Time to Go our Separate Ways

My Darling,

I am sure you know the contents of my letter before you even complete the first sentence.  I want to let you know that it has not been easy on me and writing this letter is one of the lowest points of my life.

We have known each other for 22 years. I got to know you long before your knew me.  Our first encounter was not very comfortable but still joyous to many including me.   Over the years, I watched over you from a distance, you of course oblivious of my affectionate surveillance.  I followed you with love and within the boundaries of what I was permitted.  I think after a few years you became aware of my infatuation with you.  You guardedly sought me out as if to discover what I was up to.  I don’t know at what point or what may have precipitated your decision, but after 12 years of our misty relationship, you boldly declared your love for me.   You made a decision that was hard to comprehend for those who had loved and cared about you.  Although they never told me, I could feel it in the long night calls that they were not only disappointed but also angry about your decision.  If they had a different character, they would probably have asked me to request you to reconsider your decision.   I felt their pain but did not share it.  It was now my turn.  No amount of persuasion or words of discouragement would make me abandon you.  You were now my prized asset that I long sought to hold on to.  I did everything to ensure that you did not find me a lesser partner in any way.  I did not want you to find me deficient in comparison with your ex.  I thought we were having a good relationship and all was going well between us, until I started receiving indicators that you probably wanted more.  At first I put this to the age difference between us.  I thought you were seeking more of my attention.  I thought you did not feel my love.  I blamed myself that I must have been negligent in some ways pushing you to do the things you were doing.  I went over my relationship with you, did not find much inadequacy on my part but still came to the conclusion that I was wrong.  Probably I did not give you enough time, money or simply never demonstrated how important you were to me.  I made a conscious decision to change and asked my friends to assist me show you love.  I put the past behind me.  Life between us seemed better but I could see that you would relate better to my sister.  That did not make me lose sleep.  After all, there was someone in the family you were close to. 

Over the next few years, we have had a moody relationship, sometimes you are my favorite and doing all the things I like.  Other times you are a nuisance bent on infuriating, irritating and offending.  It is these days that I find hard to live with my sweetheart.  On these days you make my life a living hell, my blood pressure rises through the roof and weird thoughts run through my mind.  Over the years, I have had a number of relationships, which you are aware of.  None of the people, I had before you left me as a result of fundamental disagreement or because of my bad behavior.  They just chose to move on, like people move on in life and I still have a good relationship with each one of them.  I therefore ask myself these questions; have I been horrible to you, mistreated you or simply been unfair to you.  I will never get to know that because you don’t say.  My friends observe you from far and tell me it is because you are searching for an inner void.  Others say that you just want to be rebellious, while others believe that you seeing me suffer brings you joy.  Whatever the truth, I chose to ignore your bad days and decided to concentrate on the good ones – however few and far between.

However, matters came to head recently.  I found out two months ago that you are spending time with someone else.  Someone you know truly well that I don’t like.  You are also aware that I don’t like everybody from their family.  To some extent, I don’t even like their cousin but I am prepared to put up with her since everybody in my family seems to like her.  Naturally, I am disappointed and devastated.  I went into a soul-searching mode and asked myself simple questions that had no answers.  When and how did things get out of hand to this level?  I am traditional by all accounts but also liberally conscious of the needs of people I am in relationship with.  For instance, while I have never understood the importance of flowers that have been cut from their garden, I still buy them for you because I know you love them.  You are my fourth girl friend.    I have on each occasion given every one of my girl friends including you some level of freedom after a number of years of living together.  I call it trust.  After a certain amount of time, I fully trust and leave my partners to be in-charge of their lives and mine and I have not had to worry in the past three relationships.  I still believe that it is the correct thing to do, yet one part of me thinks that my noninterventionist ways may have led to this rather undesirable situation.   While, I have disagreed with each one of you at one time or another, nothing for the other three has ever put me through the test you have visited on me.  The last two months have been emotionally draining, socially disturbing and plain torturous to me. 

When I found out that you spend time with someone from the forbidden family, I was so shocked that I feared to speak to you.  I was in a state of denial and just could not bring myself into believing that you were doing that right under my nose.  I confided in and spoke to James, who I consider the next closest person to both of us.   Although he did not out rightly confirm that he knew you were spending time with that guy, his answers to my questions did not allay my fears.  I continued to look for that one person who would put me out of my misery and tell me that it was all a case of misunderstanding, there was none. The next two people I asked could neither deny nor confirm but their faces gave way more than they had intended to communicate.  Then I got angry with everybody around me, everybody, including those I considered very close to me but had now betrayed me.  After a few days, I mulled over my situation again and thought that the best thing was to confront you.  As fate would have it, even before I did, you called me to talk about it because James had told you about my most recent discovery.  I thank you, first for having the guts to call me and be prepared to talk and secondly for admitting that ‘you did and were not proud of it’.  

Our conversation that day gave me great hope and I thought that all I needed to do is give you support to get over it.  I shared information about this problem (sorry it is a problem to me and I have no other way of dressing it up) with your mum because I have always considered you to be closer to her than you are to me.  As usual, she did not judge and promised to talk to you as soon as she got an opportunity.  I understand that she had a very open and truthful conversation with you and you both agreed on things to be done to help you stop. I may not need to remind you that during my conversation with you, you had assured me that although you had spent time with him in my house you were careful not to do it with the knowledge of other people in the house.  You actually promised me never to bring him to the house again.  As we both know, you did not meet that end of your promise, on two occasions after our conversation, I walked into the house and found his shoes and other traces of his presence.  I have spoken to you on both occasions and your argument has been that you did not bring him into the house.  In essence you are suggesting that as long as it has happened outside the house, I should not bother you. 

You completely ignored the fact that other people in this shared space called a house  (other people at times being guests and non family members) see what is going on and come to their own conclusions.  This leaves me in an awkward situation to explain what may be going on.  Additionally, you forget that we have two teenagers in the house who are curious and will soon be interested in why you spend too much time in the company of that person. I do realise that tensions are starting to rise beyond the bearable level.  It looks like we have reached that point when your behaviour and the conflict growing from it, is likely to cause permanent damage.  Your actions are disrespectful and disrupting the household.   They are also threatening the safety and well being of the rest of the family.  I have had to ask myself whether there's any good reason to keep the damage-causer with me.  At this point I have determined that your continued presence in my house as a live-in family member is potentially harmful and toxic to the rest.  If not checked the resultant damage is likely to be permanent.  I have used the last 48 hours to sleep and think over my decision, just to ensure that I am fully convinced that my actions aren't based on anger, fear or sentiments.  I have weighed this decision and I am taking it with a very heavy heart.  I know that if I don’t take this decision now, I may live to regret the rest of my life.  I have decided to stop feeling guilty for you and myself and instead took the decision to protect the others.  I am giving you six months to find a house and live somewhere else.  You will always be welcome to this home when you are clean and ready to abide by the rules of the house.

I would like to repeat once more, that I am available to help in anyway possible whenever you are ready to admit that you have a problem that requires professional attention.  I will give you all the financial and moral support you need.  I love you.

Nze mukwano gwo ennyo