memories of when we were together came back to me and I wanted to kiss you and hold you like before because for the first time it felt like we were still together in the relationship that was so amazing. I had to restrain myself and make myself snap back into reality but it became easier the more we hung out. The start of this year had come around after all the summer memories and I had never saw you in school or heard about you, I truly began to get worried. I finally found out you are at a school where you are happier and are doing well. It took a lot of asking around but I am glad I finally got an answer.

The main purpose I am writing this letter is because I have been thinking a lot about you lately and I know deep within my heart I truly still love you. I just couldn't help but reminisce about our past together. It's weird because even though I have moved on and can be happy with someone else, I can also still be happy with you and go back to old times. I am glad you are doing well and I know you are happy without me and have moved on, and knowing your happy makes me happy. Maybe one day there will be a chance we get back together, but that's up to fate to decide and whatever happens, it happens for a reason, and i am completely fine with that. Looking past all the negatives, I have come to realize that you really changed my life in so many ways and I can't thank you enough for that. I love you and I hope everything works out for you, because you deserve it.

It is difficult to forgive someone you’ve never met.

To Anonymous,

We have never met each other, but I suspect we know quite a bit about each other. Five years ago you met the love of my life and you pursued him. He holds a lot of the blame too for the betrayal and for the aftermath of pain that followed and still twinges in odd moments even to this day. He holds a lot of blame. But so do you, you who knew he was taken and selfishly decided to pursue him anyways. You who knew what pain you had caused and continued to try to take and take and take. I feel some pity for you now, knowing that you got nothing but loneliness and misery from it too. I know you suffered for t his. But what kind of woman are you, who would poach on another woman’s man? Where is your self-respect? Where is your honor?

Now, I look back on that time and I must give thanks as well. For if my (now) husband and I had not gone through such a difficult period, our separation would not have bore the fruits that it did. We would not have had to re-evaluate so much, we would not have learned so much, and we ultimately would not have become nearly so strong as we are now. Our relationship would have faltered, and even if it had lead to marriage it would have easily broken. But now I have faith. Now I have trust. Now I have a depth of love I never knew was possible. And so while that time was a time of pain, it was also the best thing we could have gone through and I do not regret it. It made us who we are today.

So in the end, all I really want to be able to do is forgive you. I have tried many times, but it is difficult to forgive someone you’ve never met. I wish I could meet you, to say these words to you, and then to forgive you and finally find release.

-Anonymous

Dad...Please don’t leave me.

Dear Dad,
As the prodigal child that could do no wrong in your eyes, you’ve always justified and made excuses for my actions and behaviors. So much so, that even I’m starting to believe my own lies.

You’re not the emotional type and don’t understand my emotional ways. In the past few years though, you’ve delicately tried to ease my depression and anxiety-ridden woes. You did it the only way you knew how … money.

My whole life you’ve bailed me out from every situation I’ve turned into an utter catastrophe. Or you’ve protected me from getting too deep into trouble. You’ve invested thousands of dollars into me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t brought up to be grateful and appreciative. Instead, I’ve come to selfishly expect those extensions of monetary donations and bailouts.

I’m so desperate to make you proud, yet am terrified you’ll see me for who I really am and reject me. My pathological lying is out of control just to keep up your impression of me as “the good daughter”.

I’ve become so dependent on you. We haven’t always gotten along; in fact we butt heads a lot when I was younger. You secretly wished I had been a boy and made me fulfill your dreams to make me the same star athlete you had once been. You were disappointed and uninterested when my love was music. But even when we were at our worst, I still fiercely craved your approval.

I’m petrified of you dying because only then will I finally know what it’s like to feel loss and suffer through something that you can’t help me out of.

Everyone else calls me out on my shenanigans. You make me feel like I haven’t done anything wrong and that it’s someone else’s fault. This theory hasn’t been healthy for my mental wellness, but at times has been the only false sense of confidence I’ve had.

You’ve never said “I love you” and I keep longing for the day that you do. I’ve learned to see through the things you DO say and translate those to how you feel about me.

Please don’t leave me. The day you leave this Earth, so will the smoke and mirrors surrounding me. I’m scared to death of how I will be revealed to the world when you are no longer here to protect me.

I’m sorry for all the lies. And I’m sorry for not telling you all of this sooner. But you’re the only stable male figure that’s ever been in my life and I love you.


Love, 
Your Daughter

Mail letters online!

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I hope everyone is ready for a lovely Thanksgiving holiday. I know that I am.

P.S. Come back tomorrow. I will be posting a letter to kick off the holiday weekend.

I want to trust doctors again.

Dear Cleveland Clinic and Kaiser Permanente (and all others who failed to do their job),

It’s the night before I go in for yet another procedure, where I have strangers poke and prod me with metals, and cameras, and dyes. Where I trust my body in the hands of people I really don’t know, hoping that they don’t treat me like I’m just another malfunctioning piece of anatomy. It’s been a fifteen yearlong journey...and I’m writing because I’m tired. I’m so very tired. See, had things been handled differently 15 years ago, I may not be having yet another procedure. I may not be as tired as I feel today.

Fifteen years ago. It seems so long ago. And yet, I remember the day like it was yesterday. I was 17. I was vomiting with a high fever and doctors were staring at me in wonder. I was just a baby and I remember some male doctor (whom I’d never had before) ask my mother to leave the room so that he could make sure that whatever was wrong wasn’t a “female issue.” I was a very Catholic girl, a devout virgin with a fear of sex that did not plague any of my friends who were actually having sex, and yet, the mystery of my symptoms meant I needed a gynecological exam. That was the beginning of a long, long, long line of doctor’s who (bless their hearts) wanted to think they knew the answer. I remember the ambulance trip I took from that office to The Cleveland Clinic. I remember vomiting while in a moving vehicle. It was surreal. I couldn’t understand how I wasn’t at home, with my mother’s hand on my forehead, on my bathroom floor. What a mystery it was. What a mystery I was...and all medical mysteries find their way to CCF. I remember the ultrasound, the doctors whispering, “Do you see it? No, I don’t see it. Do you see it?” as if I was not in the room, as if I could not hear them. I was 17, and that was a very, very scary moment. And I don’t think they realized that, cause for them it was more excitement...it was the thrill of finding something odd in someone’s body. I may have been a frightened girl, but to them I was purely a medical conundrum. Sometimes the person gets forgotten in the diagnosis and this is where I first felt that...I realized I wasn’t looked at as a complex human being, but rather a scientific, medical specimen.

The mystery unfolded in this diagnosis: a solitary kidney with a UPJ obstruction (a severe infection on top of a complex anatomical scenario.) And this is the moment where all of you (Kaiser, CCF, and others) changed my life forever. And I think you did it, like you do every day, without probably ever looking back on it. You collectively made a decision that changed the course of my life. In light of suggestions from some CCF doctors to follow up with surgery, the unanimous decision was to treat the infection, and have me follow up with a nephrologist. Kaiser doctors secured my mother’s heart by telling her that surgery wasn’t necessary. And I followed up with Dr. M. (I’ll spare your name, sir...but I hold you most responsible).

I saw Dr. M for the next five years, and despite the fact that I continued to have severe bouts of pain and numerous ER visits that kept directing me back to you, you repeatedly told me that everything was normal. “Yes, you spill protein in your urine, yes you have pain...but everything is okay” (although spilling protein is not okay, and we all know pain is not okay.) Dr. M, I’m not sure if you were being negligent. I’m not sure if you really believed there was nothing wrong. I’m not sure I have any idea what you really thought, honestly. But I do know this: I trusted you. I trusted you as most teenagers and young adults trust doctors—you are the educated, gifted, dedicated people who are committed to saving lives and we are meant to trust that. So never, ever did I imagine in those five years that my kidney function was being severely damaged by the condition that you and others said was stable. Never, ever did I think I would hear words like Stage Four Chronic Kidney Disease.

Is it worth it to go into the details of how my life has been affected by your decisions? Yep. It is. I was an active actress and director who was actually pretty successful in Cleveland. With my diagnosis, I couldn’t get health insurance because, well you know how those pre-existing conditions work--a solitary kidney with a UPJ obstruction doesn’t last too long on the cutting board of insurance lenders. But I was getting by. I was on tour, following my dreams with theater, in love. Life was great. But one little trip to an ER while on tour in Cincinnati (with the same symptoms I had had numerous times before) found me to be in renal failure. I needed immediate surgery. It’s kind of ironic--that doctor scolded my mother and my partner for having ever let my condition get to this point (as if it was their fault.) I could go on and on about the medical bills I had to pay for 5 years after that surgery...but money means nothing next to the reality of how my health and life have been affected. I have had 3 surgeries since then—two minor, one major. I have had to get a job that gives me the best health insurance possible and it turns out that it’s not really what I want to do, but do because of my need for good benefits. I’ve been faced with the bitter reality that pregnancy is too serious a risk because of the stress it would put on my single kidney. There’s probably a lot more. But really, the kicker is this: the one kidney I have that was functioning at 80% when I was 17, now functions less than half of that. I currently have a GFR of 30 (ish, give or take a few numbers depending on my health) and in the past 3 years it has declined at a rapid pace. Once it hits 20, dialysis and a kidney transplant are on the table. And this, doctors, could all have been prevented had you decided to do things differently.

So...what do I want from you? Why am I writing this letter? It’s not like you have a magic wand that can make it all better. And legally a lawsuit isn’t possible because we’ve past the statute of limitations. What do I want?

I want to trust doctors again. I want to go into this procedure tomorrow and feel like I’m in the hands of people who won’t make the same mistakes that other doctors have made before. I want to know that regardless of the medical journey that lies ahead of me, I have doctors who are going to do everything in their power to protect me...who will work proactively, not reactively. I want you to hear my story, not because my story is so unique or important, but because maybe it will make you consider the guidance you give other patients so they don’t end up facing unnecessary medical journeys like my own.

I want to forgive you. I want to move on. I want to feel like I’m more than this disease when I walk into your offices. I want you to know who I am...that I come from a huge, loving family, that I write music and love to connect to strangers through my music, that I am a sensitive, but strong young woman with a hell of a lot left to do on this Earth and I’m not going to let the affects of your poor medical judgments keep me from doing so.

I’m not bitter. I just want medicine to be better. I want people who are reading this to demand more from medicine, because we only have one body to work with in this lifetime and we need to demand the best from doctors so that we have it for as long as we possibly can. If the doctors we have aren’t doing their job, then we need to challenge them to do better. You don’t need a medical degree to hear the messages your body sends you--be responsible and respect those messages and share them with people who can and will do something about them.

Sincerely,
Tired yet FULL of LIFE

Dear God –

Dear God –

Life down here, over here, here on earth is confusing me…

I have been taught that you, God, are love and we people here on earth are not here to judge each other – you will do that when we get to meet you. Well, here is where the confusion lies…

It seems as though some people down here, over here, here on earth have decided to take it upon themselves to judge others in hateful manors. I don’t understand because a majority of these people are affiliated or affiliate with you, God. They proclaim their belief in you – discounting the fact that the same people that they are judging believe in you, God, too…

My interpretation is that you, God, are love and if we love then you are always with us. So shy do people see it differently? I know that you will judge me, so should I discount that which other down here, over here, here on earth say?

Some of the people down here, over here, here on earth that judge, judge others with hatred. Why do people hate? To me hate – Half Attempt To Enlighten because these people don’t try to love.

<3 ME