My Dear Cousin - Get a Lawyer

14th June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

After the death of my old man it came to me that he had to have left an estate. Well, it came to me that as (Pony Girl) was his power of attorney she would have put all his money in her bank account and I would have been left high and dry. There was a living trust at some point so I was entitled to something.

I mentioned this to (Pickle) and a five thousand dollar check arrived in short order. I then asked for an accounting of the old man’s estate and was ignored. I then said if I didn’t get an account of my father’s estate I would need to consult a lawyer.

Somehow, I found myself talking to (Pickle) who was talking to (Pony Girl) over the phone. I said “am I getting an accounting or a lawyer?” (Pickle) said “she said ‘get a lawyer’”, and I did. It’s funny that the check for five thousand dollars went to the lawyer, and I may not have been able to retain one without that money.

(Pony Girl), of course, already had a lawyer who was doing her best to make my life hell. This was the same lawyer who ‘accidentally’ drew up paperwork to have me sign away my part of my home. I think I have the better lawyer being that mine specializes in estate law.

You should have seen the lawyer I hired. He volunteers as an armed guard at Synagogues. You would swear he’s Rodney Dangerfield’s brother. He has one hand that is missing a finger, but the old man is the kind of person that puts you at ease.

There is a part of me that felt a cold wind in my soul over all this, because I never believed that (Pony Girl) would take it this far. Well, no, I knew she would take it this far but never wanted to believe she would.

Some people, am I right?


Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - Ego Solus

12th June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

I can tell you a funny thing about my old man passing, (Pony Girl) said his remains where to go to his ex-wife. I learned this when I wanted to visit the grave and mourn alone. (Pickle) would later tell me that his ashes where at (Pony Girl)’s house.

You may ask why I did not attend the funeral, and that would be a good question. Truth be told, I felt the family had long since been poisoned against me and that there was no making amends. There was no coming to them because they had already made my life so hard that I couldn’t deal with them and grief.

If there are people in your life you want to reconnect with you need to do it now. You need to take the time to see their side of things and be willing to make things right. With that family of mine they had made it clear that I would accept what I was given and pay what they asked me for it. What they wanted in return was always more than the value of what they gave.

A narcissist will often plant and idea in a person’s head and we humans aren’t all that bright enough to let that idea be put down by reason. The idea needs to be knocked out of our heads and that takes some damage. When I needed them the most those people turned their backs on me, and I think we have past the point where there is anything they can do to make it up to me.

In my art work I often write the words in Latin ‘Ego Solus’ under the symbol of the man alone. Ego Solus means I alone as I am alone. I stand alone in a world that stands against me and I will never give up.

Best,


Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - The Owl at Night

10th June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

The process of writing these is taking a lot out of me. It hurts to go over these old memories but I need to get it done. I need to bleed it out of myself and so here I am bleeding. With every letter I read the letters I’ve sent and try to normalize myself to the memories. I try to look at the pain and live with it.

Where were we? (Pickle) had suffered acts of violence against me and my sister was off with her husband pulling the strings on his life. Then (Yule) passed away.

I got a text from (Pony Girl) telling me he had a heart attack and I responded with “I was told to leave and never come back, and nothing will change that.” Then she told me that he had died in a text message. She told me the old man died by text. I still can’t get over that.

I wanted to call her and tell her how rude that was but then I guess it wouldn’t have mattered in the end. What was done was done and it wasn’t time to rub salt in the wound.

He was gone and that was that. I couldn’t cry for the old man. I mean, he treated me as if all his problems were my fault and that his life would be better had I never been born. He never really tried to reach out to me or make things right. He just kept pretending that he was the perfect father and that I was not worth his time.

I went to work that night and a small owl visited me at the homeless shelter. I was guarding the front gate and sitting alone in the darkness with almost everyone having come in for the night. I was alone with the owl and we looked at each other with some understanding.

I want to believe that owl was the old man’s spirit coming to make peace. I want to believe that, but I don’t. I believe that was a burrowing owl who can down and though I looked interesting. Truth is that the more I say that owl was the old man’s spirit the more a part of my mind thinks it and it does make me feel better.

Best,



Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - Mental Health Declined

                                7th June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

One of the things that happened after (Pony Girl) became  (Pickle)’s conservator is that his mental health declined. I believe he would stop taking his medication and try to commit suicide or maybe he was just that bad off.

I once got a call from a woman saying he was walking down the middle of the street and told her he was “looking for answers”. I told her to call the police, because he was having a psychotic episode. 

I went to work that night. When I got home I found that he had raided my refrigerator and was eating my food. The man got his hands into anything with sugar in it and had made a mess. He walked up to me and said “A lady said you wouldn’t hurt me again.”

Then he started screaming “Stop hurting me, stop hurting me!” He punched something on the kitchen counter and sent glass into the sink. His next punch hit me dead in the chest and he left. He was in lock up for a few days, and I had trouble breathing for four. Something about bruising the pericardium sack that contains the hart.

There was another time he lost his remote control and blamed me. I can tell you that I wouldn’t have known which remote control was the right one because he had at least ten of them at the time. He trashed all kinds of my things and filled the trash with my stuff. He had another fifty one fifty which is a seventy two hour mental health hold.

By this point I often feared he would become violent. He was never permitted in a car with me after those fits of violence. We would have a strained relationship after that but there was still more to come.

Best,


Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - Permit

28th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

In my last letter I told you about (Pickle) wanting to remodel the house, my telling him to use the money my old man promised me for my part, and him calling (Pony Girl) who put a stop order on the re remodeling.

There was something of an issue with permits. I didn’t know much about them at the time, but the contractor hadn’t gotten them. This led to the permits being prepared and an inspector needing to come out to the house.

This is when (Pony Girl) came to the house to find the crew working. They needed to expose the pipe to show the inspector that they were up to code. Well, she put a stop to them working right away and started complaining.

I had to explain to her that if they didn’t work, we wouldn’t be able to get the plumbing inspected and so wouldn’t know if the work was good. She relented and the inspector went all over the house looking at the plumbing.

At this point any interaction I had with the woman put me in a bad mood so I normally would go to my workroom and work. I was running a blog or two by this point, and I always had something to do.

It was a sad state of affairs that I was once again dealing with a woman who had abused me as a child, continued that abuse into my adulthood and now felt I should have been happy to be her servant. (Pony Girl) is a parasite looking for someone to leach off and that person all too often was me.

She felt I was the dumb one because I let it happen. When I got wise to it she did what she could to play the victim. In the end, she sued the contractor, got some of the money back, and it left the house with one working bathroom.

(Pickle) never left me get over that and would harp on me for it for years after that. It was a big factor in him moving out that he had to share a bathroom with me. Part of it was that he hated me.

I know he hated me because he always took joy in causing me pain. He would bring up anything he could that would make me feel bad and rub it in. If I ever did that to him he’d cry about it. He had been doing that since I was ten years old and he kept doing it until the last time I spoke to him, but that’s for another Day.

Best,


Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - Remodeling

 

27th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

In my last letter I mentioned that (Pickle) had elected to remodel the bathrooms. This was likely because I had the money from an inheritance, and he wanted to spend it for me. Anyway, the house was a wreck and I was still too depressed to really get much cleaning done.

I mean, I was still not speaking with (Yule) or (Pony Girl) and she had gotten now more than eighty thousand dollars from the old man in support. My life was a ruin, and I was trying to get as much of it back together as I could.

One of the problems with people who have suffered the abuse that I have is that they tend to have trouble trusting others and letting them into their lives. Me, I’m alone for that reason, and so my broken soul left me depressed and hard to live with.

We hired a contractor and elected to remodel both bathrooms and replace the old galvanized pipes with new copper ones bringing them to modern standard and preventing the rust of galvanized pipes from getting in the new fittings.

This was when I insisted that (Pickle) use the money (Yule) promised me for college to repair the house. He had a check book with his name and the old man’s on it. He had access to the money that had now been promised me twice. I figured it was only fair.

After all, this man had beaten me as a youth, abused me verbally as an adult, and now I was forced to look after him. That could be another reason why the family was always so unsupportive. They wanted me to spend my life looking after their problem.

Anyway, (Pickle) first tried to pay with his own money rather than speaking to the old man about it. Then he decided against that and called (Pony Girl). It did turn out the contractor was crooked but the family felt that I should have paid ‘my share’ even as they had short changed me. (Pony Girl) put a stop order on the whole thing and even adult protective services were called.

It led to a real rift between (Pickle) and I. It didn’t help that the contractor was crooked and used parts that didn’t last, old materials, and the cheapest crap that he could find. It really was a mess.

(Pickle) never forgave me for expecting him to use the money I was promised. He knew it was mine and he didn’t object at first but only made a stink about it later. You tell me, was I in the wrong?

Best,


Richard Leland Neal