1999

Gemma,

My mother is still on this bullshit about me not seeing you. I'm not avoiding you on purpose, I promise. I'm still grounded and she's taken my phone and is making sure I have no time in my schedule for you and Brennen. After tennis, I have to help her out at the stables and when there's no work there, she's making me go into the restaurant to bus tables. She signed me up for golf lessons at the country club and extra curriculars at church, so I can't even get out on the weekends and she's watching me like a hawk. I don't understand why she's being like this. I don't know what she has against you and I'm sorry for that. I like you. A lot. You're different. I don't know how to explain it. I wish I could get her to see you the way I see you, but she's not letting up. I'm supposed to tell you that I can't see you anymore. Maybe she just needs time to cool off, but maybe we should cool it for awhile until she comes around. I don't know what else to do, because if I start sneaking out to see you and get caught, it's going to get worse. I need to wait until she quits acting like a fucking Nazi about my life. I'm sorry. I'm not ditching you though. I promise. I want to be with you, I just have to figure out how to get around her.

2004

I need help. I don't know how to tell you this, but I need help. I can't do this anymore. I can't handle the work load at school and then having to do everything at work, literally everything, because all of the assholes that you've hired don't know how to do their job. I'm getting three hours of sleep at night, if that, some nights and I can't do this anymore. I don't know what you want from me. I can't do both. I'm not what you want me to be. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm not what you want me to be and the constant reminders are fucking with me. All either of you give a fuck about is yourselves and the business. Did you know one of your sons knocked a girl up and she got an abortion? No, probably not, because I was the one who dealt with that shit for him. Did you know your youngest has been sneaking out every weekend to smoke pot with me and my friends? Or, how many times I've had to pick him up from house parties because he didn't know who else to call? Did you know I've been doing benzos for the last year just to keep up with your fucking expectations? Of course not, because you must think I'm somehow magical. We're all fuck ups and you can't even admit that anything is wrong because it would be admitting that you don't know how the hell to be parents. I quit. I'm going to drop out. Start selling weed with Gemma. Remember her? Maybe I just don't give a fuck about anything anymore. And I need your help, but you're not there. You've never been there for any of us. Why am I stuck doing your job for you? They're not my responsibility. They're yours. I can't do this anymore. I can't be what you want me to be. I'm sorry.

2007

Aria,

I don't even know what to say. I feel like I should say something and I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to say to you. I'm not even sure you would read this if I tried. I keep trying to go over it in my head, but nothing comes out like anything I should say. I never thought I would be the kind of person who would cheat. I never have before. Not that it makes anything better. I don't know why I did, to be honest. I got caught up in a lot of things that I shouldn't have. I started second guessing everything and realized there was a lot about myself that I never told you. Then I decided that if you knew, you wouldn't want to marry me. That you wouldn't like who I am. I owe you an apology for the way I handled things, but I don't know how to give you that when I still feel that what I did was necessary for both our sake. Getting married would have been a mistake. I thought it was what I wanted, but I'm only twenty-three. What do I, or even you, really know about life at this point? We're so young. We got caught up in it and I can't fit marriage into my plan for my life. I would have been a horrible husband, because I need to focus on work right now. It's so much responsibility. I'm not sure I can do this and then trying to add a marriage on top of it. Our lives would have fallen apart. How do I give you an apology that I know you deserve when I don't feel sorry for how things turned out? This is dumb.

2014

I wish that I could save you. I wish that I could be the one to help you find your path in this world, but that's only something you're going to be able to do for yourself and I don't think anything I can say will be anything different than you've probably heard repetitively in rehab. I don't want you to resent me for it for saying it. I will though, let you know that you're not alone with this and change is possible. I'm not saying that from an optimistic therapeutic stand point. I'm saying it because I've been there and I've been clean now for ten years and I had to do it on my own. I was addicted to pills the first two years in college. Then, almost consecutively I met Aria and I had a complete mental break down from it all and it changed my perspective, but I can't give that to you. I think you have to hit rock bottom before you can come completely up for air and I hope that this last stint was your rock bottom, if only so now you can go up. And it's never going to be easy. I don't know if you're just expecting sobriety to be handed to you, but it won't be. It's going to be the hardest thing you've ever done in your life and you can't expect many people to help you through it. You've got to do it on your own, you have to find your own worth in order to make it stick. A support system isn't going to carry you, just be something that you can fall back on to bounce back. You need to quit listening to mom and dad, because they have no idea what any of this is like. They have a pretty warped view of how life should be and I think it's because neither of them really had to struggle in life. It's all just come easy for them and they've had each other forever. I will do what I can, but you need to go to your AA meetings and you need to make effort. You need to start involving yourself with people who aren't going to bring you down back into it. You need to find a way to wake up every morning and carry on sober. I will do what I can. I always do. You can always crash with me, but there won't be drinking in my place. You can't show up at random hours of the night like you have been the last few years and expect me to just brush it off. Shit has got to change and that starts with you. I need you to see that and see that it doesn't have to be like it is. It will get better, but please, do something before this kills you.