My Dear Cousin - Your Sympathies

5^th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

Your sympathies are much appreciated but unnecessary. I came to terms with my life some years ago, and my pain greets me like the voices of an old friend. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Well, if that were true I would be able to comfortably bear the weight of the world on my shoulders.

In the world of Psychology what these letters are is a form of systematic desensitization. That is a therapy for trauma that involves removing your reaction to painful stimuli.

You see, emotional pain is rooted in a part of the brain called the Amygdala. You have two of these almond shaped structures in the brain. These are the things that make you react without thinking. In a person that suffers from PTSD the Amygdala is often found to be swollen.

This structure inhibits the hippocampus which is responsible for long term memory. These two parts of the brain compete with each other to control our actions. They are very much like muscles. The one you use gets stronger.

With these letters I’m strengthening my hippocampus and managing the pain of the past. I’m healing in my own way. So don’t cry for me. Think of it rather as a testament to my strength that I have endured so much and I am still standing. Many doctors I have dealt with are rather impressed by my ability to function with this psychopathology.

Further, if you wish you could help know that you are helping. You’re listening, and my years working with the homeless have taught me that listening can be the best help you can give.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

 

Cotswold Way - Chipping Campden

It’s a lovely, crisp sunny day in the beautifully preserved market town of Chipping Campden. I am outside the 17th century Market Hall that was built as a shelter for market traders. Gorgeous archways surround the perimeter wall as the building takes pride of place in the centre of town. At one end is a discrete plaque marking the Cotswold Way with the words “The Beginning and the End”. Beside the sign on the ground is a circular marker stone with a brass acorn in the centre, the symbol for all UK National Trails, and a quote encircling the acorn by T.S. Eliot with the words: “Now the light falls across the open field, leaving the deep lane shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon”. Such wonderfully inspiring words as I am about to embark on my journey.

 

The Cotswold Way is a long-distance walk from Chipping Campden to the Roman city of Bath. Running the length of the Cotswold escarpment, the route travels through historical villages, past stately homes, churches and battle sites. Along the way, wooded areas with ancient trees are interspersed with rolling pastures and wide-open meadows. The route can be tackled in either direction, hence the words on the plaque.

 

As I begin my journey, I head down High Street and take in the honey-coloured buildings lining the road. Most of them date back to the 17th century and are constructed from the oolitic limestone that is known as Cotswold stone. The oldest house in town, further up the street, is Grevel House. Built in 1380, parts of the house were remodelled and extended in the 1800s. Two gargoyles at the top of a perpendicular bay window stand guard, whilst a sundial sits in a gable above leadlight windows with coat-of-arms designs. The house used to belong to William Grevel, a wealthy wool merchant whose family have been residents of Chipping Campden for more than a century.

 

Less than a mile out of town, I passed by Dover’s Hill, one of the Cotswold’s many great viewpoints. Near a bench is a toposcope illustrating the visible landmarks and the views down the grassy slopes are accentuated by sheep grazing and chestnut trees hugging the perimeter. It is here that Robert Dover started the Costwold Olimpick Games in 1622 where games such as ‘shin-kicking’ (yes, it’s true), tug-of-war, wheelbarrow relays and running races are the highlight. With the exception of a 101-year gap, it has been held every year on the first weekend of June.

 

Perplexed by the thought of the shin-kicking contest, I slowly toddle away from the hill and towards Broadway.

 

PS. Experience our virtual challenges in real life - The Conqueror Adventures

 

The team at The Conqueror Challenges
https://www.theconqueror.events

 

My Dear Cousin - My Legal Guardian

4^th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

At this point a tangent may be in order. I don’t believe I mentioned that my legal guardian and the executor of my mother’s estate was the old man’s sister. Yes, my aunt on my (Yule)’s side became my guardian after my mother’s passing. The old man was busy with his new wife and mom didn’t trust him.

I’m not sure why he was in charge of the upkeep of my home, but you see my aunt did the work. We ripped out the carpet ourselves, and my aunt and her husband put in the acrylic tile. When the wood under it rotted, and the tile came up she hired her nephew from another aunt to put it back together. When the wood rotted again they finally got a professional to do the work. After the third rotting they gave up.

From what I gather I could have had a lot more work done for what I paid for the floors, light fixtures, and a few plugs. My aunt, with the old man’s permission, overpaid herself. I’m only bitter about this because I live in so much of a slum and still haven’t gotten my home repaired.

My aunt was poor and needed money. We have all done things we’re not proud of for money. I get it, she handled things for me that my old man was too much of a child to deal with. She deserved something for that, but she also deserved to be in prison for child neglect. Even had she not been my legal guardian it is now state law that she needed to report the old man for leaving a ten year old alone.

If you ask at this point why the old man, who at least saw what the house looked like on weekends when he came over to take me to the store, didn’t do anything about the state of things, I have an answer. He didn’t really care.

I once called him and said we needed a plumber, because the tap was leaking in the bathroom. He just said “No we don’t, let it leak.” That weekend he called me into the bathroom and said “you forgot to turn the sink off.” I told him to try turning it off, and he finally called his sister who sent her husband to fix the problem.

My old man was like that. He would live with broken things. Oddly, he would also go to the store and fill up two carts worth of things that would then wind up on the floor. He would never take any of it back home with him on Monday when he left to go be with his wife. That is unless his wife came with him to my home. In which case she would walk off with whatever she could get her hands on.

Evil stepmoms, am I right,

 

 

Richard Leland Neal

 

My Dear Cousin - From Carpet to Concrete

3^rd May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

As you’ve read in my last few letters my life was rather hard up until my mother’s passing. When my mom was well I had a mother most of the time and a father one day a week. When she got sick I had a father from Friday night to Monday morning. When mom died my music lessons stopped because they took place during the week and the old man didn’t want to make the drive. Therapy for my nerve damage also stopped.

There I was, a ten year old living in a house with a fourteen year old mental case as the closest thing I had to a guardian. I have to ask why no one on my street said anything about this.  How do people just turn away from so much in this world? How do we make ourselves blind? Three children, two boys, one girl, fourteen, twelve, and ten, who had just lost their mother and were living alone.

To add injury to injury, it took my old man about six months to turn my house into a slum. He made no attempt to keep up the garden, and he ripped out the carpets. They did replace a few old electrical fittings with new ones that made the house safer and we got fire extinguishers. However, the old man replaced my carpets with acrylic tile which was laid over the old wood floors. The wood rotted and the floors came up. I was walking on concrete before long.

This was the time that (Pickle) got used to using me as the scapegoat. I would complain about him breaking my toys or using my toothbrush for something abnormal. I once went a week without brushing my teeth because he got petroleum jelly all over the brush and I had to wait for the old man to come home to take me shopping.

Every day he would say “I’m under so much stress, Ricky says you did this to me two years ago.” About once or twice a week this would culminate into a beating from (Pickle). He was four years older than me and the old man got him thousands of dollars in weight equipment.

I’m still bitter about the fact that I had five thousand dollars of weights in one room and nothing to cover the foundation of the house in the other. Between the ages of ten and fourteen I figured out that I was white trash, what else to you call someone like that, and I’m still trying to get the stink of trash off me today.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

 

My Dear Cousin - The Sick Young Boy

2^nd May 2021

My dear cousin,

In my last letter I talked about how my parents broke up. The sad truth about that is that you know what comes next. There are still a few surprises in store for you, but I can guarantee you’ll wish they weren’t true.

I started having health problems at this point. I kept puking after seeing my old man. People said I was “throwing up my feelings” but I think he just gave me so much candy that I couldn’t take it. We would go to Pick and Save and buy all the candy we wanted, and I being young ate too much.

Then there was the fact that mom had some trouble finding a babysitter, and my two siblings were rather rough playmates. They had a game where they would ambush me on the couch, strip me naked, and than pull me off onto the floor. This happened over and over, and the part of me that tended to hit the floor was the back of my head.

As a result I have what doctors now call transient brain damage. It impacts my ability to see words. Even now I couldn’t write this coherently without programs to read it back to me. I also lost the ability to see faces for a few years. From kindergarten until high school most people were just lumps of clay to me. I couldn’t see a face on top of a head, and so I would often need to wait for someone to speak before knowing who they were.

I still have trouble with faces to be honest. It’s not as bad, but I’ve adapted. Then part of this may be that (Pickle) and I slept in the same bed, and he would keep me up all night. I’ve never slept well and that can really impact a man’s brain development.

Two years after the divorce the old man remarried to a woman who he knew had been a prostitute in Nigeria. She came with a small army of children older than us and all kinds of problems.

About a year before she died mom had me in therapy for my brain injuries. She never knew how I got them, but to be honest she had her own problems. She enrolled us in music classes and the world was good. Then we went on one last vacation. We canoed the Colorado River. When we got home she had a massive bruise where she had been sitting in the canoe. She went to the hospital where she stayed until she died some months later. 

 

My life just isn’t all that cheery,

 

Richard Leland Neal