My Dear Cousin - Never Come Back

14^th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

So, where was I? The whole family and I had fought over that car the old man had given me. In exchange for that car I had been asked to leave and never come back never getting my part of my mother’s estate which had been an issue for the last sixteen years.

I did have it out with the old man. He called and asked me if I wanted his car after (Pony Girl) gave it back to him. He said I was unreasonable and he said I was a slob.  I am a slob, but I feel he was unreasonable. I would generally think that risking your son’s life by letting him drive his car with badly worn tires is unreasonable.

I guess he felt that not paying for the upkeep of a car you were asked to pay for over and over again as long as you owned it is unreasonable. Then, the old man was one to laugh at my problems when he didn’t want to deal with them, scream at them when they wouldn’t go away, and keep screaming because they stuck around.

When I quoted our conversation on the subject he said “Well I lied.” I had been saying “We had an agreement” for months. Then he said I had tried to hit my sister, and I informed him that I hadn’t even gotten within five feet of her. I then told him that her boyfriend had left a bruise on my arm and he said “well, that’s hard to prove, a bruise.” He knew I didn’t try to hit anyone.

 

It’s hard to say how deep that cut me. He didn’t care about the truth or me or my well being. My family thought of me as something to be exploited. If I wasn’t going to profit them then I wasn’t worth having around. 

I reminded the old man that he told me I couldn’t call the police on my brother unless he hit me with an ax.

“Was I smiling when I said that?” he asked.

“No, you were screaming,” I said, and I had to come to grips at that point with the idea that the man didn’t care about me. I hung up the phone and pushed it from my mine.

Well, what do you expect from my old man? He was unfit to keep a dog. That is quite literal, at some point we wound up with a dog that had been his that he could no longer care for because it hurt someone. The poor thing came to me being eaten alive by a fungus that caused his skin to bleed. 

It’s an ugly world I come from.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

 

 

The Pit

2^nd January 2013

Dear Cassi,

       

Pony Girl came again today as some interloper into my home. She, Pickles, and the fellow from across the street, Ken, were cleaning as I sat in my room with the kittens. I immerged to find that Ken had cleaned the mess of wood chips he had left in the back yard and that the kitchen floor had been mopped.

       

It comes to me that Pickles is a slob until Pony Girl arrives and my two siblings become more of a use together. Why all the interest in the state of my home now troubles me. I feel as if I’m watching them dig a pit to drop me into to fight some new beast they’ve found.

       

Pony Girl has always been one to do what she wishes, call it help, then demand twice the worth of her “service” as gratitude. Her version of ‘Help’ has always been so costly. Much as when Alan ‘gave’ me that old white car and then Pony Girl demanded my slavery for my accepting the thing. I had argued with them saying that I didn’t want the car, took it to shut them up, was heckled until I returned it to them, and they were angry with me.

       

This event prompted the old man to give his little girl thirty thousand dollars to move away from me. She got another thirty thousand after that from what I understand. The spooled never grow into people I guess. They just make their way in life as parasites. 

What an ugly world we live in that kindness can be a word be use to mask abuse. Then, when we look at the grand nature of things my little life is just an ugly place in an even worse world.

       

Whatever comes I will meet it was best I can. Whatever happens next I’ll take it like an adult. The fight will be hard, but what part of my life hasn’t been?

Stay safe, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal