To My Dearest,
My mother always said never to cook in a dirty kitchen and I always thought she meant household duties. She would say, "Keep your house clean, especially the kitchen, because a man don't want food cooked and prepared in a dirty kitchen!". She believed men were simple, uncomplicated and that we women were the ones that complicated things. She told me all men needed to be happy were food, sex, and sleep and if they could get all three in the same place from the same woman, they were lucky, blessed even. I never really understood what she was telling me until I was in my thirties dealing with my second marriage. Her words haunted me, and in an instant that one night, while in your arms for the last time, I knew what she was trying to get me to understand.
All this time I blamed you. I blamed you for the miscarriage of our first baby. I blamed you for going outside our marriage for what you said was a 'break' from all the pressures of being married. I blamed you for a lot of things only because it was so easy to be the victim. It was so easy to put all the responsibility of keeping our marriage together on you. I placed so much significance on sexual infidelity that I didn't consider the emotional and psychological infidelity that I contributed.
Looking back on things I realized what I did to push you away. I stopped talking you. I withheld sex from you and I alienated you from my life by not including you in decisions that I made that effected the both of us. I made you feel unwanted and undesirable. The reasons were not that clear as they are now. I wanted you to feel pain. I wanted you to feel hurt and humiliated the same way I felt when people asked me about the pregnancy and the due date! I hated how you just brushed off the miscarriage so quickly like it was no big deal. It was a big deal to me and it should have been a big deal to you. Instead, you just went on like nothing happened. Deep down I was suffering! Drowning in my own sorrow and yearning for the baby I expected to have, I resented you for wanting me to go on with my life. I hated how you could smile and go out with your friends like nothing happened. I was jealous of you because unlike you, I still looked pregnant and strangers would ask me when my due date was and I would have to lie as opposed to telling the truth and risk being humiliated. But you didn't know any of this and how could you because I never told you. I never gave you the opportunity to be there for me.
I know you loved me and would do anything for me, but I allowed jealousy and a contrite spirit to ruin my love for you. As much as I would love to blame you right now, I can't because I played a significant part in why you disappeared from our marriage. I wrote this in a letter because I know that if I told you in person, you would want to try and make our relationship work, and right now, I can't. Right now I am working on me. I need some much needed therapy so I have enrolled in group therapy for women who lost babies. Its not much but its a start to getting myself together.With hope, maybe I can become the woman my mother would be proud of and eventually be the type of woman a man will feel blessed to have, lucky even. Its time I stop cooking in a dirty kitchen and start cleaning up the mess around me that I call my life. I hope that one day you will be able to forgive me and be friends. I wish you all the best out of life and take care.
