Scott's Last Letter
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We all know about Elaine making Scott write her letters. But this letter is different, and it's also the last.
Sometimes in therapy you write letters you never send.
Here is a boy's final letter to the woman who used to be his stepmother.
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Elaine,
This is a hard letter to write. I don't know how to start. My therapist- I have this counselor guy that I talk to, Dr. Lindholm, dad found him for me when I came home from Horizon- he said I need to write it. He said it would be healing.
I go see him twice a week. He's nice. He's helping me, too. I'm not angry all the time like I was before. You always said you didn't know why I was so angry (except I think you did know) well now I'm more okay. But I still have a lot of problems because of you.
A while ago I would have said I'm not blaming you completely and I would have taken some responsibility for what happened, but now I don't feel that way. I think it was because my dad always said I should be a man and all that…but now I'm starting to feel like it really was your fault. And it's not the counselors or anyone else making me feel this way. It's me realizing what you did to me. You knew exactly what you were doing.
I think maybe you wanted me to feel like it was my fault. Maybe you wanted me to feel guilty so that you didn't have to.
I'm going to tell you how I feel now.
When you got married to my dad, I was kinda surprised because you guys didn't know each other that long. Only I wasn't mad, like you said. You started telling people I was just mad 'cause I didn't want my dad to marry you, but that's not true. I just didn't know what to say or do. I wasn't mad. It was just weird, that's all. But to be honest, I thought it might be nice to…well, to have a mom. Now I'm embarrassed to even say that. But my mom wasn't there for me, and my dad was gone all the time, and you were nice to me, and so for a while I thought you would be like my mom. As embarrassing as that is to me now, I thought I'd have a mom again…and that would be a good thing, ya know?
You weren't really what I expected. But I tried to like you. I really did. I was nice to you in the beginning and I wanted you to like me. I wanted you to treat me like I was your son. That's hard for me to say. But yeah, I wanted you to act like I was your kid, your real son. And at first you did. Kind of. I mean, I could tell you weren't into the whole mom thing, but you tried to be my friend, and that was almost as good. You were nice to me. I could tell you were trying.
Things were okay for a while.
I don't want to talk to you about what happened. I can talk to Dr. Lindholm about that. I don't like talking about it…No, actually I really hate talking about it. It hurts. Only keeping it in hurts worse.
Well I don't need to tell you about what happened, you were there, you already know. But maybe you don't know how to made me feel. After that first night, I thought maybe I did something wrong to lead you on, maybe you'd misunderstood me. Or maybe nothing really bad had happened and I was getting freaked out for nothing. I was confused. I didn't know what you were trying to do or why. I didn't know what to think. I didn't know if I should tell my dad about it. If I did, would he get mad; would he even believe me?
In the end I decided that you hadn't really done anything wrong, that it was my fault, I had just led you on, and if I was more careful next time then nothing like that would happen again. I decided it was all me, that you weren't trying to be weird. That's what I told myself anyway. That way I didn't feel like I was losing control. It was easier to accept it if I was still the one in control.
But it was just really confusing. And I'm angry that you put me through that.
Now I think the reason that you started little by little is so I wouldn't do anything about it. If you had tried to just have sex with me right away, I probably would have known that it was wrong and told someone. But you didn't. You got to know me, you acted nice, you made me trust you, you made me rely on you, and then you started to look at me. Even when it first happened, you didn't just come in and say you wanted sex. You asked if you could sleep in my room, and then later you touched me, and eventually it happened. Everything happened gradually. Dr. Lindholm told me people who do this sort of thing take time to "groom" their victims. I don't want to feel like a victim. But I understood what he meant. I think you went slowly on purpose, so slowly that you would make me wonder if I was overreacting or causing this myself. And by the time I realized that I wasn't overreacting and I didn't cause this, by then it was too late to tell anyone. I felt trapped.
And you made me feel like I had brought it on myself. You did. You used to tell me a lot of times that I had led you on and now you couldn't help needing to do stuff because of that. I used to believe you. I used to think I must have done something really bad and I had started all of this. Here's the thing, though. I never looked at you that way. I didn't, I swear. And I think you knew that. I think you just told me I had led you on because that way you wouldn't have to feel like you were abusing me. You lied to me.
You are never going to hurt me again.