Free Going Too Far by Robin Morgan Page B

know that this, the first of the new batch,is very difficult for me, and feels like gobbledegook even as it’s coming out on the page.
    Rereading the other letters in this folder touches me, not only letter by letter, but as a progression—toward nowhere, I could feel, if I let myself. Each letter brings back its intense mood so vividly, but enhances my present kind of schizophrenic state of mind by doing that very thing. It would appear from the progression that it sure as hell has been a struggle to love you, one that has rewarded me well more often than not—and more, a struggle to love myself, with lesser, or false, self-deluding rewards.
    Interesting, that The Leech Dream is in here, and that the reason I’ll be showing you these letters tonight is partly brought about by our still not having learned that dream’s lesson. Interesting that the letter just before this one is like the wail of a child for help; a pathological liar-child, in fact, with fantasies and mother-problems and all the old boring shit. Interesting that I’m writing almost a poem a day and fantasizing about suicide, only to be infuriated by the cliché of self-pity of that Plath-y role, unable to enjoy even the fantasies or take them seriously, mocking my own depression, my own secret filthy boring self. Mocking even that last bit of melodrama in the previous sentence.
    I’m sure it all is really very funny. In fact, I think I’ll dig up and place at the beginning of this folder the letter I wrote myself before we were married. Might as well include the whole grandstand gesture, and round it out. I won’t reread that one, though, because I know from the last time I did that I almost hate it, and its writer, for such smugness, such naïve I-can-lick-the-worldness, such humility, such simple-minded unawareness of what I felt even then: resentments, hurts, hostilities, all “unimportant” and unexpressed, buried under that rosy glow of positive thinking. God knows I admire the courage, though, and am touched by the rather trusting innocence, icky as that sounds and ironic as it is, because I thought, at that time, that of course I wasn’t innocent but on the contrary very aware: of you, me, the way the relationship worked. More complex than that, dears. I’ll include it anyway.
    So what else do I say before I turn these over for your perusal? Worse—or better—for your replies. Will those replies make it easier, or harder, for me to write more letters? I wonder. We’ll soon find out, I guess, and I’ll be interested to see—although at this moment my curiosity, spontaneity, and general “negative capability” seem at a record low ebb.
    But since I don’t know, I must make this letter an end, to this series at least, hoping it will be followed by others more, not less, sincere. Notice I say sincere and not honest, as I don’t know that I possess one fiber of the latter quality, but I will allow myself at least the former.A farewell letter of sorts, then, from that secret letter-writer to her unknowing, unreading reader. There were more things I wanted to say in these letters than I ever got around to saying. I don’t know if the new writer will be able to write such things to her new reader.
    Where from here? Tonight, coming home on the bus together, we saw a beautiful mother and baby, wonderful, free with each other, obviously healthy and rare and commonplace, utterly lovely. I want to have your child. Unsure again, afraid again, now it seems a fantastic dream. Still, still, I want that, want us together, raising it and writing and talking for twelve-hour stretches and making love.
    This moment, when I am numb and tired and want only to sleep and know you are lying in bed a few feet from my desk, one thin wall between us, waiting for me to finish this—have you an idea that I’m writing the final letter of this group?—waiting for me to lie down