30 Days Of Letters - Someone I Want To Tell Everything, But I'm Afraid To

When I read the first of Essin' Em's 30 Days Of Letters (Done before her by other bloggers whom I keep intending to read in length), I was intrigued. And now I'm giving it a go myself.

Does it count if they’re deceased but they’re the one person who I’ve ever known that I can think of offhand that I would have feared telling about who I am and have become since they knew me? Everyone I can think of that I want to talk to that lives accepts and loves me for who I am, after all. And most of those deceased wouldn’t care too much. But my grandfather would.

Dear Grandpa,

You had great expectations of me. I was going to grow up, stop wearing the black makeup and the funny clothes, graduate high school and go to university, and become a journalist. Or a lawyer. Or something like that. You were very against homosexuality and the NDP. I never thought nor wished to ask you what you thought of abortion. I know you were pro-womens rights, but when my mom was pregnant with my half-sister she had to live in a home for unwed mothers and was unable to keep her after the birth.

The year that she didn’t get honours, you took her certificate off the wall and didn’t put it up until she got honours the next year.

I know you adored me, that I was the apple of your eye. I doubt I would be now. I’m very much what you never wanted. I haven’t grown out of the black makeup and the funny clothes, although I cannot be buggered to put them on when I’m lazing around or not going anywhere special. I’m VERY openly queer. I support the NDP with a sprinkling of Liberal, an unplanned pregnancy that I don’t feel capable of supporting will be aborted, and if I’m unwed I sure as hell won’t be staying in a home. Are there even specific homes for unwed mothers anymore? I’m really not sure.

Not only did I not get honours once in high school, but I barely scraped through grade ten and dropped out of grade eleven. I scrapped journalism on the level I wanted, am only now looking at finishing my diploma, and I’m looking at sex education as a career. I drink, perhaps too much, and smoke, and occasionally enjoy marijuana and salvia. Rather like my mothers ‘dirty hippy’ half-brother.

I’m also a LaVeyan Satanist, which Mom doesn’t understand and you definitely wouldn’t. It has nothing to do with sacrificing virgins, babies, and goats, Grandpa. It just fits with my ideals and my lifestyle and I love it.

None of this is something you would accept. Never mind the time I had a crush on a skinhead. In my defense, I was young, stupid, and he bought me smokes and loved the same bands as me. But he was massively fucked up, and I look back and wonder what the hell I saw in him. You would have hated him. You would have loved Lad. Lad would have listened to your war stories, and played cards, and treated me well. You probably would have demanded to know why when I ended it.

At least you would have understood why - You and Grandma loved each other to the end of your days. I trust that you would have supported me not staying with someone I wasn’t in love with anymore.

I love and miss you Grandpa, but were you alive, I’d be terrified to tell you anything about my life.