The following was written October 19th, 2020.
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There’s an infinite number of ways to look at it. Infinite perspective. But since my Grandma died, my aunt has turned into a weird nightmare for me. I kinda saw it coming too.
My aunt had been detached for I don’t know how long. I can tell this from realizing and recognizing my own detachment that I had for a good number of years. Maybe since I was 18. And until after I moved back, so let’s say until I was 34. That’s how old I was when I had the first brain change and wrote a book that was passing on the family story I was told. That seemed like such an important thing to do after the brain change. But I had to fill it with other stuff too. I couldn’t just get the truth by asking my family about it, I had to use what I was presented with and then formulate my own personal truth around that. Which I did. And then that all started to change also the moment it happened.
I learned about a woman named Bea. Actually, I had already learned about her. There was a father’s day card that had been saved from the late 70s or early 80s. It was from my mother to my grandpa. It said something like “I can’t believe what you are doing to this family with Bea. But here’s a father’s day card because I’m supposed to.” And then there was some discolored blotches on the card with circles drawn around them with a line connecting to “These are from tears.” Daaaaamn. That’s pretty harsh. A knife in the ol’ guts or heart. Okay, but seriously, that is very emotional. His youngest child guilt trips him for father’s day. Okay, so what is he doing and who is Bea?
I don’t remember how exactly it came up, but I was in a relationship at the time, and I had the courage to directly ask Grandma “Do you remember a woman named Bea?” And Grandma sure did. She kind of scoffed and laughed and was upset, “Oh yeah, I remember Bea.” I was pretty surprised and asked “Who was she?” Grandma told me something like she was the person that Grandpa would spend all his time with after their son Johnny died. And I learned, either then or later, that the only thing that mattered to Grandma was Grandpa coming home at night. Which it kind of sounded like he did.
This was brain frying news to me. This was something I had always suspected and thought but something that I never had confirmed for myself. Grandpa would cheat on Grandma. He wanted to, it was obvious. It seemed like he would too. Finally, I learned he had. Maybe for 5 years. The time between his son dying and his grandson being born. Driven mad by grief maybe.
I asked my Aunt about this, now that Grandma had told me something. I asked C “Do you remember a woman named Bea? This would have been from years ago.” And I remember her taking a breath and going “Bea, yeah. I hadn’t heard that name in years.” But she knew exactly who I was talking about too. This woman or something about this woman left quite the impression on my family. She told me that she had a memory of her, her sister/my mom, and her mom/my Grandma all in a car together and they had driven to Bea’s house and her dad/my Grandpa comes outside waving a gun and basically starts chastising them and telling them to stay out of his business. Which is kinda weird when you’re like the patriarch of the family and you’re like “Stay out of my business!” That sounds like you’ve given up your role and just want to be some dude.
So, almost immediately after I begin to pass on the family story I was told, it begins to change when I dared ask a question. Now, maybe the timing was right or it was a good question, but, I don’t know. It changed how things were. It didn’t change what happened, but it changed the idea of what happened. It proved the feelings I got from what I had seen and what I had heard to be justified, I was correct feeling how I felt and it had always been that way. I mean, your feelings are always okay to have, it just made those ones that much more right, if that makes sense. Not good, but correct to feel.
That was almost four years ago and talking about things that go back further than that. Hey, that is the best kind of work, when you get to some kinda grounding point of “A-ha!” and realize that there was a thing that happened and that’s where this X Y or Z thing comes from. Very neat.
Grandma passed away and we had a memorial and then we threw away all of her’s and pappy’s(her husband) things and all of the old saved family stuff. C, my aunt, really wanted nothing to do with it. That’s okay. Stuff is just stuff. But people are people and infinitely more valuable than stuff. You could say people are priceless. And people say the same about stuff, to be fair. Sentimentality? Yes. A PERSONal kinda thing? Yes. Anyway, 90% of the stuff was thrown away. Which was fine-or should have been fine, but it was not.
Leading up to this I expressed how we don’t need to rush anything and my Uncle agreed. There was no rush. We were not in a rush. And I said I would like things to be done as painless as possible. And my aunt asked “What is going to cause you pain about this?” And I said “I don’t know, we’re going to have to see how I feel when we get there and things start happening.” And she said “When my parents sold my family home did anyone care how I felt?” And I said to her “I don’t know. Did you tell them and talk to them about how you felt?” And she said to me “No, they were impossible to talk to.”
Now, the terrible irony here is that this is what my aunt has done with herself now. She can’t admit that this conversation happened. Or if she can, then it didn’t happen like that. Okay, well, how did it happen? Well, she can’t or wont remember, but it sure didn’t happen like that. But it did. It very much happened like that. Maybe not exactly verbatim. But this is Godblessed close enough. And that was just shortly after Grandma passed away. This would have been in December 2019 or January 2020, I guess. So about two months later 90% of everything is thrown away.
That’s pretty fast and there are other people than myself who live at the house and anyway, my aunt evicts everyone except for me. But we’re not in a rush. No no. There is no rush. Well, this weirdass double think or whatever it is does me no good. Also, this friggin coronavirus thing started up. Everyone moves out and not because of evictions, but because they are good people. Even this super sad and fucked up 27 year old girl who relapsed on meth for like the 3rd time. Yeah, that’s another thing that happened that was totally sucky. Well, coronavirus started up and all of everything gets really funky. Everyone has moved out. Then lockdowns and quarantines are issued. Evictions are halted. Mask mandates are ordered. Whoa. Super weird stuff going on.
But we are not in a hurry so C has her attorney’s send me a legal letter and start an eviction on me. This is on June 1st, 2020. Her parents/my Grandparents 72st anniversary. In a time of halting evictions. While we are in a pandemic. And we are in no rush. Honestly, this makes no sense. I’m sorry, but selling the family home is far too important to her when compared to everything I have tried to share with her over the last 18 months. The old family home will get sold. We already agreed on that in 2012. Which is another conversation that she doesn’t wish to remember and will maybe pretend she does not recall.
Back in 2012 when my Grandpa passed away, there was a time that Grandma, C and myself were sitting at the kitchen table. And this was shortly after he passed away. In fact, I think that C and N, her husband/my Uncle, were up here to add N’s name on the trust as something. It’s so funny how little I cared about what was going on. But I think honestly everyone around me cared a heck of a lot more. C, for one, getting her husband’s name put on to something. And Grandma, for one. Because she didn’t ask any questions about the trust, she just did and signed whatever the family asked of her. She straight out asked what we were going to do with the house after she died. Daaaamn. This was more shit I didn’t want to think about or care about. Having Grandpa die about 26 years before he thought he would was crazy enough. Now I have to imagine Grandma dead and me in this big old house?
“This house is too much for me,” I remember saying. And C said “We would probably sell it,” and looked at me as if my say or decision or input meant a good Godbless to her(it didn’t). And Godblessed Grandma in her infinite wisdom and her limitless unconditional love said “You can sell it and then he can get a condo,” and she referred to me when mentioning he. And I was blow away by this. Living in a condo? I could imagine myself doing that. But I still didn’t care. I didn’t want any part of it still and didn’t want to think that way about the future. So, I don’t even remember what more was said after that except maybe a “We’ll talk about it later,” which 8 years later I can easily imagine my aunt saying. By the way, later never comes.
We never talked. Not in person. Not face to face. But we did have a couple phone conversations. She made sure her husband was with her. The first one happened back in April 2020. But also, there’s this other bullshit that she claims where she tries to say that I agreed to move out in April. I never did, said or agreed to that. And I even expressed to her in August that if she would have evicted me then, then all of this would have been handled sooner, because then she would have been being honest. But, okay. So, we talk on the phone in April. The poor meth girl is moved out and so is this other renter. And the other renter who lived here for over 15 years was still here, but he was on his way out as well. So two out. One on the way. But one family member remembered. Poor old me. From what I remember of our conversation, I was trying to get her to open up her eyes basically. She seemed pretty in denial that coronavirus was even a thing that was going on. And I needed to talk with her about her “kindness.” Her “kindness” was giving me $100,000 from the sale of my childhood home, what I have come to know and call as the family home. Well, $100,000 certainly is a lot of money. But it’s not what her mother/my Grandma wanted. She wanted me to have a condo. But she never made any alteration to the trust. So it turned into word against word. Which is also fine, and very strange. But it’s one of those things that does cause disease and can kill a person. When all they do is lie to theirself. It’s a strange kind of death. But anyway, I needed to talk to C about her kindness being different from her mother’s wishes. But that is a conversation that apparently my aunt will kill to avoid having. Oh yeah. This shit gets way worse. But back to the phone conversation.
We talked for about half an hour. Which is a pretty good length. Something she asked me was “Where do you see yourself in 6 months?” And I said “I don’t know, maybe right here.” That was a very funny answer for a few reasons. It was about the last thing on Earth she thinks she wants to hear. And I had been talking about moving out of state with my cousin and starting a commune. No joke! Somewhere up in Oregon seemed like the right place. And holy cow, just think of all the change that has been going on since then. Wow wow. So basically in my view of a perfect world back then, 6 months from then I saw myself living in Oregon and being a homeowner. And that is the disconnect that C has there. She does not understand the importance of myself having a permanent “forever” home. As odd as it sounds, Grandma could see me for the lost or abandoned puppy that a part of me is. And she wanted to make sure that that puppy had a home. My aunt, not so much.
One of the new things she likes to bring up is that her parents gave her $3,000 and then...sent her on her way, I guess. Because it’s an example of her different $100,000 kindness, maybe. And in comparison, who can argue against that! That’s like 33x the amount of kindness! Or 6x, adjusting for inflation. But still, 6x the amount of kindness! That is pretty dang great. But then, like, you know, look at the other end. And how kind you are to you. We’re back up to about 33x kind. And that is adjusted for inflation. And an exaggeration.
You know how much it sucks to go down this money way of thinking? It totally sucks.
So anyway, treat yourself good. Treat yourself great. Treat yourself like a god, a goddess. But treating yourself 33x is going to be a few too many. We all know what excess does and all that fun and not so fun stuff. 33x is definitely going down a path of excess.
Here’s something else with all this: no one has to be wrong. Like, there doesn’t have to be blame for stuff. Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t reasons and lessons, just that there doesn’t have to be blame. There doesn’t have to be a wrong person. Just a bunch of stuff that needs figuring out.
When we talked the reason she called was by me having a fit about her confusing me about money. Which was putting it nicely or mildly, because the truth is she was confusing me about everything. But I understand why now, unresolved trauma that has led to undiagnosed mental conditions, keeping all the spiritual and love stuff out of it.
I asked her the same question “Where are you going to be in 6 months?” And she responded “Right here.” And so I asked “And has anything changed?” And she said “No.” And I’m like pretty darn upset right then. We are just starting coronavirus. Shit is changing all over the place. I’m a little shocked, a little exacerbated, a little blown away and I say “Well okay. So I guess this is good for now and we’ll talk later.” And we most likely exchanged I love yous and that was that.
What is really sucky for me about this was not getting across what I needed to or getting the thing out of her that needs to come out. And it’s the decades of bad famiel feelings. I get that man. I started feeling that before I was 10 years old. I had four years with my mom, then a couple years of adjusting to life with Grandparents and then I started noticing there’s some bullshit stuff going on that is seemingly impossible to talk about for no good and unspeakable reasons.
See how I did that? Impossible to talk about for no good unspeakable reasons. That’s important because that’s totally bullshit. TALK. EVERYTHING. OUT. SPEAK. LET IT OUT. Inside it festers against you and so much of what you do in your life. It’s a rot that starts inside and spreads to the insides of so much the spreader comes in contact with.