Dear Oanh

October 7th, 2020

Dear me from one year ago,

I regret to inform you that tomorrow will be one of the worst days of your life.

Tomorrow you will reset the password to log into your joint bank account.  You asked him for the password many, many times.  He always says, “Oh it’s on my phone… I don’t remember it…I will get it to you when I have time…I can’t do it right now.” 

Do you remember the first time you asked? It was when your debit card was rejected at Target and you had to walk away from a bag of tortillas for dinner and a groovy girl doll for Chloe Romano’s 10th birthday party on Saturday.  Your daughters trail behind you. “That was so embarrassing, Mom. Why don’t we ever have money?”  You wonder the same thing.  You were just paid the day before.  

That was three years ago. I know.  You don’t want to know. 

You will ask the woman on the customer service line for the password to the bank account.  She will tell you that as a joint account holder you can reset the password.  You blurt out.  “I can’t do that.” You will suddenly realize that you are terrified.  The voice on the other line tells you reasonably, “Reset the password and just tell your husband the new password.” You agree to do this. It is terrifying. 

You will see entries $500, $1,000 cash withdrawals every Friday and Saturday from the same ATM machine. There is an address.  You google: 4801 Colmar Lane.  It is for the Creekside Men’s Cabaret Club. 

You will be shocked and confused. You thought the hemorrhaging money would be for drugs or alcohol. You never expected strippers.  You will be sick to your stomach.  You will cry quietly in your cubicle trying not to make any sound so that Keith sitting on the other side would not hear.  But he will be clicking away at his keyboard.  You will leave work early to head to a Patient First clinic to get a full STD work up.

Your day will get worst. The nurse will jab you in both arms and will be unable to find a vein.  You tell them that you are always a hard stick.  The nurse practitioner will try. He will succeed in getting half a tube but not enough to test.  The doctor will try. They finally write you a scrip to go to the labs for bloodwork.  You wait in this sterile room contemplating the absurd end of your 20-year marriage with multiple band aids in both arms. The doctor comes back to tell you that the nurse practitioner had an accident and exposed himself to your blood and that if you are willing, they will need to do additional blood work for his worker’s compensation.  And for the first time that day you will smile darkly to yourself.  Someone was having as shitty a day as you.

When you go home. You make a veggie lasagna from Wegmans. You force your face into a smile in front of your daughters and pretend that everything is normal as you have done every single day for years and years. After dinner, you say, “Can we talk?”. 

You go out on the deck.  You tell him you know about the Creekside Cabaret. You tell him that you have opened a separate bank account, that you have an appointment with a divorce lawyer next week and that he will pack his bags and go to his sister’s or his mother’s tonight, and you suggest he sees a therapist about his addiction issues.

But you are making this suggestion as a friend because it really is not your problem anymore.

Over the next few weeks, you will feel like you hit the bottom of the ocean floor.  It would be so tempting to curl up down there and settle in.  But you won’t.  You will kick off the bottom floor and propel to the surface. The air will feel so good. You will tread water for a long time waiting for rescue to get you to the shore.  Then after a while of treading water you will become stronger, and you start to swim.  You could swim back to the shore but you will choose to swim further out in the ocean just for the joy of it. While water feels oppressive when you are at the bottom of the ocean it can also be buoyant when you float along the top.

Best regards,

Me from one year later

-Oanh Nguyen

Oanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and emigrated to the United States with her family in 1975. She is currently a part-time online student at the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on Creative Writing. She currently lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with her daughters and other animals.