My Dear Cousin - A Poor Gift

20^th May 2021

 My Dear Cousin,

 

After (Yule) sold that car the family expected me to give up my third of a paid off home for the family offered me three gifts that were of no interest to me. This was not all at once but over a bit of time, perhaps a year or two, but I would accept none of them. I had learned what happens when I accept things from my family.

 

The first was a check from the old man for two hundred dollars. I was out of work when this happened. I was out of work, because the ordeal with the car had left me so depressed I could hardly get out of bed. What I honestly needed to do was contact the company I had been working for to be reassigned.

 

The check wouldn’t cover two days of the suffering I was feeling because of how (Yule) had harassed me over that car so I returned it to (Yule). He didn’t really react as far as I could see, but after I handed it back to him I just walked away.

 

My grandmother told me it was my fault, because I had given him the car back. I felt I had no choice, as no matter what I did they wouldn’t stop harassing me about that car. My family here in California tends to be the kind of people who will listen to nothing short of violence, and I didn’t want to get violent.

 

Two hundred dollars wouldn’t have replaced two days of lost work. It wouldn’t have covered the money for college I had been promised. It wouldn’t have even been the money the car that was supposed to have been a gift to me had been sold for. Keeping it would have been a deal with the devil, and them giving that to me as if it was supposed to mean anything was like having them spit in my face.

 

I never spoke to my grandmother again. I believe I spoke to (Yule) one more time. This was the first of the three gifts and it had told me once and for all that family was useless to me.

 

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - I Refused to Speak

 19^th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

 

It has been a few days since my last letter, but you never answered me anyway. Maybe my life is just too dismal to take. Well, I assure you that I need to keep writing regardless of your reading just to bleed the pain from my mind. A bad memory can be like a cyst; bleed it and it may scar, but leave it and it can get worse.

 

Well, a point I forgot was that before the wedding, and after I called the cops on (Pony Girl)’s husband to be I refused to speak to (Pony Girl) for about eight months. I don’t think you can blame me for that, talking had never done me any good so far.

 

(Pony Girl) brought this situation to a head when she started hounding me and calling me childish for not speaking to her. We spoke and that was when I learned that the car they wanted me to give up my house for was sold for four hundred dollars. They expected me to pay two hundred thousand dollars for it, and it was worth four hundred.

 

There were two points of this conversation. The first was that (Pony Girl) was to pay me back for the time I had paid bills for her when she was in college. The second was that she was to disclose the amount of money dad gave her for college.

 

She never fulfilled the second part of that promise. She knew how much it was but laughed out “I don’t remember” when I brought it up. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe I deserved the money, but only that she so loved steeling from me.

 

I remember once I got a sheet of stamps and put them on the old bulletin board next to were the landline used to be in my home. The next day they were gone and I asked (Pony Girl) if she had seen them. She admitted to taking them but wouldn’t give any of them back.

 

I overreacted to this, and was very upset, I should have just let it go. I recall my grandmother saying “maybe she needed stamps”. I explained that this was not all that true, but the old woman refused to believe that her family could ever do anything wrong. The whole family had a ‘turn a blind eye’ attitude to abuse.

 

I remember when I complained that (Yule) had given her and (Pickle) money for college and not me (Pony Girl) laughed out “You’re older now”. I had been in college since the age of eighteen and he didn’t give me money then.

 

It was just like that white car. (Pony Girl) decided that it was her car that I would pay for. When I didn’t like that she decided that I had to get rid of my other car. When I wouldn’t do that she tried to kick me out of my own home.

 

Well, for the second or third time at that point, but you get the idea.

 

Best,

 

 

Richard Leland Neal

 

The Wedding Invitation from Hell

Every now and again I write a letter based on an event from memories from a few years ago. I do this for my own mental health. Writing about painful experiences can give a man some closure.

In behaviorist theory this would be called systematic desensitization. In this case it would be the act of accessing the memory and assigning it a different emotional response.

If there is one thing I’d like you to take from this letter it is that if you wrong someone make amends without making demands. I don’t believe that my family had any interest in making amends, but what they did only served to make the situation worse.

9^th September 2011

Dear Cassi,

Did I ever tell you about my sister’s wedding? It was a telling event from my past that illustrates why I have so little to do with my family.

It started with the appearance of my uncle. The only uncle I actually know. On my mom’s side it was a big family, but they never got along. Legacy of pain, I think you understand. I hadn’t seen the man for more than ten years. The last time I saw him was at my mother’s funeral.

    

He said he wanted to reconnect with me after all the years we had been apart. He lied. His real goal was the get me to go to my sister’s wedding.

    

I remember getting my old high school yearbooks, and thinking that I was going to go over them with him. We went to some pizza place, and he spends the time trying to convince me that I needed to go to my sister’s wedding.

    

My uncle explained to me that there was an occasion where his brother had wanted him to walk away from some property, and he had beaten his brother within an inch of his life. As my sister had tried to have my name removed from my mother’s estate I understood how he felt. Then he told me that he hadn’t spoken to his brother since. Again, I see no problem with this as now I think it’s been four or five years since I spoke to my sister.

    

This gave him no pause and it made no difference what I told the man, he just wouldn’t stop asking me to go to my sister’s wedding. He had no other goal, and, to put it bluntly, was willing to test our relationship to the point of destruction to get me there.

    

Over all the family history I’ve gone through all I ever see is my family hurting the people the claim to love. In this case rather than make emends they chose to put pressure on the victim. I believe I haven’t spoken to my uncle in nine months. The next time I do I know what he will say. It’s all the same with these people, they scheme and lie, steal and desecrate. The only thing they never do to try to get what they want is to be a decent human being.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal

Adam and Eve - Kimberley Broyles