Open Letter #3 - Confessions

March 1, 2025

Title: Confessions

Dearest Albert,

You should know—I can admit it now, that perhaps I was looking for you to save me as much as you needed saving yourself. I was grasping for light in a time of darkness, and you, whether you meant to be or not, became that light. You entered my life at the precise moment when I was unraveling—when the weight of everything was pulling me under.

Things were hard. I was clawing for rhythm in my writing, trying to shape something meaningful while trapped in a marriage that was unmaking me, unraveling me thread by thread. Love can be cruel. It can hollow you out, leave you clinging to the edges of yourself, desperate for something to anchor you.  

I was trapped in a loveless marriage, treading water, trying to survive while holding on to the last fraying threads of my sanity. The walls were closing in, the silence between us louder than any argument. I needed saving, and who better than someone I admired—someone who wielded words in a way I only dreamed of? I needed you more than I should have, more than I care to confess. I needed your guidance, your mentorship, in ways that stretched far beyond the page. 

You told me you were a retired veteran and writer, that you wanted nothing more than for me to ‘put you to work’, at least for a while, you said. And now I wonder if you already knew then that you wouldn’t stay. Had you always planned to disappear, or were you simply unwilling to open the door to your darkness all the way? Perhaps you only ever meant to let me in just enough to be seen, but never enough to be known.

I know it was you in the library that day. Even before I turned, before my eyes skimmed the quiet corners, I could feel you—your presence settling into the air, familiar as an old echo. You were seated at the table to the right of the Black literature section, your head bowed, a newspaper sprawled across the table before you.

But you weren’t reading. Not really. Your hands barely moved; your eyes fixed somewhere beyond the print. It was all pretense, a fragile performance, as if hiding in plain sight might soften the weight of the moment.

I know you wanted to see me—to witness me in real time, beyond the cadence of my voice and the glimpses you once gathered from distant images. You wanted to watch the way I moved, the way my eyes searched the shelves, the way my curls framed my face in the light. You wanted to see if the words I once poured onto the page matched the woman standing before you.

But I will return to that part of the story later. Some moments demand patience, their weight too great to be unraveled all at once. For now, let it linger—like an unfinished sentence, like a door left slightly ajar.

You are not the only one who has lost what is most dear. Grief has carved its name into me, too—I have lost a mother, I have lost love, and hope has slipped through my fingers more times than I care to count. I have been misunderstood, slandered, and misjudged, left to reckon with the weight of truths twisted beyond recognition. 

But no, my eyes have never beheld death the way yours have. I am no soldier of war. I have not wandered through Vietnam jungles and rice patty fields haunted by the echoes of the fallen, nor felt the jolt of a rifle as it delivers its final, unyielding sentence.

I have never borne the weight of a life extinguished by my own doing, never carried the kind of sorrow that settles deep into the marrow, impossible to shake. I don’t know that kind of pain. I can only imagine its ghost, the way it lingers—the way it never let’s go.

Wounds that fester in the quiet hours can be the most merciless, the kind that time does not heal, only deepens. A torment that no language can soothe, no reasoning can absolve. Some griefs are not meant to be reconciled—only endured.

Sincere Regards,

Terry a. O’Neal

Hampton, Virginia