The following is an excerpt from a letter that Erin wrote me in 2013. She gives a lot of details about a certain time in her life. When I met Erin, she was living in a house on Normandy Ave in Torrance, CA, with her dad, his girlfriend, and a friend of there’s named Bruno. Here she talks a little bit about what it was like there and the details that had led to her living there.
Erin Danhi
15 February 2013
Dear Aaron,
I started this with the intention of it being really sweet and romantic, but that’s just not who we really are. Then I thought to myself, “who are we really?” The realest motherfuckers I’ve ever known, that’s who. So here’s my real account of things.
No one ever wants to give credit for their personal success to someone else, but I want to. My goals for myself had nothing to do with external shit. Everyone who pretended to care pressured me to do something, but I just wanted to be happy one day. I just wanted to cast off my past…all the shit that had the potential to hold me back and already was. I just wanted to be happy and healthy with my own life and my own world that was free from violence and the usual weird situations that arise when you’re surrounded by addicts in progress. I was so fucking tired of it. I’m going to tell you about things you don’t know.
I’m sure you remember the house on Normandy. I had only moved in there the summer before we officially met. It was shitty from day one. I had been living in the Hawthorne house with no food, a leaky roof, rats, and intermittent power for 6 months. I was honestly just grateful for a mattress and a blanket. My Dad promised me I could move in with him as soon as he had a place to live. He called me and told me he’d found a place and I was welcome to start moving my things in that weekend. I showed up with Jimmy and a trunk full of stuff. The house seemed really…settled…for everyone having just moved in there that week. Come to find out, my Dad, Diane, and Bruno had been living there for two months already. That broke my fucking heart. I asked Diane about it and she told me point blank, “He wasn’t going to let you move in, but your grandfather said he needed you out of that house.” I hadn’t done anything to hurt anyone. I hadn’t damaged that house or taken advantage of the “freedom” of living alone at 16-17. I practically had to grovel to my grandfather for a small allowance just so I could eat. I knew Diane was lying just to hurt my feelings. I asked my Dad who straight out lied about living there for two months. The look in Bruno’s eyes when I asked and he refused to answer told me everything. My grandfather, after a lot of pushing, told me that *he* insisted my Dad let me move in. That day I was slapped in the face with the truth that my Dad just didn’t care about me and it hurt so much. Why? What had I ever done to make him love me less? I’d saved his life no less than a dozen times by then. And not in some emotional sense, but physically kept him from dying from his own stupidity.
I called Ryan and cried for hours. We had just barely gotten back together after he cheated on me, lied about it, and continued to lie. I took him back because I was afraid and I felt alone. My friendships were all strained and overcoming a betrayal I had made, but in good conscience. I still don’t regret that. I never will. But Ryan had already realized I was in desperation and he could not bring himself to love me like he did before. He still kind of loved Monica, but she was crazy. Talking to him only made me feel more alone. He offered me no comfort and only said, “Maybe you should get a job and rent a room from someone.” I realized too many painful things that day. No one cared about me like I cared about them, no one loved me like I loved them, and my long term relationship was going to end soon, leaving me even more alone. My friends were carefully approaching our restarted friendship, but with an aloofness akin to a mother ignoring their panicked child. I felt invisible and scared.
I wanted to kill myself, but I couldn’t. My Mom needed me. She was so deep into her alcoholism and was still recovering from surgery on her ovaries. She was basically in the same emotional predicament I was, except with alcohol in there to color it all much uglier. I had to be there for her. She was the only thing pinning me down to the earth and I wasn’t happy about it. She was a painful tether. But I’m glad for it now because without her needing me, I do believe I would have ended my life before we met. Keep in mind, all of this was going on in a two month time frame and there was a daily spectacle on someone’s part to make things worse. In fact, most of those days, everything and everyone was falling to shit right before my eyes. Luckily, my Mom reached out to Neil just before the end of the summer and he saved her, no doubt. My Dad’s drinking was exactly as it had been and his relationship with Diane was exactly how it had been except it was all getting worse. Diane was physically challenging my father on a regular basis. And, though I hated and still hate that woman, I for some reason always intervened. Like I would put myself between them and get hit by both or I would try to strangle my dad from behind so she could get away, but the bitch always took a free shot before she ran off and locked the door. Then, of course, my Dad would turn on me. How dare I get involved, help her, stop him, blah blah. That’s when he started hurting me more frequently. Twisting my arms, pulling my hair, squeezing my fingers together, trying to bend my arms the wrong way, but he never hit me. It was all borderline abusive, but hurtful to me on a few levels. I was fighting with Diane about our own shit and she was unbelievably cruel with her words and she threatened me a few times. She would call me fat, tell me my pussy stunk, that I was probably fucking my father (because he would sometimes defend me), and she even came on to Ryan once in front of me to make me mad. No one had ever made me so angry. Out of all the people I’ve truly hated, she is definitely the one I’ve hated the most. Every single argument with her, I was waiting for her to finally hit me so I could beat her to death and be done with it. I refused to be the first to throw a punch and I guess she did, too. I’ll never know how we grew to be friendly later. It’s mystifying.
Okay, enough of the sob story…
Erin goes on from there to talk a lot about how things changed after that, when we met, and how some of those circumstances affected her still and our relationship. I thought it might be nice for some of you to hear, in her own words, her story about what it was like for her in that house on Normandy.
My heart hurts for her pain but she conveyed it so well I could feel it. I’m so thankful you had each other. I’m glad you have these things to keep her alive inside of you and to share with others. She was a profound human and as much as we would want her here with us, I am grateful she no longer feels any of this kind of pain and is free.
Thank you, Jennifer! Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, her writing could be so expressive and full of emotion, it hits you especially hard when she talks about these painful topics. You can imagine the positive side of it, the love letters and how beautiful and touching they were. So grateful. And yes, it does give some form of comfort to know that her suffering is over.