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 - Contract

1^st June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

I guess this is getting a bit hard for both of us. I was reading through these letters yesterday, and I had to take a walk then I had to put them away for today. Family is a really sore topic for me and, well, I haven’t seen (Pickle) for a while.

I’ll tell you about that later, but this letter is still about him. It turns out that in addition to the bad experience we had with the remodeling he has had problems with contractors. 

I overheard (Pony Girl) saying that he had a window salesmen over to the house one day and signed a contract just because the man wouldn’t leave and he knew that would get rid of him.

(Pony Girl) had to get him and make him tear up the contract after telling him that (Pickle) wasn’t competent to sign it in the first place. Then there was that ridiculous coin collection of his. He had spent more than twenty thousand on it, from what I gather, then sold it all in a day, and I don’t know what he got back but not much.

Anyway, (Pony Girl) became his conservator after this last mess and he wasn’t supposed to spend more than two hundred dollars without her approval. I remember (Pickle) coming home from the court hearing and then him saying that the judge had told her she wanted too much power. That didn’t surprise me.

There was a time after this that he had asked me to take him to the store to buy a fan for his bedroom. I took him to the store and helped him pick the fan out. A week later he got in my face like he was ready to throw fists and yelled “next time buy your own fan!”

I looked at him like he had grown a second head and said “why would I buy a fan for your bedroom?” I mean, he had asked me to take him to get the fan, asked me to help him pick it out, and (Pony Girl) must have seen the bill and put the idea in his head that I had gotten him to buy the fan for me.

I did have three or four hundred dollars worth of fans around the house at the time. We have no insulation and this is California. Still, it comes to me that I should have told him to have his sister take him to the store to get that fan.

I brought this up with (Pony Girl) once and she said “I don’t remember what you’re talking about.” This is typical narcissistic behavior. The natural response to hearing that you nearly got your two brothers into a fistfight over a fan would be to ask what happened rather than dismiss it.

Where she not guilty and really didn’t remember it would have been more of a “what are you talking about” than an “I don’t care”. The always did laugh at my pain. I guess she’s still laughing.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

 

Pony and Pickles

14^th January 2013

Dear Cassi,

       

This week I was issued court paperwork stating that Pony-Girl will be applying for power of attorney over Pickles. Trusting a woman that tried to have me kicked out of a home that I own twice is absolutely crazy. Then, Pickles is absolutely crazy and the two were made for each other.

       

I can say with a high degree of certainty that this will come bite him in the tail. This family wrote me off as a loss seven years ago and now I think they can go about their business so long as it keeps free of me.

       

This is a group of people made for one another and the best raven I could ever have would be to give them to one another.

Sometimes you got to move on, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Finish What You Start - Dave Barry

 

Children as a Battle Ground

23^rd November 2011

Dear Cassi,

   

One of the things I learned a good deal about in both Psychology and Sociology is the aftermath of divorce. I know it has played a large role in my life, and I must imagine it has come about in yours. 

   

Some people stay in bad marriages for the sake of their children, some folks split up because they just can stand one another. Still others come to understand that it truly is the right thing. I have to stress at this point that the experts recommend all couples go to therapy when the relationship is good. Generally, by the time couples come to see a therapist they have built so much resentment that the relationship is doomed.

   

Living in that broken home children will rarely thrive. Even if the couple can hide their fighting normally their children will pick up on the hostility. Petty folks tend to bleed their misery into the world around them even if they refuse to believe that they are miserable.

   

For those couples who do split up, and there are many, their children often become at battle ground. The arguments that once lived in the marriage are played out in the minds of impressionable children. Those children are asked to choose between parents. Then the children loving both father and mother can’t shake the feeling that they have betrayed both.  

I recall telling one of my Psychology classes that the thing to do is be reasonable adults, and your kids should come out fine. The sad truth is that most of the divorcees studied by science simply aren’t reasonable adults. How does that old song go? “Shattered lives broken dreams.”

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal

Learn from My Mistakes

Year of Neal 

I found this blurb in my files, and I have a better understanding of what my teachers meant when they called my work ‘hieroglyphics’. It comes to me that this is too short to make a post but I will include the original text and a translation so that it can be understood. The file date was the 18^th of June 1995.

Original

This year has been a trieng one, I have lerd more out of the clase room then in it. I havelerned the dienamics of the homan mined. Toched opon the workings of the body; and obof all sean the depth of his descras.

                        

As I sit thinking of  what one thing did I lern that stans out, I reais this is not as simpl as it seams. I lerned that all computers are of comen disien, but it is not sobject mater. What I think is the most inpotant thing for me to have lerned is that if one is to hevaly reliant on once self; that one will destoi the grop nomater how hared he or she works. This is of cors specing in terms of presentation as far as the work gos one or meny just get it dun and thats the way I see it.

                         Unforchunatly even now as   

Translation

This year has been a trying one, I have learned more out of the class room then in it. I have learned of the dynamics of the human mind, touched upon the workings of the body; and above all seen the depth of its disgrace.

                        

As I sit thinking of what one thing I did learn that stood out I realize this is not as simple as it seems. I learned that all computers are of common design, but not all subject matter. What I think is the most impotent thing for me to have learned is that if one is too heavily reliant on one’s self, that one will destroy the group no matter how hard he or she works. This is of course speaking in terms of presentation as far as the work goes one or many just get it done and that’s the way I see it.

                         Unfortunately even now as …  

Okay, as you can read the text is only slightly more understandable when converted to my best estimation of my own thoughts those nearly twenty years ago. I was very ill at the time and could hardly think.

What I believe this is speaking of is a group project where one of the boys kept asking for help but I asked what he needed help with he kept saying ‘everything’ which was of no use in directing our energy.

It was a mock radio program where we were to teach history. I had read my part of the script and having seen that I only had one line insisted he rewrite it so that I had more. He only gave the other boys one line so we were downgraded because it looked like only two of the four group members did the work.

Well, you live and learn I guess. First lesson, ask for help with a direct problem, and never make your request nebulous. Second lesson, inspect as much of the finished product as you can. Third lesson, make sure work assignments are well rounded.

I hope someday someone will learn from my mistakes.

Richard Leland Neal

Psychopathology

21^st March 2012

Dear Cassi,

       

Today I saw the mental health counselor. It was a good lot of work over getting a simple prescription refilled but it had to be done. I slept a few hours of my morning and made haste to see this fellow who would give me leave to see the doctor.

       

It is a formality with my medical provider that I must first see a Counselor or Psychologist before I can see a Psychiatrist. This being that the first two are Master Arts or Philosophical Doctor rather than Medical Doctor and are without the ability to grant my prescription.

       

In all truth, I have no resentment to this formality because of how important it is for most folks. A psychiatric medication is like a crutch that we use to help the mind heal and in said healing that crutch should one day be discarded. Thus, we may think of the Counselor as we would think of a Physical Therapist. The Counselor is there to make the bits of us that do not work do as they should.    

       

By the nature of our interview I told the Counselor of my intention to use the medication to quash my ill feeling as I conduct systematic desensitization. He told me that he was surprised that I was so functional a man given my history and the stresses of my life. I imagine, had he read about me and not seen me, that he would have expected a drooling idiot rather than a man.

       

He told me that I appeared to be a rather nice person. I have never claimed that to be true but I got the feeling he meant something else. In any case, he cleared me to see the doctor and that is what he was there for so I must concede his usefulness.

Stay safe, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal 

Also updating today!

Random Street Theater a Comic

http://randomstreet.blogspot.com/

Listened to a Crying Man

15^th March 2011

Dear Cassi,

         

Well, in my last letter I told you about my time working as a guard for (a phone store). I have to say one of the most difficult situations that ever arose at work happen at that place. A man arrived one afternoon on a bicycle loaded down with bags and such. He was an older ragged looking man with a long graying beard. My first thought was that he might have been homeless, but I had to say he was too clean. The old man had come for help with his cell and his questions took a supervisor more than two hours. Every now and again the supervisor would excuse himself and the old man would talk to me about his life. That was nothing of a concern, people had been discussing their lives with me from the day I became a Security Officer. He was an electrician by trade with one son who was out of work.

         

As the old man went on his stories became more upsetting. He told me that one of his friends had been cheating on his girlfriend when he was killed and his body parts had been spread over a highway. He said that the girl was never the same after that and who would be.  At this point I had to wonder if the man was insane because he was opening up to a stranger in a room full of people, but having experience in that regard I just let him talk. He just needed to vent I figured.

He told me that his brother was very rich, but that his brother’s son had committed suicide. Now that was a story that truly drew my interest, because this nephew had everything in the world, everything that you and I would want, and still took his own life. At first I didn’t believe, but then the man looked in his bags and came away with a file folder baring his nephew’s name and showed me a copy of the suicide note. I remembered that it said “I’m sorry, I can’t tell whether it is positive or negative,” the duration I can’t remember.

The most upsetting thing about this case is that the deceased had just started medication and it is likely that killed him. It is the sad truth about psychiatric medications used to treat depression that the time shortly after they are administered the desire for death has not been suppressed but the depression has. All too often the sufferer is given just enough will to die.

I watched tears well in the old man’s eyes as he spoke of his departed nephew and hoped that the ear I had given to his pain would relieve his suffering some.

Stay safe, Cassi

Richard Leland Neal

Letter to Counselor

This is a forum post I wrote a day ago to a counselor talking about her problem client. She hasn’t responded so I don’t know if she found my comments useful.

Dear Counselor

This fellow you’re working on is a grown baby because he had no strong role models and he clearly needs to find a few. His father could be enabling and the son’s refusal to call him by his parental role is indicative of abandonment issues.

I can only say that he needs to be in group therapy so he can learn that he is not the only person in this world with problems and that his father needs to “man up,” or “parent up” to be PC, and stop enabling his son’s acting out.

In addition, I would have to ask if he ever reached out to his mother. She doesn’t have to love him but she is a part of him and he should help things along. Ask him to write letters to his mother, real paper letters, and bring them in and read them to you. Hopefully you can get him to a point where he wants to have something good to say. His mother will not come save him, but she might want to be a part of his life if she can be proud of him.

In any case putting his feelings down may help to lance the fester and start the healing process. He can use these letters for a blog later.

Another thing you could try is sessions with his dad where you toss a ball around. Sounds funny but it forces him to engage and concentrate.

Take everything I say with a grain of salt. You have a good deal more experience than I.

Richard Leland Neal

BBS Webmaster

One of the unfortunate byproducts of a job search is that job searchers are constantly bombarded with information about online schools. This would be no big deal if it were not for the fact that I need to get a state license to do what I intend to go the school for.

In the flesh education is less convenient and harder, but that would be why it’s more legitimate. When faced with this forty five thousand dollar question the answer is assess, assess, assess. (That fourth “s” is very important)

So I sent this email to the state board. Will they reply? Five bucks says no.

26^th August 2011

Dear BBS Webmaster,

I’m currently looking for a grad school to qualify me for a license in mental health counseling.

I’m told you do not recognize a master’s degree from an online school like Grand Canyon University or Capella. Is that true?

Do I need to get an MS or will an MA do?

Thank you for your time,

Richard Leland Neal 

Drive Yourself to Poverty, Work for Use

A true account and there is little more to say. Some would tell me that some job is better than no job, others would applaud me for saying no. I say it is what it is and it is time to move on.

25^th July 2011

Dear Cassi,

 The latest of my job search woes was a growing security guard company. I sent them my resume online and was called in for an interview. I met a man with my own first name. This fellow told me that the amount of time I had spent with my last company was an exceptional reason for them to hire me.

    

I was then called in the next week to become a “Flex Officer” in the Orange county area. As I sat filling out paperwork, I found a page about steeling within the company. It stated that the company had four accounts of theft by security guards in the past year. That would be four accounts they know of indicating that there were at least forty in reality.

    

They asked if I lived anywhere near the job site, and I informed them that I did not. It was when they glazed over that point that I knew something was wrong. I brought up the point for a second time and the operations manager said “You’ll never get a job right next to you.”

    

I was informed that if I wanted this job I had to be willing to drive fifty miles to work every day at a paycheck that would hardly cover keeping my car running.

    

I have always thought that this came from the idea that if a person needs the money they will come to work. It is an idea that fails to take into account what this will do to job performance. Financial problems place a worker under stress. Where as it is true that a worker under stress is less likely to be able to get another job they are more motivated to do so. The stressed worker can put less into their work and is less productive.

People work these jobs because they have little alternative. The need for work holds them like the manacles of a dungeon. So many companies right now are held together by the bad economy that if it ever got better these companies might just disappear.

In the end they referred me to another office but I have not heard back,

Richard Leland Neal

Return to Sender

When I put this letter together Cassi had a few issues with her P.O. box. I received three of my letters back marked return to sender. It was a minor pain in a world of it, but it was there.

11^th July 2011

Dear Cassi,

Our late issues with the mail hit a note with me when I opened the last of the three returned envelopes. It was clear at some point in its two week amblings that the paper was exposed to heat. I could see the ghost image of many of the lines made so by the reactivation of the toner from its printing.

The tortured paper was a clear image of the events surrounding it. That simple piece of paper took a long march to return only to who sent it to have been replaced. It came to life to die as we all do.

The day is a circle of light to dark, but in most parts of the world the day starts in darkness as it ends in darkness. As the earth turns so do lives, and we all return to the darkness from which we came.

That’s what life has felt like for me for these past few years, just an endless circle, a repetition. Hope is the coming of the dawn and the promise of a new day, but is there any worth in that day?

Everywhere I turn in the modern day I find people looking to waste my time. I sent out three job applications to get three new emails about jobs that aren’t real.

The bad economy has given rise to a new breed of scavenger. The internet worms scuttle about leaving a trail of email slime and feeding of the dead flesh that is the job seeker.

I wonder if we can ever wash away the refuse that is making our world sick. Never entirely, but things will improve some day.

Stay safe,

Richard Leland Neal

Dysfunctional System

I can remember this letter and some of the events around it. It’s plain that it was never meant for anyone but sender and recipient. To be honest it’s nothing other than the events of my life strewn out on paper for the benefit of someone who was feeling down.

Cassi had asked me to send her a hard copy of something I said in an email and I obliged. She said she had laughed about it for days. I guess you had to be there.

Monday, 27^th  September of 2010

Dear Cassi,

I do think I found the Email you were talking about.

‘The sad working of the dynamic of those people is more complex than is easy to understand.  A dysfunctional system established a monarch and a scapegoat and the other slugs in the pack pound on the scapegoat in order to gain clout with the monarch. Much like you will see with the comics in all truth.

People talk about dysfunctional families, but I prefer to say “dysfunctional systems" because the work place or social group may have the same dynamic.

In other words: "If you’re the scapegoat home you may become on at work or with your friends" which is what happened to me.

Anyway,

Swift is a good cat most of the time, but she can be a handful when she wants to be.  From what we understand she was left behind by a family that lost their home and couldn't take care of her anymore.

The world is sad and ugly sometimes.’

I guess it was funny, but you have to understand that it was the early cusp of the theory. The thing about dysfunction is that the only people who complain are the scapegoats. Everyone else has someone to put their problems on even though the system is hurting everyone.

Most folks are to much the fool to understand that putting a chain to the wrist of another is nothing more than to manacle them self. That's why I call it a dysfunctional system. If all of the elements, people and what not, could be properly employed then the system would be better for everyone. Let me use myself as an example, my family's activity caused my problems in life. This led to a significant loss of household income that could be placed as the major factor for many of the issues my relatives presently face.

They all convinced themselves that I had no value as a person and so downgraded who I was. Then we have the situation with (a mutual ex-friend) where he gave up thousands of dollars because he wanted to keep the producer as a backup plan rather than fulfilling his promise to me. He stood to be no worse off then he already was and could have gained as much as seventy thousand dollars to put into his next movie. If he ever makes a movie I will be surprised. I suppose your ex didn't lose all that much when he harassed me into leaving his company, but he had nothing to gain by my exodus.

Anyway Cassi, I think it's funny to send letters when I have a telephone, but it can't hurt. Um, and I need to reprint the other two letters I sent because I think the address was wrong. It turns out I forgot the black and left the diamond and knowing the post office you’ll never get them.

Stay safe,

Richard Leland Neal

Image of a Man

This not being a letter I was hesitant to place it on this blog, and this is one occasion where I’ve left the name of the subject in the letter. The truth is that going over my old letters has become something of a trial for me, and I’m not making much progress because of that.

I have a backlog of more than a hundred letters that haven’t been placed on this blog and for every one letter I write I intend to place at least three on the net. There are some letters I reject and will not post for one reason or another, but those are in the minority.

This was an assignment for a writing class, a class where the psychotic teacher wouldn’t stop hounding me after it was over. It’s a funny thing about people they will all too often say “My way or the highway,” then come running after you when you hit the street.

Well, the class told me they liked this, but you tell me what you think.

3^rd December 2007

Baby fat

I could tell the unmistakable form of Frank from a good distance. He is a big man, bigger then me by a good eighty pounds. I could tell something was wrong with him from his step. It was the unmistakable glide of small steps with its slow movement. As he came closer I could tell that his eyes were barely open. Just black slits on his baby fat face.

“You look like hell, Frank.”

“I’ve got a fever of a hundred and two,” he said without stopping. He just glided past as if it took almost all his energy to walk and it probably did. I’ve said many a time that a man as big as Frank is going to have health problems, and he calls off more often than most, and that says something out here.

I’ve often thought that Frank’s fight with obesity was a result of his rearing. He once told me a story about a time he got hit in the head with the back of an ax. He touched a spot over his eye on his shaved head. “I can still feel it,” he told me as I looked at the place were the ax had struck. He pull back his pinkish brown skin to reveal a cleave in the bone.

“I wasn’t supposed to be up that late so my sister snuck me back in the house. When my mom found out she started beating me. She hit it and broke it open again.” I figure that Frank seeks comfort in food. His mother obviously had to be a violent woman to hit her son as he was bleeding. 

“All right Rich, I’m going home.” I looked up from my thought to see Frank holding his fist out to me. I met it with my own, his hands were ice cold. I was relieved to know that they would not make him work in this condition. “I’m sorry for letting you guys down,” he told me.

“Shit happens, Frank, you get some rest.”

Letters to a Soldier: Writing About Stuff to Write

Yeah, this is one of those letters I wrote for no other reason than I thought that a friend of mine wanted to read them.

18^th June 2007

Dear (Soldier),

Well, another week has past and I almost got a day off from work. Not really, we are now short three people. We had it down to two, but then one of the new guards quit because she was told that she had to come to work on time and would have to cut and apply seals like every one else. Not that I’m complaining, more over time is more money in my pocket and that’s a good thing.

As of the time I’m writing this I have about sixty-three days until school starts and around fifteen days to apply for the financial aid I’m not going to get. May as well apply anyway it doesn’t cost me anything, and I might need a student lone.

Your father is bothered by the fact that you called me and not him. I responded with the simple statement that (your wife) reminds you. Let’s face it, it’s normally the truth. Not that I’m complaining. (your wife) needs you more then I do, and it’s important for you two to be there for one another. Then when you think about it it’s always important to be there for the people you care about.

I’m working on a new play right now. I call it “A Mind Bending” about a man in an insane asylum who is on trial for murder. It doesn’t help his case any when he knocks out an orderly who had been beating him.

DAVID: The last time he hit me we were in a crowded hallway. I called out and fell to my knees. With six of your staff watching. He grabbed me by the collar to hall me to my feet, and I caught him off guard. It takes about thirty pounds of pressure to knock a man cold. When the other orderlies came for me I put my hands up, but one of them tackled me, and I hit my head against the wall. Not hard enough to worry me but loud enough to make the staff worry. It opened this (touches bandage on his face) and left a bloodstain. They took me into the infirmary to get me checked out, and I asked the doctor to look at my back. They took off my shirt and found my evidence compelling.

The statement is about human nature and how we learn to live with things, but I’m also trying to talk about the fact that you can’t get something for nothing.

In terms of novels I’m still working on the thing with the Deam. I don’t have a really definitive story line yet. More like a group of related short stories. Nothing developed at this point. I’m working on the other story, but I’m not getting far with the plot. Right now I have begun the story on the bridge of the “Star Seeker” as the ship has used its FTL drives and is lost.

I’ve changed the designed of the ship so that it was originally designed by Clordoenions and they sent an AI to build it for earth. The FTL drive that the Clordoenion ships use creates a universe that moves in relation to the existing universe. I don’t know if I’m going to keep the existing transformation ideas from the story. There are two reasons for his: number one is "how", and number two is "why".

I can see ships with limited flight capabilities that transform into robots, but they would function more as tanks then fighter jets. Jet stream or thruster assistance is a concept that makes cents to me, and having one form for speed and another for maneuverability is in current development.

I intend to read the Robotech books again for research purposes and the rest of the Herbert books once I’m done with Nylund. I still try to read one play every week because of my professional interest, but plays are harder to follow because they don’t have the detail and most of the Characters are less distinguishable.  

Anyway, man, I have to get back to work now and I suppose you do too, so have a good day and stay safe. 

Peace and long life,

Richard Leland Neal