Dear Mom,

In the middle of the night. After you fall asleep. I leave my bedroom. I lock my door from the outside with my fingernail. I tiptoe slowly, with a great amount of stealth, down the hallway. I can’t remember if I close your door or if you did before you got into bed. I then sit on the top stair and scoot down on my butt, one step at a time. When I reach the foyer, I tiptoe quietly through the house and to the family room. I slide open the sliding glass door without making a sound. And there, on the other side is someone. A friend. A boy. A girl. A group of friends. If no one is there? Then I leave and walk to the car out front that is waiting. We drive to the city. No destination. No plan. Simply for the ride. Or I go back to his house. Or he comes inside. Or they come inside. I’m fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. I might even be eighteen. I drink. I do drugs. I smoke cigarettes out back. There is sex. There are parties. The lights are off. Everyone is asleep. Everyone but me. 

I am sorry.

I’ve never been to Alcoholics Anonymous. As I’ve said many times before, I don’t consider myself a true alcoholic and I never felt a calling to AA. Never felt the need to go talk to other people who are working on sobriety. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll change my mind and attend a meeting. 

I do know enough about the program to know about the twelve steps. I think the first time I ever heard of it was in the movie Clueless. Do you remember taking me to see that in the movie theater? I look forward to the day my kids are old enough to watch it. Particularly because we live in Los Angeles and the jokes will hit differently as they will understand the references on a deeper level.

Anyway… 

Most of what I know about AA is from the movies. But I know enough to know about the importance of making amends. And I am starting to understand the difference between making amends and apologizing. 

I spoke of regrets briefly last week, and I will admit that one of my bigger regrets in life was never having the opportunity to make amends for my mistakes. And I take full responsibility for that. I had ample amount of time. I knew you were dying. I could have said something. I chose not to. I’m sure there was a significant part of me that wasn’t ready. I didn’t have the words yet. But I want you to know now that I am profoundly sorry. I am sorry that I didn’t make amends before you died.

So, I will attempt to do it now.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s impossible to make amends when the recipient’s ashes are one with Lake Michigan. But I think I can do it.

First, my apologies…

I am sorry for lying to you so often. I would say I’m sorry to have lied to you ever, but I recognize that I was a teenager and teenagers do lie. I just could have done it less. A lot less. I’m sorry for all the times I blamed friends, or nonexistent people that I made up, for the cigarettes you found or the alcohol that was missing. That time when you found a condom floating in the toilet and I said I was ‘playing with it as a joke’? I’m sorry about that. 

I am sorry for stealing. I know that you suspected me of taking your hundred-dollar bill from one of your jars in the bottom drawer of the credenza in the dining room. It was me. And I knew when I took it that you’d find out. It was quite obvious. Did you also know about all the smaller bills? I’d often take a five or ten or twenty from your wallet. I was usually cautious to never take enough at once to be noticeable. Except for that hundred of course. 

I’m sorry for breaking promises. All the times I told you I wouldn’t do it again. When I gave you my word. When I swore to God or on my life.

I am sorry for taking you for granted. For using you when I needed you and discarding you after. I am sorry for waiting until college to treat you like a confidante. Like a friend. Like a human.

I am sorry for not letting you in. For pushing you away. For not trusting you.

And I am sorry that I gave you so many reasons to not trust me.

I am sorry that I fought with you in the end. The last weeks. The last days. I got annoyed when you’d call me from the rehabilitation center. Confused. Making no sense. Asking me questions that you were supposed to know the answers to. I was aggravated for having to repeat myself. I was upset that we couldn’t have a real relationship. That I was thriving, and you were slipping away. And I am sorry that I wasted so much time. 

As I sit here and write this, I know that telling you how sorry I am. How sorry I feel for all of the wrongdoings and mistakes. It doesn’t change anything. You’re not here to listen. You’re not here to respond. You’re not here to absolve me. 

But I am. I am still here. And I believe I have the power to absolve myself. Through acknowledging and taking the necessary steps to being an overall better human. If I walk the rest of my life being honest. Being trustworthy. Being intentional. Staying true to myself. Letting people in. Can’t I be a good person? Live up to my potential? Make you proud?

So much of this idea of self-absolution goes back to guilt. To forgiveness. You are not here to forgive me. So, I must work on forgiving myself. And in order to forgive, I must first overcome my guilt. Because isn’t that what this all is? Guilt? I need to make amends for my wrongdoings and my shitty behavior because I still carry guilt deep within. I used to joke that it’s because I’m Jewish. That guilt is in my DNA. But I don’t really believe that. It’s simply a crutch. A reason to stay complacent and accept guilt as inevitable. Again, I think I have the power to change that. 

As I strip away the layers of guilt, I find that the moments in my life where I acted immature or cruel or selfish or against my better judgment still haunt me. The version of myself when I was a bully to you. When I joined in and teased you. Poked fun at you. When I half listened. When I lied. These moments are shameful for me. I knew better. I made bad decisions consciously. Knowing the consequences. Knowing the betrayal. So, this guilt lives deep within. And maybe I need to work layer by layer. Allow myself time to chip away at my guilt. I can’t just wave a wand and say all is good. All is magically forgiven. It doesn’t work that way. I need to face each moment head on. Recognize it. Name it. Forgive it. 

The one that bugs me the most, that makes my skin crawl when I think of it, is the lying. I can come up with a million excuses as to why I withheld so many truths from you. I was scared of your reaction. I didn’t want you to look down on me. To dislike me. To love me less. I didn’t want you to change me. To take my identity. To force me to clean up and grow up. But really, if I’m being honest with myself, I lied because it felt good. It felt powerful. I had control. I could write my own narrative. But it was false. A story I told myself. A fake identity to go with my fake I.D. 

And this fake version of me was more popular. Had more friends. She was malleable. She could do anything. Say anything. Be anything. But she lied and stole and betrayed. And she regretted. Even if she couldn’t admit it until so many years later. She did. She did regret. She still does.

For so long I carried on in a way that wasn’t comfortable. I didn’t like who I had become. And I think I accepted this fake persona as my true self which hurt even more. Because not liking oneself is so painful. It’s ugly. And the more I became that person, the further away I got from understanding who I really was. And as a shell of myself, I couldn’t be honest. I couldn’t be honest with me or with you. So, lying became the default. Lying became acceptable. And oh boy did lying become easy. Lying became second nature. 

I lied so much that I think you even accepted it. There was nothing you could do about it. I wouldn’t confess. I stuck to my story. So, in a way, my lies became the closest thing to a truth that you were going to get. I’m so sorry for that. For making you question everything. I can’t even imagine the pain this caused you. The sleepless nights. The contemplating how to handle me.

I used to make up friends that I was hanging out with. Mix up names of real people so they’d sound authentic, but you couldn’t possibly find them in the phonebook. And I’d just hold up my arms and say, “I don’t know why they’re not listed.” And that would be it. Or maybe I’d be grounded for lying. But the truth never came out. I still got away with it. 

I have so many stories like that. I’d take the punishment for lying because I knew that the truth would be way worse. And the more I got away with it, the more this became my normal routine, the more I slipped into this dark world of fraud. And I became so good at it. I lied to you. To friends. To boyfriends. To police officers. I was so good at coming up with a story on the spot that sounded plausible. I’d pull from truths. And I think somewhere along the way, I started to believe it. I started to convince myself that my lies were real. My stories were true. And I think that I’m still uncovering the truth in my web of lies. It’s why I can’t always trust my own memories. And this I regret. I feel so guilty. Because the loss of trust in a relationship is devastating. You couldn’t trust me. I couldn’t trust myself. 

Maybe it is because I now have my own kids, but lately I have been thinking more and more about those nights when I’d sneak out. Or when I’d lie about where I was. So many things could have gone wrong. I could have been in an accident. I could have been attacked. I could have been left for dead in that parking lot in Mexico when I was fifteen… that’s a story for another day. And it’s almost like I feel more guilt over the ‘what ifs’ than the ‘what was’. I was putting myself at risk of being in real danger. And I didn’t care. I had some sort of death wish or something back then. Maybe it was the thrill of it. Like the possibility of danger allowed me to truly feel. I carry so much guilt because of it. Because of my behavior and the disregard for my safety or for your feelings. You didn’t deserve it. You didn’t deserve to be so worried about your child. You had enough of that with Paul. A child who had no choice. Who was at risk of death for his entire existence. And there I was, playing with fire because it was fun. I was such an asshole.

But I want to be ready to forgive myself for those actions. For the years of lying. 

I would like to think that you can see me. That you can hear me. That you can read these letters. But if you can’t? Then I must do the work on my own. I must let my mistakes go. Release them. Stop the guilt. Find the forgiveness. And move forward as my best self. The self today that is a mother. A wife. A friend. A loving human. And still, a daughter. Not just to Dad. But still to you. Because, as Idris told me this morning, “Mom, when you die you will never be gone because you will always be in my heart”.

Mom, you are still with me. In my heart. And if my heart is full. Unbroken. Thriving. Then you must feel that. And I must believe that. Because if you can feel my love for myself and for my family then you can feel the love I still have for you. And I hope that you can feel the respect. The adoration. The truth.

I know I still have work to do. I still have layers of mistake to forgive. Guilt to chip away at. But I do forgive myself for the lying. I regret it. But regretting it helps me acknowledge it. To name it. To release it. 

I still wish I could have gone through this growth with you. The regret I have for not having had these conversations with you while you were still alive weighs so heavy on me. Why couldn’t I? I wasn’t a child when you died. I was an adult. About to get married. I should have known better. But then I wonder, would it have made a difference? What would you having forgiven me on your deathbed meant in the long run? I am starting to question if I ever needed the forgiveness to come from you at all. Ultimately, you loved me unconditionally. From the day I was born until the day you died. You loved me with every ounce of your being. The real problem for me was that I suffered from an inability to love myself. So, isn’t it me who I seek forgiveness from? Have I always needed to absolve myself? Look within and release this hold? This guilt? This regret?

I have the power to make amends. I choose to. I choose to face my demons. I choose to accept my apologies. To forgive myself. To move forward.

I love you, Mom.

And I love me.

Love, 

Rachel