Unsent Letter to Jeni - written 22/10/2022

It’s coming up to 5 years since I found you (6th November 2017) and those 5 years have been an emotional roller coaster. When we first started talking, if felt good, really good. We were finding out about each other, well I was finding out about you. You never actually asked me anything about myself, you don’t even know when my birthday is.

After the first 2-3 years, probably the honeymoon period, I could tell you weren’t really looking to form any sort of relationship with me, not even a hello every now and then. Looking back, some of the things you said to me I thought were quite cruel, you no doubt had your reasons for saying it – that I was playing the victim (I was a victim, we both were victims – maybe we are now survivors). But I allowed that because I wanted it to work, I wanted to be in your life and you in mine.  I clung to every scrap you thew to me. I felt pathetic, trying to cling to something that wasn’t really there.

Yet still I kept trying to make something out of nothing. When Tracey contacted you and your boyfriend told her that you didn’t want any contact, I refused to accept it. I refused to believe that could be right, how could it be right, you are my daughter, it can’t be right. But slowly I have come to realise that it is what you want and you have no desire to know me. It’s out of my hands, there is nothing I can do to influence or change it. It’s time for me to accept that fact.

That realisation is like being hit by a train but I know that I have to accept it if I am to get myself out of this state of turmoil that I have been in for the last 5 years, on permanent alert waiting for you to come back to me when you were never going to. It’s wearing me out, it’s sapping my energy, it’s taking me away from the people who love me, it’s slowly destroying me.

Maybe one day you will change your mind and I will still be here for you as I always have been. I have to accept too that you might never do that. Right now, that’s a tough one to try and swallow but I will keep trying to break it down until I can accept it. I have to accept it if I am to move forward from here.

I didn’t fight hard enough then, I’ve tried fighting now but it’s too late and now I’m only fighting against myself.

I’m going to try really hard to stop stalking you on social media.

I hope everything goes well with the new baby, S and the rest of the family. I think I know you all but I know I don’t really. It’s all stuff that I’ve made up in my head and second guessed. The reality is I don’t know anything about you at all and I feel really stupid for ever believing that I did.

Remember I love you always and no matter what.