Disclaimer: Long Post
Wow. Okay so my brain is in full blow overdrive. This is going to be a brain dump post. So it's going to be long, marginally incoherent and not entirely rational. Consider this the warning. Run now while you still can.
ETA: Sections will be added as I finish them.
Extended Family:
Stop fucking allowing her to live like this. If she wants to self-destruct and refuses help, that is fine. However, as a blood relative you are obligated, not only by blood, but by the fact that she and her daughter are fellow human beings, to help the child. If she refuses your help you continue to offer it, in increasingly forceful ways. If you have to call the police and report her, in order to keep her from harming her child, you *DO IT*. You don't worry about what will happen to her, you don't worry about if she will love you or not later. You just do it. No mother who is working with all her faculties puts her child into that kind of danger. None. She has reached a point where your love for her is not enough to keep that child safe. It's hard, but you have to be an adult and stop her. For the sake of the child involved.
Andrew
Every time you tell me how happy you are, you rip me open all over again. How are you so happy without me when you claimed I was everything? I will always be there for you. You know that. Despite the things you say, the actions you take, when the chips are down, and you've ostracized all your other friends, you know that you can come crawling, a mess of tears and anger, to me and I will be there to help you. I will be there to pick you up and set you right again. No matter how much of me it kills in the process. I loved love you. I spent 7 years of my life with you. I devoted my time and energy to supporting you and making you happy. I wasn't always the best girlfriend. I wasn't always the nicest person in your world. But when you needed me, I took care of you. You used to do the same for me. I always figured we would end up married, or at the very least living with one and other. You know everything nearly everything there is to know about me. And in the end it isn't the insults or the cheating that hurts. I can chalk those up to you being a guy. It's the fact that I let you in, you knew these things, you knew how hard it was for me to share them, and just when I'd opened up, given in, let go.... you let me fall. I trusted you. Even after the infidelity, even after all the lies. I trusted you, as a friend and as my lover. And you lied to me. With omission. With silence. And you let me believe in you. You made me believe, despite my protests that you loved me. You did something more horrible than any infidelity you could have committed. You gave me the false hope that someone could ever love me as completely as you claimed to.
Church
I am so utterly disappointed in and disillusioned with you there aren't words. I am aware that the institution of the church is made of fallible human beings. I know it is susceptible to mistakes, errors, weakness. I know all of this and I still can't strike a balance between my hope for something better from you and the reality of what you are. I've lost friends because of you. I've lost family. And now I am losing something that much worse. I am losing my faith. I come to you, every week, without fail, with the hope that there will be something more. Something better. I am met with hypocrisy, gossip and fear. There are things I over look, for the sake of peace within the ranks. There are things I let slide out of the knowledge that you are a conservative institution. When you disciplined John, I let it go, I talked to him on my own, and all was okay. When you refused to acknowledge your responsibility to the community as a whole and teach sex education to the teens, I became upset, but I let it slide. When you took a "special interest" in Ben, and destroyed any free will that the boy might have had, any love for art he might have shared with the world, I was angry, but let it go because he is not my child. Now? Now I have gone beyond disturbed, beyond angry. I'm....broken. You are destroying my father. You are taking a good man, a godly man, and you are preying on his long standing feelings of inadequacy. You are making him unable to act on his compassion for people without fear of repercussion. You are using things from his childhood, and his past mistakes to make him feel less of a man. He is a *GOOD* father, and an even better husband, who does nothing but try and give the best he can for his family in the best way he knows how. You have no right to make him feel like a failure. None. Your actions, especially those of his fellow deacons make me angry beyond words. You make him feel inferior in every way you can. For having an illness, for having a heart condition, for not being rich, or 8 years ivy league educated. For wanting to help people who you may not approve of. My faith is dying, with every bit of compassion you take from my father. I am watching him bleed the happiness from his life in the hopes that you people will accept him, tell him he has done something good, tell him that he has succeeded at being a good person. You make him feel like less of a man for having been married for 30+ years to a strong, devoted wife and for raising a self-sufficient independent child. You have no right to question him. My father is a good father, and a better man than any of you ever have a hope of being.
Boy: Pt One
What am I going to do with you? When you are here with me, things are beautiful, brilliant, lots of love. And then, you are home, and you are cold, and distant. There is so much I just don't know about you. Things that I'm sure in time you will tell me but that are things I should know, before I get so attached that you break my heart (hint; too late). There are things I wish I could tell you. But talking about you isn't exactly your favourite activities.
Of course that brings us to the first problem: the problem of my fidelity and your desire for a monogamous relationship. I haven't done one of those in ten years. I firmly hold the belief that people will always lie, people will always cheat, and most of all, people will always hurt you. It is what they do. Open relationships save the problem of attachment, and grief when the inevitable happens. Then you come along. And tell me all is fine, that you understand that is part of what makes me who I am, and are fine with it, you can deal. I don't believe you of course. I even posted here that I didn't. And yet somehow you make it sound like all is all right. That you care about me anyway. Despite my misgivings, and the past experiences with boys who claim they are okay when I know they aren't, I give in, and believe you. Now you want me all to yourself. Faithful, monogamous, something that you and only you possess.
This poses some questions. Do you love me? Or do you love parts of me, that not being one of them? Are there other things that bother you that you are going to want me to change? What about *your* behaviour, and your complete inability to say no to people when they are groping you? How can you expect me to live up to a standard you don't hold yourself to?
Despite these questions, I thought it through and decided I care about you enough to try, to make an effort at being monogamous. Yet when I present you with that, which is a **huge** decision for me, you are less than enthusiastic. You don't even act as if you care one way or the other. All I get is a "We'll talk about it later". What the hell is that? You made a *huge* deal out of this, I make a major decision regarding us and that is what I get? I'm so very confused right now. There aren't words.
So, being slightly optimistic (which never gets you anywhere...) I wait for you to come back and talk to me about it. Which, in all honesty was my fault. Because you were with Molly and I do know better than to ever expect to see you until she is done with you. Either way, you don't bring it up again. Which leaves me to wonder what the hell is going on. I'm sure you see where that confusion is. I don't know how I am supposed to behave in relationship to others if you don't fucking talk to me.
Boy: Pt Two
I haven't fallen for someone this hard in a very long time and I am scared. Terrified to be precise. I miss you when you aren't around, I wonder what you are doing when you are gone. I'm scared because I know I'm going to get hurt a lot when you realize what a spaz I am. You say it won't happen. You say you won't, but you will. I know it. I'm sure of it. And I'm scared because I can't stop liking you. You have a great deal of power in that. And when you realize it I'm afraid you will use it. Badly. I'm scared because I trust you. I'm afraid, because I want nothing more than to believe you, when you tell me you love me. Don't tell me you love me unless you mean it. Because I am just dumb enough that I will go and do something stupid, like believe you. And then when you leave, or cheat, or go back with an ex, or whatever, (cos everyone is different) it will hurt that much more. Please. Please don't hurt me.
Illness
Dear Depression,
Go the fuck away. No one likes you.
In hatred,
Jessi
Dear Body,
Stop. For the love of all that is good and holy in this world. Just. Fucking. Stop. I am aware you are displeased with my recent activities. I am aware that you are angry about my unwillingness to stop when you indicate it is time. But you are really starting to aggravate me with this interference into my life. What would you have me do? Stay home? Not interact? I do that and Mr. Brain decides to go all emo on us and then I'll have to put you back on the anti-depressants. Or start slicing you up again. I know you don't want that. I know that the last thing you want is the be chemically altered. I know I am paying for Friday night's smoking. I was aware at the time, and I understand now. But must react so violently? Please, try to understand that I am a red-blooded 22 year old female. I want to party, and drink and spend all hours of the night doing my boyfriend. And I would appreciate it if you could let me do it minus the dizzy spells, sharp stabbing pain, or other related intrusions. Make a note. I'm about done with you and your attitude. I'm tired of being scared that people will find out about your dysfunctions. I'm tired of being afraid you are going to kill me. Get over it. And soon.
No Love,
Jessi
Friends
Try to understand I am in a funk. Not a full blown depression, but just a funk. I don't always want to go out. I don't always feel a burning desire to answer my phone. Sometimes, I just want to curl up in a ball and be left the hell alone. Sometimes I need to be away from people. Calling the phone and yelling at me isn't going to make me want to come hang out with you. If there is an emergency I will pull myself together long enough to help. Long enough to make you smile, or laugh, or vent. I will be there, if you need a shoulder to cry on, but understand that it is not easy for me when I am on the brink of collapse. So don't tell me you are having a crisis, just to get me on the phone with you. Don't *tell* me it is dire just so you can invite me to go out. That will serve to do nothing but make me answer my phone less. I know you don't understand why I'm not my bubbly cheerful self. I know you can't cope with me when I'm not. I get that. So do us both a favor and stop trying to get me to be that girl when I don't have the energy to. I will find a way, if you need me, in a 911 kind of way. Otherwise, please, just let me get out of this on my own. It may not be as fast you want it to be but going out with you and faking a smile isn't making it go away, it's just making it harder to hold in. Please try to understand that.
Bren
Stop acting like you are 6. I didn't do anything to you. Whatever offenses have caused you to block all my screen names and stop taking my calls are entirely the product of your imagination. Grow the hell up. I'm tired of babysitting you.
ETA: Sections will be added as I finish them.
Extended Family:
Stop fucking allowing her to live like this. If she wants to self-destruct and refuses help, that is fine. However, as a blood relative you are obligated, not only by blood, but by the fact that she and her daughter are fellow human beings, to help the child. If she refuses your help you continue to offer it, in increasingly forceful ways. If you have to call the police and report her, in order to keep her from harming her child, you *DO IT*. You don't worry about what will happen to her, you don't worry about if she will love you or not later. You just do it. No mother who is working with all her faculties puts her child into that kind of danger. None. She has reached a point where your love for her is not enough to keep that child safe. It's hard, but you have to be an adult and stop her. For the sake of the child involved.
Andrew
Every time you tell me how happy you are, you rip me open all over again. How are you so happy without me when you claimed I was everything? I will always be there for you. You know that. Despite the things you say, the actions you take, when the chips are down, and you've ostracized all your other friends, you know that you can come crawling, a mess of tears and anger, to me and I will be there to help you. I will be there to pick you up and set you right again. No matter how much of me it kills in the process. I loved love you. I spent 7 years of my life with you. I devoted my time and energy to supporting you and making you happy. I wasn't always the best girlfriend. I wasn't always the nicest person in your world. But when you needed me, I took care of you. You used to do the same for me. I always figured we would end up married, or at the very least living with one and other. You know everything nearly everything there is to know about me. And in the end it isn't the insults or the cheating that hurts. I can chalk those up to you being a guy. It's the fact that I let you in, you knew these things, you knew how hard it was for me to share them, and just when I'd opened up, given in, let go.... you let me fall. I trusted you. Even after the infidelity, even after all the lies. I trusted you, as a friend and as my lover. And you lied to me. With omission. With silence. And you let me believe in you. You made me believe, despite my protests that you loved me. You did something more horrible than any infidelity you could have committed. You gave me the false hope that someone could ever love me as completely as you claimed to.
Church
I am so utterly disappointed in and disillusioned with you there aren't words. I am aware that the institution of the church is made of fallible human beings. I know it is susceptible to mistakes, errors, weakness. I know all of this and I still can't strike a balance between my hope for something better from you and the reality of what you are. I've lost friends because of you. I've lost family. And now I am losing something that much worse. I am losing my faith. I come to you, every week, without fail, with the hope that there will be something more. Something better. I am met with hypocrisy, gossip and fear. There are things I over look, for the sake of peace within the ranks. There are things I let slide out of the knowledge that you are a conservative institution. When you disciplined John, I let it go, I talked to him on my own, and all was okay. When you refused to acknowledge your responsibility to the community as a whole and teach sex education to the teens, I became upset, but I let it slide. When you took a "special interest" in Ben, and destroyed any free will that the boy might have had, any love for art he might have shared with the world, I was angry, but let it go because he is not my child. Now? Now I have gone beyond disturbed, beyond angry. I'm....broken. You are destroying my father. You are taking a good man, a godly man, and you are preying on his long standing feelings of inadequacy. You are making him unable to act on his compassion for people without fear of repercussion. You are using things from his childhood, and his past mistakes to make him feel less of a man. He is a *GOOD* father, and an even better husband, who does nothing but try and give the best he can for his family in the best way he knows how. You have no right to make him feel like a failure. None. Your actions, especially those of his fellow deacons make me angry beyond words. You make him feel inferior in every way you can. For having an illness, for having a heart condition, for not being rich, or 8 years ivy league educated. For wanting to help people who you may not approve of. My faith is dying, with every bit of compassion you take from my father. I am watching him bleed the happiness from his life in the hopes that you people will accept him, tell him he has done something good, tell him that he has succeeded at being a good person. You make him feel like less of a man for having been married for 30+ years to a strong, devoted wife and for raising a self-sufficient independent child. You have no right to question him. My father is a good father, and a better man than any of you ever have a hope of being.
Boy: Pt One
What am I going to do with you? When you are here with me, things are beautiful, brilliant, lots of love. And then, you are home, and you are cold, and distant. There is so much I just don't know about you. Things that I'm sure in time you will tell me but that are things I should know, before I get so attached that you break my heart (hint; too late). There are things I wish I could tell you. But talking about you isn't exactly your favourite activities.
Of course that brings us to the first problem: the problem of my fidelity and your desire for a monogamous relationship. I haven't done one of those in ten years. I firmly hold the belief that people will always lie, people will always cheat, and most of all, people will always hurt you. It is what they do. Open relationships save the problem of attachment, and grief when the inevitable happens. Then you come along. And tell me all is fine, that you understand that is part of what makes me who I am, and are fine with it, you can deal. I don't believe you of course. I even posted here that I didn't. And yet somehow you make it sound like all is all right. That you care about me anyway. Despite my misgivings, and the past experiences with boys who claim they are okay when I know they aren't, I give in, and believe you. Now you want me all to yourself. Faithful, monogamous, something that you and only you possess.
This poses some questions. Do you love me? Or do you love parts of me, that not being one of them? Are there other things that bother you that you are going to want me to change? What about *your* behaviour, and your complete inability to say no to people when they are groping you? How can you expect me to live up to a standard you don't hold yourself to?
Despite these questions, I thought it through and decided I care about you enough to try, to make an effort at being monogamous. Yet when I present you with that, which is a **huge** decision for me, you are less than enthusiastic. You don't even act as if you care one way or the other. All I get is a "We'll talk about it later". What the hell is that? You made a *huge* deal out of this, I make a major decision regarding us and that is what I get? I'm so very confused right now. There aren't words.
So, being slightly optimistic (which never gets you anywhere...) I wait for you to come back and talk to me about it. Which, in all honesty was my fault. Because you were with Molly and I do know better than to ever expect to see you until she is done with you. Either way, you don't bring it up again. Which leaves me to wonder what the hell is going on. I'm sure you see where that confusion is. I don't know how I am supposed to behave in relationship to others if you don't fucking talk to me.
Boy: Pt Two
I haven't fallen for someone this hard in a very long time and I am scared. Terrified to be precise. I miss you when you aren't around, I wonder what you are doing when you are gone. I'm scared because I know I'm going to get hurt a lot when you realize what a spaz I am. You say it won't happen. You say you won't, but you will. I know it. I'm sure of it. And I'm scared because I can't stop liking you. You have a great deal of power in that. And when you realize it I'm afraid you will use it. Badly. I'm scared because I trust you. I'm afraid, because I want nothing more than to believe you, when you tell me you love me. Don't tell me you love me unless you mean it. Because I am just dumb enough that I will go and do something stupid, like believe you. And then when you leave, or cheat, or go back with an ex, or whatever, (cos everyone is different) it will hurt that much more. Please. Please don't hurt me.
Illness
Dear Depression,
Go the fuck away. No one likes you.
In hatred,
Jessi
Dear Body,
Stop. For the love of all that is good and holy in this world. Just. Fucking. Stop. I am aware you are displeased with my recent activities. I am aware that you are angry about my unwillingness to stop when you indicate it is time. But you are really starting to aggravate me with this interference into my life. What would you have me do? Stay home? Not interact? I do that and Mr. Brain decides to go all emo on us and then I'll have to put you back on the anti-depressants. Or start slicing you up again. I know you don't want that. I know that the last thing you want is the be chemically altered. I know I am paying for Friday night's smoking. I was aware at the time, and I understand now. But must react so violently? Please, try to understand that I am a red-blooded 22 year old female. I want to party, and drink and spend all hours of the night doing my boyfriend. And I would appreciate it if you could let me do it minus the dizzy spells, sharp stabbing pain, or other related intrusions. Make a note. I'm about done with you and your attitude. I'm tired of being scared that people will find out about your dysfunctions. I'm tired of being afraid you are going to kill me. Get over it. And soon.
No Love,
Jessi
Friends
Try to understand I am in a funk. Not a full blown depression, but just a funk. I don't always want to go out. I don't always feel a burning desire to answer my phone. Sometimes, I just want to curl up in a ball and be left the hell alone. Sometimes I need to be away from people. Calling the phone and yelling at me isn't going to make me want to come hang out with you. If there is an emergency I will pull myself together long enough to help. Long enough to make you smile, or laugh, or vent. I will be there, if you need a shoulder to cry on, but understand that it is not easy for me when I am on the brink of collapse. So don't tell me you are having a crisis, just to get me on the phone with you. Don't *tell* me it is dire just so you can invite me to go out. That will serve to do nothing but make me answer my phone less. I know you don't understand why I'm not my bubbly cheerful self. I know you can't cope with me when I'm not. I get that. So do us both a favor and stop trying to get me to be that girl when I don't have the energy to. I will find a way, if you need me, in a 911 kind of way. Otherwise, please, just let me get out of this on my own. It may not be as fast you want it to be but going out with you and faking a smile isn't making it go away, it's just making it harder to hold in. Please try to understand that.
Bren
Stop acting like you are 6. I didn't do anything to you. Whatever offenses have caused you to block all my screen names and stop taking my calls are entirely the product of your imagination. Grow the hell up. I'm tired of babysitting you.