Open Letter #8 - Guard My Tongue

Written Friday, February 21, 2025, 2:38 PM EST

"To Terry... I am at home now. I will be here for a few hours. If you can, call, and I will do what must be done... —Albert"

Dearest Albert,

By now, the letters I once wrote you have likely faded from your memory. I imagine they’ve long been deleted from your inbox, discarded like remnants of a story no longer relevant. Yet, as I sift through our old correspondence, the weight of what I endured—nearly two decades in a marriage devoid of life—returns to me, unshaken by time.

Your responses were always brief—not out of indifference, but because words on a page meant little to you. You sought something deeper, something alive. You longed to hear my voice as much as I needed to hear yours.

In a letter I wrote to you on Sunday, April 11, 2010, it reads:

"Dear Albert,

There is so much I need to say to you. It’s 10:22 a.m., and I am lying in bed, cocooned in the flickering glow of candlelight, the door shut against the world. My thoughts pull me in every direction—my story, you, and the quiet battle to remind myself of who I am and who I am meant to become. Doubt is creeping in. I have a dull ache behind my eyes, the kind that comes from thinking too much, feeling too much. I keep replaying your words about writing, turning them over in my mind like stones, yet I still struggle to find my voice. More and more, I second-guess myself. I wonder if the story is strong enough. Even though I believe in it, I fear it is not powerful enough to hold a reader’s attention. Or maybe the truth is that I am not strong enough to carry it.

You told me to keep it simple, but my story is layered, its dimensions sprawling, too vast to reduce. I overanalyze everything, and it’s holding me back. My head throbs from the weight of it all. It has been an emotional morning.

If I could pick up the phone and call you at any moment, I would have done so long ago. But I want to speak with you when I can be fully present, when I can hear your voice without distraction, when I can give you the unfiltered version of me. That time never seems to come. My husband supports my writing, yet he does not understand all of me. He knows of you, of our conversations, and though he accepts our relationship, he cannot comprehend it fully. There are things I cannot say in his presence without fear of judgment, without the weight of his silence pressing against me.

You should know that the written word has saved me in ways you could never imagine. I have spent most of my life censored—forced to swallow my thoughts, to guard my tongue, to keep secrets that were never mine to hold. As a child, I learned early how to shape my words for the comfort of others, how to pretend I was unshaken, unbreakable. I learned to be strong because I had no choice.

I was raised with two sisters, one older, one younger. Then, at ten, I became a second mother to my baby brother. My mother, a woman who had been raising others since she was a child herself, was born and bred in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the middle of nine siblings. By the time she turned eighteen, she had seen enough of the South to know she had to leave it behind. She took the first bus bound for California, where her older siblings had already gone before her. I don’t know if it was loneliness or reckless faith, but within two weeks of arriving, she met my father. A month later, she married him.

He was nearly a decade older than her, a man from Tyler, Texas, raised in a world where men ruled without question. He was different. Selfish. Stubborn. A man who could be surrounded by family and still remain utterly alone. He had three daughters and a son who needed a father, yet he did not know how to be one. Later in life, I came to understand why—he had spent his own childhood fending for himself. Love was not something he had been taught in a way his children needed.

We grew up in a small country town in California, but my mother never let go of her Southern ways. She raised us with Creole traditions, with the warmth of soul food simmering on the stove, with the echoes of a Louisiana childhood she had both escaped and carried with her. Her father was Creole, her mother a blend of Black and Native. My mother herself was born with pale skin, blonde hair, and hazel eyes that changed with the weather. My older sister’s hair spilled down her back in thick waves, and strangers would often ask if we were mixed. At the time, I didn’t even know what mixed meant, but I answered with a defiant no every time.

Despite the color of her skin, my mother was the strongest Black woman I knew. People mistook her for white, but she was the only mother I had ever known, the woman who stitched our clothes by hand, cooked every meal from scratch, and taught me how to read, how to write, how to see the world through an artist’s eyes. She was creativity itself, a woman who carried beauty and resilience in her hands.

My father, though, remained a stranger. Emotionless. Absent even when he was there. Out of my two sisters, I was the rebel, the troublemaker, the one who never quite fit the mold. School was my escape—basketball, volleyball, track, debate, fundraisers, organizing events, anything to keep me from being home. My mother saw me as strong and leaned on me because of it. From a young age, I cooked, I cleaned, I cared for my siblings. She taught me how to sew, but I never took to stitching clothes—I only did it for the art of it, for the creative release.

(I feel guilty for spending time writing this when I know I should be working on my story, but I have so much bottled up that I need to tell you. And still, the headache lingers. It is now noon. I am typing this on my small word processor, a tiny machine no bigger than a sheet of paper. I will download what I have so far and send it to you, then I will continue. I am speaking to you from the depths of my heart; I hope you know that.) —Terry"

Even now, as I revisit these words, I feel the weight of them, the ache of all I was trying to say between the lines.

And I wonder—did you ever truly heard me? Or were my words just more pages you left unread?

Sincere Regards,

Terry a. O’Neal

Hampton, VA