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 - Pray for that Child

8th June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

I should mention at some point that (Pony Girl) had a child. I guess you know that, but I’ve never met him. She didn’t want him and her chances of having a child were always low, but what can happen will and she had a son.

(Pickle) has told me that he looks just like me. Or rather he looks just like I did at his age. He is the picture of our kind. It’s funny how my roots come clear at times. I wonder what he’s like or rather what he will be like, but then knowing my family he’ll turn out broken like the rest of us.

(Pony Girl) has never spoken of him to me and only (Pickle) has mentioned him and is love for the boy is somewhat worrying. (Pickle) killed mother’s chickens in play and burst blood vessels in his dog’s ears. He can be a dangerous man to be around.

If the boy knows of me at all, or ever will, I know (Pony Girl) will speak ill of me and so poison him against me. It is better that he never know me. Let me be a ghost in his mind even if he thinks of me as some demon.

I do recall once (Pony Girl)’s mother in law coming to my house and babbling on about if I wanted a choice in anything I should pay for my own repairs. I doubt she was told that I had been promised money for college and was only trying to get what was mine. I know no one told her that I had been told I would never get my money out of the house.

You can turn anyone into a villain if you don’t tell the world what you did to them. (Pony Girl) can really spin a yard of how horrible a man I am if you don’t mention the fact that she tried to turn me into her servant. (Yule) told the world what a bad son I was without mentioning how little he did as a parent.

So I will never see my nephew, and he could be better off without me complicating his life. Being an only child he could become a narcissist like his mother.

I remember that I once found a cat that (Pony Girl) adopted. She took the cat when she moved out and once brought it back when she went on vacation. That cat had been a loving animal when it left my home. The last time I saw her she was mean and would hiss at anyone who touched her.

Pray for that child,



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 - Another Car

25^th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

 

As I recall, I have now written to you about all the events of my family life ending with the three gifts I rejected from (Yule), his mother, and his sister. I have to remind you at this point that everything that was ever given to me by my family was at some point used as leverage to force me to do something I didn’t want to do.

I recall (Pony Girl) bringing up every dime she could remember that my old man had ever given me. She couldn’t remember that she had gotten more than eighty thousand dollars from the man at this point, and the last time I had accepted anything from the family they had harassed me about it until I was too depressed to go to work.

I calculated something like fifteen thousand dollars in lost wages from that, but I’m sure if I had mentioned that they would have said it wasn’t their fault. That was my family for you. They did whatever they wanted to me, and I was just supposed to take it without complaint. I defend myself in any way, and I’m the villain.

In any case, the old man got on another of his legal drug benders and wound up in a manic state where he was just spending money like it was going to go bad in a week and this led (Pickle) to come to me and say that I could have my (Pony Girl)'s old car as she was getting the old man’s SUV now he was getting a new one.

“I can tell your answer by the look on your face,” he said seeing how I felt. Her car was a Saturn SC2 and where as it was in better shape than the Saturn SL2 they had tortured me over the thing had problems I didn’t want to inherit. I recall that the sunroof was no longer working, and they had needed to do work on the power train.

At some point after that I asked for money for college which I was promised but never got. The old man once again said he would give me money and never did then he got himself a second SUV instead and when he found himself in a ditch with blown out tires he stopped doing whatever drug he had been taking as of late and (Pony Girl) became his power of attorney.

They returned the second SUV, and I got nothing, as expected, I never got anything from that old man that was of value.

I do recall at some point (Pickle) telling me that (Pony Girl) had said she took all of the old man’s money and put it in her bank account so that I couldn’t ask for what he had promised me ever again. This is felony larceny by the law, but I guess it doesn’t work that way once you have power of attorney.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - I Drove

13^th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

In my last letter I had called the police over my (Pony Girl) and her boyfriend heckling me about getting my old man’s ‘gift’ car fixed. The old man paid for two tires on his car. He wouldn’t pay for the other two, and he wouldn’t give me the college money he promised.

I stopped talking to my (Pony Girl) at that point. I was angry, and I was frustrated. I was also working at a new post where I was getting a lot of overtime and not seeing much of the house let alone the family. This came to something of a head on the fourth of July.

I came home from work to find the family and my (Pony Girl)’s boyfriend on the lawn. I was driving that gift car that I had fought with them over. I jumped out of it and into my old car and drove.  I drove through the freeway watching the smoke and fireworks in the sky. I drove thinking of how my life had been a hard mess and it wasn’t getting any better.

It was about this time my (Pony Girl) decided that she wanted the old man to buy her out or rather she convinced him to buy her out. After years of fighting with me and keeping me from my education that selfish woman had scored a major victory.

I suggested that instead they buy me out, and let me go my own way since everyone felt that I was the problem. This is when one of the cousins, the old man’s sister’s child, told me I should just leave and never expect to get my part of the house. She was the daughter of the executor of my mother’s estate and the real estate agent to handle the sale.

Again, the house was what was left of my mother’s estate now having drug on for sixteen years. I hadn’t gotten money for college like my two siblings and now I was supposed to just leave and get nothing.

When I asked why I would do such a thing the answer was “he gave you that car.” I returned the car after that and the old man was pissed.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal