I’ve got a stash of letters that I’d love to send to Honey and to HomeWrecker. But I don’t. I wrote them knowing full well that they’ll never reach their destination. So for now, they’re going into the ‘Dead Letter Office’ part of this blog. If I accumulate enough, do I get some kind of prize? There should be a point system, like at Chuck E Cheese. ‘Cause I’d totally have that sweet mini boom box by now. You know, the one that’s like 42,000 tickets, which means you just paid $812 for a crappy plastic radio that’s sat on a shelf for 2 years? But I digress…again.

Dear Honey,
I know this letter is rather pointless, given that I have come to understand you’re a pathological liar and a sociopath. But no matter. These things I write aren’t for you, anyway. They’re for me, so I can die to this completely before I attempt to live again.

I’d like to specifically address you moving as far as the east is from the west from your sweet, loving, hilarious 1 and (now) 3 year old babies.

You say things to yourself like ‘I’ll provide for them, and visit them as often as I can’ and think this somehow makes you honorable. It doesn’t. It makes you, at best, someone who gives financial support voluntarily rather having your wages garnished. In paying that support, your dirtbaggedness is just better hidden from those who are only looking at the surface anyway, which is pretty much everyone you are friends with. ‘Seeing them as often as you can’ means Skyping on a dead, cold glass monitor for about 20 minutes a week. Visiting once or twice a year, if that. Phoning in your job as parent (as if that’s even possible), while simultaneously laying every decision, every exhausting night, every heartbreak, every question about where daddy is all at my feet. Who says chivalry is dead?

Oh, wait. I do.

It’s all cold comfort to the fatherless. All of what you tell yourself is merely an attempt to justify the unjustifiable. If you dropped that facade in your mind for a minute, you might hear your real voice. The truth teller. The one who, if given that voice, would say ‘my sexual satisfaction is more important than you, kids. I know you need a father, but I need a stripper in my bed. I won’t raise you. I won’t cherish and protect you and your mommy. Promised I would, but I won’t. I won’t be there for you when the chips are down. I won’t handle anything involving your day to day life. I won’t know about your favorite toys, your favorite songs, your fears and hopes and broken hearts. I won’t take you to soccer, or to hit balls in the park, or have tea on the floor of your room. I won’t be there to hug you when you have your first broken heart. All the things that matter and that mean anything in life…that mean anything to you. Because my heart is where my most important relationship is. And I’m not talking about the relationship I have with HomeWrecker. I’m talking about the one I have with me. You see, I love you, but I love myself far more than I could ever love another person. And that includes you. Though I possess the capacity to examine that my actions reflect that truth, I won’t delve too deeply into that insight. It’d harsh my buzz. Spoil my fun. Make me realize some ugly, horrifying truths about my choices. You’re going to pay the price for this. The evidence of this is lying all around you in the broken pieces of your family, living out of boxes in the guest room of your Grandma’s house. Don’t have a daddy there for your first day of school? Love myself more. Don’t know why everyone at school has a daddy to help them with homework or take them to a movie, and you don’t? Love myself more. No daddy daughter dance? No picnics? No day at the park? No pancake Sundays? No hug when you fall and hurt your knee? Sorry, you see, I LOVE MYSELF MORE. And you will come to learn this in endlessly heartbreaking ways over the entirety of your lifetime. My self delusion will see to it. And it will mess you up emotionally in incalculable ways that I’d rather not ponder. Sure wish I could help, but again…

I LOVE MYSELF MORE.