Dear Stevie                                                                                                            October 3rd                                                                                                                       

I am not much good at writing letters since I am more of a visual person. I do write a diary but only for myself. But I will try, seeing as you took the time to write to me, and I think I need to get some things off my chest. I am sorry it has taken me a month to get around to it. Writing this letter is my way of finding a much needed shoulder to cry on. I may not be able to give this to you, but at least it might help me set a few things straight in my mind. I am writing this at three in the morning as Christine would be angry if she knew I was replying to you. I am sorry that I have not phoned or been to see you this week, but at the moment I do not think I could, for a few reasons. If I did I might get angry and Christine would be furious if she found out. She has been making it really hard for me to speak with you. I am forbidden to even call you. I bought a new phone and that's how I managed to call you last week, but she found it and confiscated it. It is a shame you dislike the Internet as emailing would be easier than writing and posting letters. I was so happy when you came to visit me that time, but it was a risk as Christine does sometimes come home during the day if things are not so busy at work, or she sometimes comes home for lunch. She has been doing this more, recently. Maybe I will hand deliver this when I have finished it, I don't know. I hope you are OK. I am sorry if I ramble.

 

I have some news. I'm pregnant! I've known for a few days now. I can't believe I have waited this long to tell you. I think Christine could tell for a week or so before we knew for sure. Deep down I think I could too. As I mentioned to you that time you came to visit, I have been sick a lot. I tried a home pregnancy test just over a week after I last saw you and, of course, it came up negative. It embarrasses me to admit that I'd already had one tucked away which I bought about a year ago, though what I thought I was going to do with it, God knows. So then I bought another one and tried that two weeks after. Just three days ago I did another and it came up positive. I was so happy, but then I tried yet another, just be sure, and that came up negative. So Christine did one for me. There are some advantages to having a doctor for a girlfriend. She has been very concerned about me, and has even managed to take some time off work to nurse me, though I am capable of looking after myself. I have been on cloud nine since she told me and even she is excited about it. I am trying to imagine your face when you read this.

 

I have read your letter through lots of times now. I don't think I could ever find words to describe how touched and moved I am by it. Christine has tried to take it off me. She has always treated me like a child but she is doing so more and more. If she used to be a little shy over some things, now she hardly talks to me, not in the way I'd like, and she is drinking heavily, as she always has. We take turns each night to sleep on the couch. I think our relationship may be finished, and it hurts me so much to say so. She is the only long-term girlfriend I have ever had.

 

That girl you saw me with when I was fourteen, Jane, I had been seeing her for quite a while, but we really had nothing in common and I think that might have been the last time she took me out. Mum really disliked her, by the way, because she thought Jane was weird. Jane was weird, which is probably why I liked her. It's funny how I remember that evening, but I don't remember seeing you. I must have been lost in my own world, as usual.

 

That day I came to visit you and we went for coffee, you must have seen how I nervous I was, how I had been looking over my shoulder the whole time. I know Christine wants us to be apart and, although I understand why you are respecting her wishes, it hurts me because it seems like you are being cold to me now. I wanted to tell you that I think about you constantly. Instead, all we seemed to talk about was Caroline's beauty salon and Emma's high street photography business. I am happy for them, I really am, but I wish you were not so discrete and good, that you would not care about the boundaries Christine has built between us, and that we could talk about us. Christine and I have had the most terrible rows as she does not even want you to come to the birth. It seems to me like I am losing you, that you are becoming nothing more than a shadow, and that there's nothing I can do to get us back to that first week, that wonderful week we had together.

 

At the moment I feel like I am a prisoner in this house. I am having to rely on Christine for so much, including the drives to the hospital and for all practical advice. I am getting more commissions, by the way, including illustrations for a children's book, so at least I have that with which to occupy myself.

 

When I think of you, how you look, your voice, your smell, your gentleness, I do not find it easy to reconcile all that, your femininity, with the fact that you are really male. I know you're not male. I am struggling for words. I told you I am bad at this. I can hardly believe you and I had sex. It was so wonderful. I really mean that. This is so embarrassing. I don't know if I would ever be able to go to bed with you again. It is so strange because, although making love with you was so good, all the time I was fighting to overcome nausea and push aside horrible, unwanted memories. It was like riding the highest wave knowing that, at any moment, I could have been drawn down into an abyss. I know this cannot be what you would like to hear. It's not exactly complimentary. Maybe I don't have the right to say any of this.

 

What you told me about your childhood in your letter I found really sad and you wrote about it so sweetly. I admire your bravery. I remember very little about that incident with those boys and the robin. I do remember you as a child now, but only vaguely. You are right to say that my childhood was difficult too and I think the fact that we both experienced difficulties as children has made both of us cautious about relationships. Which is why I am surprised you were not more cautious with me. I forgive you. Despite your dishonesty I still have very tender feelings for you, feelings I no longer have for Christine. Please forgive me if I sound bitchy.

 

From the age of six I was abused by my mother's boyfriends. Over the years, until I left home at eighteen, three of them raped me on numerous occasions. I did not even speak to Mum about it until I was about ten. She didn't want to listen, didn't believe me, buried her head in the sand. Strangely, the fact that I think she honestly didn't believe me, that she thought I was making up stories, is the only reason I can talk to her now. I suppose I inherited some of my childishness from her. She was married twice and one of her husbands continually abused me, sometimes even when she was in the house. He told me not to scream out or he'd hurt me more. But once, I did dare to scream. Mum came running up the stairs to find me with my skirt pulled down and my stepfather next to me on the bed, but by that time he was fully dressed. I cannot remember what excuse he made, but they were divorced soon after that anyway. She did not ask me what had happened and I did not tell her. We were both too scared to talk about it, even after he was long gone. Each of her men were careful not to get me pregnant or leave any evidence. They were clever and had probably been abusing children for a long time. They were all alcoholics or heavy drinkers and would often beat Mum up. At night, I would hear the noises of sex coming from their bedroom and it would sound to me like she was in serious pain. I am sure that, sometimes, she was, but every time she would scream like she was being torn in two and I hated it. And the noise of the man grunting made me feel sick. I don't really want to talk any more about this.

 

I have just come back from the toilet. I threw up.

 

When I left home to go to college I put all my troubles away in a big trunk which I kept locked away in a dark part of my mind. I forgot all about it for a while as I took up a new life. I had always found comfort in painting and drawing so I really threw myself into my studies, went out a lot and, unusually for me, was quite outgoing for a while. I was spreading my wings so that I could escape my past. All my friends were girls. I had come to hate men. I found them utterly repulsive, violent, smelly, rude, obnoxious and I didn't want to be around them at all. I distrusted every single one.

 

It was not until I began college that I began to realise that I was a lesbian for certain. Pretty late, I suppose. Not because I thought I might be attracted to men, but because, before that, I just felt like sex was something nasty, something to be ashamed of, and I think I suppressed my sexuality for a while. No wonder the few girlfriends I had had up to that point had given up on me. It wasn't until I met a very persistent girl called Natasha who was in my class at college that I lost my virginity.

 

Natasha looked a bit like you. She had a long, thick mane of golden hair and green eyes, but was taller and had a statuesque, full body. She was more extroverted than me and more experienced. I had needed to meet someone like her. I would never have got close to anyone who wasn't prepared to climb over the walls I'd built around me. We dated for months before we went to bed. I was head over heels in love, but only for a short time as I found it hard to really open up and be trusting. I think I really hurt her, actually, as she wanted to get closer and I would not let her. Also, I had started to notice things, little things. I would catch her eyeing up men.

 

Then one day, when I had just finished my classes, I met her outside the college and I kissed her. Horrified, I stood back from her, as if I been kissing something horrible, like a corpse. It was the familiar smell on her skin, and the taste in her mouth, of semen. I bent over and actually threw up there and then, on the pavement. That killed our relationship, as I you can imagine, but we had already been drifting apart.

 

After we stopped seeing each other I started going out even more and had many casual girlfriends. Too many. I became really promiscuous. But I allowed none of them into my heart. I kept that safely locked away in the dark trunk.

 

Then, my childhood memories started to return, first in nightmares, then in my waking hours, and before long I was on antidepressants and seeing a therapist. Things just caught up with me. I came home and had to put my studies on hold for a whole year. Then came the yearning to have children. Feeling the need to occupy myself with something, I found work at a charity, answering calls about allegations of abuse. I would offer children practical help and try my best to lend them a sympathetic ear, but I was only just starting to process my own trauma, so I don't know how good I was at the emotional support. I found the work rewarding but deeply disturbing and soon had to stop due to my worsening depression. I saw a doctor and she really helped me get back on my feet, first by prescribing the medication, then sending me to the therapist. Need I tell you that doctor was Christine?

 

I poured my heart out to her and went back to see her many times, even though I had started seeing the therapist. I found Christine easier to talk to about most things and eventually dropped my appointments with the therapist and carried on just talking to Christine. Once, my appointment with her was late in the day and when it was time for her to leave she took me with her to a pub. She told me to stop seeing her at the surgery, but to wait for her every evening in the pub. It was not long before we were in bed together after spending an entire evening drinking. I could never match her drink for drink but, in my youthful stupidity, I thought I could, so I can't remember our first time together. I don't feel like she took advantage of me though. I had become more and more attracted to her despite the fact that she was so much older. So I dropped out of college and moved in with her, finding both a lover and mother in her, a mother who actually cared and paid attention to the things I said. I suppose Mum cared in her own way, when she was sober enough. Maybe it was Christine's drinking that partly attracted me to her. I was used to being around someone who drank.

 

My wanting to have children was something I told Christine about very early on, before there was even the hint that we might get together. She told me that my desire for children versus my antipathy towards any realistic way of my having them would be something the therapist could help me deal with and perhaps overcome. But I found therapy an incredibly cold experience and could not open up enough for the process to be helpful, hence my dropping it. At the same time, I was unable to talk to Christine much about my wanting a child. Whenever I tried, she would cut me off. She didn't want to hear it. In fact, I remember her twice telling me she had had nightmares about 'things' growing inside her. A doctor with a pregnancy phobia!

 

Actually, I have had similar dreams lately, but mine were not nightmares. I have always dreamed, literally, about being pregnant, but now I have those dreams constantly and some have been a bit strange. In one I think I must have been the Virgin Mary! An angel visited me, a male angel, and when he was gone, my belly swelled in a second and then a flock of birds burst out of me. In another, something crawled out of me, something slimy, looking like a gooey chrysalis. Then its wings expanded, like those of a butterfly, as blood pumped into them, and it grew and grew into a beautiful angel. She carried me on her back and flew me to All Saints where we stopped to listen to you playing.

 

Did I tell you that Mummy is visiting me almost every day now? You should have heard her reaction when I made the announcement on the phone to her. The first thing she was said, after screaming into my ear, was, "Oh, so you do like men after all! Who's the father?" I thought that was so funny. At first I didn't even understand what she meant. Sometimes she seems more innocent than me. Then I told her all about you. I am sorry to say that was not very happy and she started on about my 'weird friends' again. I must admit, she has been quite supportive, though. The first thing she does when she visits is make me a strong coffee and make sure I am sitting comfortably. I do not mind being treated this way by her so much, though I could do without her telling me I 'need a man'. Coming from her I think that sounds hypocritical, considering how her men have been. She still will not listen when I try to talk to her about the abuse I suffered.

 

At the moment I am feeling very sad and hurt. I have to be honest, I think it was wrong of you not to tell me about Christine's proposal. I think you were both wrong not to tell me. OK, I might still not have been happy about it but at least you would both have saved me this horrid feeling of betrayal I have now. I know you did not do it for money, but I still feel like I have been used. I trusted you, opened my heart to you and now I feel like, all the time, you must have been thinking how stupid I am. I know I was wrong to call you those nasty names. I am very sorry. And it was also wrong of me to cheat on Christine, but you were wrong to take advantage of me. Once I had found out about the little conspiracy you both cooked up, I stopped feeling so bad about cheating, so there's that, at least. But why couldn't Christine have explained everything to me to start with? And why couldn't you?

 

Writing this letter has been upsetting, but I am glad to have done it. I have not been sleeping very well lately and as I lie awake I think of you and make up conversations between us, conversations that would be impossible between us now. I do not feel quite so sick tonight and that has given me the energy to put some of my thoughts in order. However, I still do not know how I should feel, or what to do about us. I know I should have considered all of this before, but it all happened so quickly.

 

From my own experiences, I know how the relations between parents affect the child. I do not want my child to suffer how I did. It was not just the abuse that scarred me. All my life I have been haunted by someone I don't know, like a shadow walking behind me, someone I cannot see nor talk to, but is there all the time.

 

Help me, Stevie. Help me do what is best for our child.

 

Love from

 

Linda xx

 

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