My Dear Cousin - That Third Kid

1st May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

Well, in my first letter I told you about my parents and in my second I recapped the last time I saw you or what I remember of it. So, after that tangent it’s time to talk about that whole business of being born. I believe I have no cognitive memories before the age of three. I could be wrong on that, but I’m also told all that shuts down until you have a child of your own.

Now, my old man said it was then that the marriage fell apart. He said ‘when we had that third kid it all went south. It was fine when there was one kid for each of us, but three was just too much.’ Mom never talked about this, but then I have to conclude that my old man was something of an unreasonable person.

In any case, he got a vasectomy, and then they found the cancer that would eventually take my mother’s life. (Pickle) said they did a lot of fighting back then and my neighbors would tell me this was true some thirty years after the fact. I think this is why (Pickle) has mental problems. It can’t be good to have your parents fight all the time. Then again, we are all screwed up aren’t we?

I do believe that at the age of three I wanted to sleep in my parent’s bed. Why? (Pony Girl) honestly suggested it, and I was a dumb child. I’ve always been considered the dumb one, and I imagine you can ask (Pony Girl) about that. I wet the bed, it was a common problem for me, and the old man was furious. He refused to sleep in bed with my mother after that.

Mind you that mom thought she would have been dead by this time. The doctors had told her she had three years to live when they found the cancer, but she was recovering. To hear the old man tell it, mom wanted to get intimate one night and he couldn’t manage. The next day she called him at work, or so he says, and said “Don’t bother coming home.”

Twenty three years after this the old man was still complaining about how I wet the bed. I wasn’t even speaking to him at the time, but he would get into earshot and start flapping his gums over it. In modern speech he was what we would call a “man-child”. You kind of need to be immature to blame your marriage falling apart on a three year old.

Best,


Richard Leland Neal

Battled Bepression

By the fact that this letter has no name at it's end I can tell I never finished it. Well, I was depressed. 

In any case, I hope what is there makes good reading. 

6^th March 2014

Dear Mr. (YouTuber),

It was the fifth of March that you asked your audience, of which I am one, to tell you the stories of their depression. I have battled depression for the whole of my life, and so the story of my depression cannot be held in a comment. So long a story needs thought and introspection notwithstanding the need of all things done by the depressed: time.

My depression found its start in the rough handling I received in tender youth. The youngest of three children in an unsupervised home my older siblings would unite against me as a force of violence and so I would fight until exhaustion against them. This prompted my mother to send my older (sibling) to live with other family members for a summer, but it did little good as (they) had to come back for the school year.

These beatings of youth left me with what is called transient brain damage as a result of trauma to the back of my head. I struggled to read and struggled to write because of this problem, and even now I would be unable to write this letter coherently without a program that reads my work back to me as the written word and I simply do not get along.

My depression worsened with my mother’s second relapse of cancer. She fought the disease for as long as she could but lost and died a week after my tenth birthday. My father was what one may call an absentee parent. He would arrive at my residence on Friday night and leave Sunday evening, and so I would see him for the weekend. This left the home in the care of my older (sibling) who, mentally ill and violent, ruled by needless force.

At the time, in wake and sleep my life was a nightmare. In my waking times I stood silent looking after myself and staying away from siblings as best I could. I often had dreams where my hands were cut off, and I learned in college this is symbolic of the feeling of helplessness.  

By age fourteen my depression had reached its height, and I could hardly lift my hands. I had medical insurance, but my father refused to take me to see a psychiatrist. Why I cannot with certainty say, but he would always dismiss my maladies with “it’s all in your head” or “You’re a hypochondriac”.

For much of my high school years I felt like a piece of dead meat with a soul trapped within. There were times I would sit in bed unable to sleep but unable to stand as if a prisoner in my own flesh. Every morning I would vomit, I’m not sure why, before or when I got to school.

I made it past high school and suffered with depression my whole life finding what friends I made of little help. I learned in psychology that the abusers find the abused and that many of us accept abuse as we think it to be normal. I was twenty nine when I walked away from the abusive people in my life, and I still have trouble making friends often due to my condition. I take medication, and I live with my problem but there is little hope of recovery.

The one great silver lining to my condition is that I can relate to my clients as I work with the homeless population of Los Angeles. Many of them lived a life as sad or worse than my own. They find in me a listening ear and accepting mind a comfort. 

Last Day of Leland

27^th July 2012

Dear Cassi,

It comes to me that I have not told you of the last note in Grandpa Leland’s life that was played so many years ago. Leland was a man who had little love for doctors and even less for medication. He would crush pills and mix them with honey to get them down, because he had trouble swallowing them. Still he lived to be seventy five from what I understand. In his last years he had a sixty inch waste and did little moving.

       

I’m told once one of my aunts came over to help him with his laundry and found in his sheets blood. Not spots of red, mind, but deep puddles that had stained the bed itself.  The family insisted he go to see a doctor and only after some pushing Leland agreed. They found that he had colon cancer, but he lived for many years after that discovery. 

       

When Leland finally passed he did so in his sleep. He was found the next morning with the number of his undertaker on his bed stand. The old man knew he wasn’t long for this world, but he had that number because this undertaker was a friend. It would appear as if this man in question had retired from the business of the dead some years before but not saw those he had fondness for to the other side. Thus, grandpa went to the darkness gently touched by old hands that cared for him.

       

Family came out of the woodwork to go to the funeral but Alan refused to let them see his father’s body. “You pay your respect when a man is alive” he would say. Alan thought most of those folks just wanted to have a run at his father’s things. People can get greedy when folks die and will go about taking what they are not welcome to have.  The funeral was a small affair from what I gather but I have no recollection of this event.

       

There is much to be learned from this, Cassi, both from the passing of Leland and the actions of Alan. Firstly, it is good to have your affairs well in order when you pass. Sounds morbid I guess, but in this world a person has to look after things as best they can.

Secondly, to this we learn that the time is now to see things dealt with in our lives and loved ones. In the time of our lives we should see disputes settle if we want them to be so and never let the little things turn bad. That is a lesson everyone in my genetic similarity should learn as we have never been folks to get on. In the fragile nature of our lives we should never live for someday. Living for someday only means that we had laid today aside.

When I look over my life I see so much preparation for the future but so little joy and light. I have wallowed in darkness for so many years that I forgot the sight of the sun. For so much of my life I have been nothing but a walking ghost because I never learned from Grandpa Leland.

Live at least a little every day, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

As a Life Continues

 

This is an essay from a summer school class I took when I was seventeen. To the best of my understanding it lasted a total of twenty eight days. Each day we would write an essay and it be graded. On the last day we would submit an essay to be evaluated by and independent body.  If the Essay was not good enough we would not graduate high school. I had to take this because I suffered from a learning disorder that I was in therapy for when my mother passed. The old man was unwilling to keep taking me to this therapy.                                                                  

‎June ‎23, ‎1997

As a Life Continues

 

 

I was born in nineteen seventy nine. I am told that my (Yule) cut the umbilical cord but could not remember it later. My mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer within months of my birth. Due to this I have never been shocked by the progression of the disease. At three years of age I encountered one of the most complicated and common parts of modern life, divorce. My (Yule) has often reflected on my misunderstanding of the situation, "you asked why I did not come home anymore," and he would chuckle about it as if it were funny. I spent the majority of my young life in a pool, it was a small pool but adequate. My (Pony Girl) and (Pickle) were often there with me. (Pony Girl) was always the thinner of the two. (Pickle)  was a pudgy white fat child with a real attitude problem. He was spiteful and hated honor students. It will be my belief for all time that my mother’s death was the end of my childhood. When you stare in to your mother’s cold dead face, you grow up. The truth is you have no choice in that matter; you just can’t go on without a change.

         

One thing that has always been part of my life even when I was very young was school.  You see my mother was a science teacher as well as a pharmacist. She had graduated from a four year university with two diplomas in mildly related fields. As a three year old I was teaching mother's class with her and, of course, listening to many teachers’ discussions. The early exposure probably gave me some kind of an advantage over other children. In North Whittier elementary school I had problems being understood by other children. This may have had something to do with my vocabulary, as it tested to be three years advanced. I was miserable at Catherine Edward's Jr. High, this was due to the activities of PE. For example Stones were hurled at me during athletics and racial slurs were a common part of life. I will never forget the time some fool called me a Nazi. Being a Jew, I easily explained his folly to him but he failed to understand, "you’re a dirty Jew and a Nazi," he said to me. For this reason, I have ever since tried not to explain things to the grotesquely stupid. Finally I went to Pioneer where I had experience in drama, music, and photography. The overall experience of Pioneer has been very wearying physically and mentally.

 

For the future I would like to put forth the skills I have learned in the Theatre. I worked on lighting sets for some time and found it intriguing. It was this that sparked my interest in technical support and organizational tech. Moreover, I have gained skills in the field and even now I would make an excellent grip. What is a grip? Well he is the man that carries heavy equipment for theater and film production. In other words, a grip is a human pack animal that is renowned for his strength and endurance. However if the field for any reason does not fit my lifestyle I plan on adding engineering to my abilities. Electrical workings are already an important part of my life and taking the next step from repairing is designing. Most of electrical engineering is color coated and ultimately very simple to work on. The knowledge I have obtained should make mastering this field no more difficult than any other of my interests. If even that proves poorly matched there will always be related fields or other areas of interest for me to follow. I'm not concerned about finding a suitable occupation.