Pa02Aug15b Letter never sent (Fwd, Roy)
Posted by Boz on 2002-July-18 on BoyChat.
Dear [Zeb],
I want to have a serious talk with you about something and I want you to just listen until I am done. I know you hate serious discussions, but this is pretty important. Last month I came for a visit unannounced and then left more quickly than I said I was going to. I know that that really confused you and my answers - or non-answers, really - about why I left so soon were not much help. I know that you were aware that I was keeping something from you and that you did not like it, but I saw no other choice for me at the time. But now I want to explain to you exactly what was going on - and has been going on for a long time. I am pretty sure that at least some of this wont surprise you, but hear me out.
[Zeb], if there is one thing I want to try to impress on you more than anything else it is this: please don't blame your parents for anything. They are very good people, good parents, they love you very VERY much, and they have acted as they did because they are scared to death. They are scared to death of me. They are frightened of what they think I might try to do that would end up hurting you very VERY deeply.
I know that this sounds crazy to you, but it does not sound crazy to me and certainly not to them. It has been obvious to them - as it has, really, to anyone who has ever seen us together more than a few times that you and I have a very close relationship. We have formed a real and deep emotional connection. I love spending time with you, no matter what we end up doing (and even if we just do nothing at all) and it seems to me pretty clear that you like having me around.
But you surely must also know that it is not usual for a boy your age to have such a close relationship with any adult other than his parents. I don't think any of your friends who are your age have an adult friend like you have in me. Now that, I hope, makes you feel at least a bit lucky and special (I certainly feel lucky and special to have you as a friend) but to parents - any parents and not just yours - that is something that makes them worry a lot for you.
Now you must have some idea why they are worried. They think that it is possible that I might just be being your friend in order to do something that might hurt you. They think I might try to kiss you or to touch you on the penis or suggest that you do that to me. They worry that because we have such a close relationship that you might let me suggest these things or do these things even when you don't want it and that this will make you hurt and unhappy.
And [Zeb], like I said before, I don't think that their worry is crazy. It is easy for me to understand. They don't know what our friendship is really like. No explanation can make it make sense to them. I have tried to do that a bit, but in the end they are unable to understand that I could care so much for you and want to spend so much time with you without having in mind the idea of making some kind of sexual advance on you eventually. It does not matter that in the three years we have known each other that they have no reason to think that that has happened, they still are worried.
Your parents also worry because they cannot conceive that we could say I love you to each other or that we could kiss or even touch each other in a sexual way and it not be a bad thing for you. They will even think that even if today you are happy about such things that eventually you will come to hate me and feel ashamed of doing these kind of things. Their worry is not a crazy one. It has happened to other boys before. Those boys get told so many times that doing such things is a horrible thing and that a man who would do them is an evil person who uses them that they start to believe it. It happens. And your parents love you too much to want to have to take a chance that this will be what happens to you.
A year ago your mom and dad got quite mad at me for a story I wrote for you. They said it was too romantic a story for you to be reading and certainly not appropriate at all for a man of my age to be writing for an eleven year old boy. They got upset, but mostly their reaction was worry and fear.
[Zeb], they love you so much that the idea that I might be doing something to hurt you scared them terribly and they reacted the only way they knew how. They confronted me about it and we had a long talk and I thought that the end result of that was that they were reasonably reassured that their worries had no basis. That is what they told me, too. But they still could not shake the idea that I was too close to you and you seemed to care too much about me for their comfort. When I came to visit in the summer, they were wonderful hosts, but it is only later that they tell me that the whole time they were wondering about me. Why was I there? What kind of man takes time out from his vacation and travels hundreds of miles just to visit a boy? Is he really dangerous to our son? Will he try to hurt him?
The fears they had stayed and kept growing. I know that you are aware of some of this because you said to me last month, I think my parents have something against you. I was quite surprised to hear you say this, but I know that your are not stupid and that your are a sharp observer, and so any tensions in how your parents feel about me are things you likely would pick up on eventually, and you did.
The fact that the incident that you offered me as evidence that your parents have something against me happened last November - fully seven months before the time you told me about it - makes it clear to me that this is an idea that you have had for a long time. And you are right. They do have something against me. They are afraid of me and how important they see that I have become to you.
I am sure that the fact that you want to write essays for school about gifts I made for you or that you put me on your list of role models for the yearbook (and not them) does not help to ease their fears. They are afraid that you might be emotionally attached enough to me to let me do something to you that will be hurtful to you in the end. They do not understand just how strong willed you are and how you know that you always call the shots with me, not the other way around.
When I came to visit last month, I really thought that they were ok with me. I really thought that I would be able to not just visit, but to stay and be able to see you every day for another year or two or more. I was really hoping that that would happen and, as you told me many times while I was visiting, you also obviously wanted it to happen. But your parents could not accept that. They told me, at first, that they never wanted me to see you ever again. After some long conversations with me, they loosened up to decide that I could visit with you some more on my trip, but then I would have to leave and not see you again.
So this is why I disappeared suddenly for several days in the middle of my visit with no good explanation and this is why I left earlier than I had said at first and this is why I didn't just stay for much longer. This is why the idea of visiting you this summer is one I cannot consider, no matter how much I and you want it to happen.
Your parents told me that they did not want me writing stories for you anymore. They told me that I was not allowed to write emails to you except polite replies to letters that you send me. I offered to bcc to them every email I send to you and up to now I have done that. I know you well enough to know that you must be thinking that if you could only explain to them that I am not the monster that they fear that they would have to listen.
But the truth is, the more and stronger that you might insist to them that I am not a bad guy, the more they will believe that it is true. The same is true for me trying to explain it to them. They are so blinded by fear than any challenge that sounds to them like proof that you care a lot about me or that I care a lot about you will only make them more convinced that there might be something to fear. As much as you might want to try to convince them or just yell at them, it won't help. It will only make things worse.
But like I said, I know you. I know that you cannot hear or read these words from me and NOT confront your parents. I know it would be ugly. They would be angrier with me, and any hope you and I might have of seeing each other again would be gone. Your relationship with them would greatly worsen, and that is not good for you or for them. It would make me more unhappy, too.
So this is why these are words that must remain unspoken and that this is a letter I will never send to you. It might sound strange, [Zeb], to think of me writing this as an address to you when I have no intention of you ever reading it, but it is something I just have to do to get it off my chest. Maybe I will show you this one day. Maybe in six years time when you are eighteen. Maybe. But for now, I write it for me.
I'll say this one more time: do not blame your parents. They are reacting the only way they know how to the only way they know how to make sense of the world. They have tried their very best to be the best parents they can, and most of the time they do a great job of that. They are good people and they love you more than you can ever know. I love you more than you will ever know, and a part of loving you means taking a big step back to give you the room your parents need you to have. You have a great family, great friends, and a great school. You might want me in your life, but you will be fine without me.
The hardest part of love is letting go, but that is what I have to do. It is what we both have to do, to some extent.
Don't think that I will ever forget you. There is no chance of that ever happening. You are the most wonderful and special person I have ever known; the person I have cared more about than any past or present. There is nothing I would not do for you. I have treasured every moment that we have had and will treasure them forever. I love you, [Zeb]. Now and forever.
Keep writing those emails and I'll keep replying. Maybe some day, I can tell you just how much they all meant to me. Maybe you already know. Maybe they mean the same to you.
Your buddy, now and always,
Boz