24
Kevin
Iwoke up beside Skye. Or should I say, I opened my eyes to watch her? Lost in my head, I haven’t been able to sleep. My heart breaks for her, even as she softly snores beside me with contentment on her face. I can’t imagine the pain she’s endured and continues to feel. My heart skips a beat at the thought of what she saw when she panicked in the kitchen that night. What was she feeling? I’ve often felt the fear and anxiety of projectiles around me in those moments. For her, the missiles causing the fear are the touches from someone who was supposed to care for her. Her war is much more intimate than mine. The enemies share her blood. I was trained to be a killer, while she was taught to be a victim.
I don’t know how I got hard after she spilled her secret to me. Maybe it was because I felt closer to her in that moment, as her long-buried words poured out of her and into me. Her pain is something I recognize and identify with. How can I stop feeling so fiercely attracted to someone who feels like me?
Skye stirs and drapes her arm across my bare chest. What would Skye’s letters be like? Would they be angry and bitter? Or forgiving? We need to write those today.
* * *
The soundof tearing paper fills the silence between us as I rip sheets from a notebook. Broken pieces of binding flutter to the floor.
“Do we have to do this?” Skye whines.
I push a piece of paper toward her and plop a pen on top. She picks it up and rolls her eyes.
“This is stupid,” she says as she fiddles with the pen between her fingers.
“Don’t knock it till you try it.”
“Oh, I’m knocking it.” A smile creeps across her face.
I pick up my pen and start my first letter.
Mom,
I don’t hate you for leaving me alone all the time. I hate that I had to raise myself, and to be honest, I didn’t do that very well. I was so angry when you wanted nothing to do with me for joining the Army. You insisted that people who go into the military become fucked up. Well, you were right about that, but I was pretty messed up before I signed my name on the dotted line.
When you were home, you were drunk. You became a role model for my drinking. You taught me that life is shit when you’re sober. That it’s easier to stomach everything with the alcohol in your blood. That’s worked real fucking well for me so far.
You didn’t teach me work ethic, compassion, or how to love another human being. You taught me to chase an obsession. You made sure I knew what it was like to feel insecure. You broke me by letting me break myself. You never hugged me. You never told me you loved me. How can I love anyone the right way when no one has ever shown me what that looks like? I wish you’d admit that I was your biggest mistake.
I drop the pen for a moment and take a deep breath. My eyes move to Skye. She scribbles across her page as her top teeth dig into her lower lip. Her blue eyes flash up at me, and she moves her paper closer to her, guarding it. I’m not sure she’ll let me read it, and that’s okay. As long as she gets out what she needs to.
I continue working on my own pain . . . my letters.
Lt. Morrison,
I wanted to be the best soldier I could under your command. I wanted to be the first one on the scene and the first one running into the fight. I stayed up too late, fighting nightmares long before my discharge. I tried to be the best, and it cost me my mental health.
I should have talked to someone before it became what it did, but I didn’t want to look weak. In the end, that’s exactly what I became. Weak. I couldn’t finish my second deployment.
I failed you, my brothers, and most importantly, myself. I joined the Army because I knew it would give me the structure I needed. I found that, but I also got so much more . . . a family. I loved every one of those men more than my own brother. A part of me broke each time I held a soldier as he drew his last breath.
When you heard the murmurs of my nightmares and my descent into what I can only describe as madness, you didn’t want to believe it. You fought to keep me within your ranks. We both knew I wasn’t cut out for it anymore, and the discharge was set in motion.
The civilian world is impossible, Lt. I was taught to watch my six, trained to be a killer, and then told to turn it off when my boots hit American soil, but the need to be on alert all the time didn’t go away. I wasn’t fit to be in the Army any longer, but I’m not fit for life as a civilian, either. But there’s no discharge from that.
Thank you for fighting for me. I would have taken the bullet you took if I had been there. I’ll never forgive myself for not being there when you died. It was an honor to serve beneath you.
I fight back the heat behind my eyes on that one. I live with a lot of regret over this. I would have tried to divert the path they were on when they were attacked. I fucking hate fatal funnels. Some you can’t avoid, but from what I was told, it was avoidable. I could have saved him. I could have saved all of them. Yet I’m alive while they’re buried. I should have been with them. Even if I couldn’t save them, I could have died an honorable death with them.
There’s only one other person I feel the need to write a letter to.
Emily,
What can I say to you that would make anything better? I hurt you. I really hurt you. I loved you with all my heart, and for a little while, I felt normal. But it wasn’t long before the nightmares returned and I drank them away. Well, I tried to.
Drunk me never treated you right, and I knew I was losing you before I lost you. I was destroying you while I was hell-bent on self-destruction. I pushed you into the arms of him, and he happily caught you when I threw it all away. The worst part is, he was willing to wait till I fucked up, and he ended up the hero you needed. Maybe he was what you always needed.
I fucked up. I hit the lowest point of my life and illness that night. I’ll never forgive myself. I’ll carry this guilt as long as there’s breath in my body. I wish I could tell you how much I
I furiously cross out the words. I know what I was going to say.
I wish I could tell you how much I love you.
As my pen wrote the words, it felt wrong. I don’t love her. Those words slapped me in the face, waking me from the delusion I’ve been holding on to. Emily is a part of the past, and she needs to remain there.
I look at Skye, her cheeks flushed red. My heart skips beats for her. She’s special. She’s perfectly imperfect. She looks up at me, and her temples pulse.
“Are you okay?” I ask, though I can see the answer on her face.
“This is fucking terrible. Why did you make me do this?” She tosses her pen down and drops her head into her hands.
“It’s meant to be terrible. It’s about confronting what you’ve been avoiding. When those words are written out, it’s hard to deny them. And when you burn them, it’s easier to let them go.”
I put down my pen and motion her toward me. She clambers off the floor, grabs her papers, and sits beside me. She drops her head against my shoulder. Sweat beads on her forehead, and I realize I’m sweating too.
“Do you want me to read them?” I gesture toward the letters in her hand.
“I wrote two versions of the letters. I’ll let you read the watered-down set, but the others can’t be opened again.” Skye crushes two of the papers in her hand, wadding them up.
“Alright,” I tell her.
I wish I could read them in their entirety. I want to understand her. There’s probably so much of her in those crumpled papers. So much of what’s hurt her and what continues to plague her. I won’t force her, though. I won’t make her do anything she isn’t comfortable with, even for my own selfish desire.
She swallows hard and hands me two folded pieces of paper, and I hand her two of mine. I crumple Emily’s and put it in the pile of discarded papers beside her. She looks at me curiously but doesn’t say anything. I open her first letter.
Daddy Dearest,
You’ve never been a father to me, and I wish you could be stripped of that title. Fathers don’t do what you’ve done. Your hands have broken 10 12 of my bones. Does that make you proud?
I can’t hear well in my right ear because you ruptured my eardrum. My left hand is in constant pain since you shattered it with a damn mallet. These cuts on my body are because I don’t know how to survive without some kind of fucking pain. You made this pain normal for me.
I was never allowed to be a kid or a teenager. You made every year of my childhood worse than the one before it, you bitter, horrid excuse of a man.
And Mom? Fuck you too. Fuck you for letting him beat us both. You are my mother! Is there no instinct in your body to protect your child? How do you have no instinct to even protect your fucking self? You’re blind in your left eye. Because of him. How many of your bones has he broken? I don’t know, but I know it’s a lot. His money made you lose your sense of self-preservation. It’s made you forget that I’m your daughter instead of your enemy. You’ll never love me, because I was just one big mistake, and you make sure I remember that.
My eyes move along the page, taking in the cruelty she’s faced. And this is the one she let me read. There’s somehow more of this in that balled-up copy.
I swallow hard at the last sentence of her letter. It’s hauntingly familiar and equally painful. I wipe a hand through my hair and glance at Skye. She’s engrossed in my letter. Redness spreads along her pale skin and reaches her chest. Her leg shakes.
I pick up the second letter and unfold it.
You,