FOO letters - not to send

[Hope67]

Hi Blueberry,
That is a really well put together letter - just wanted to say that.  Really expresses things, and  to you.
Hope 

[Blueberry]

Thank you Hope 

______________________________________

And another one:

B1,

Idk if this should be more a letter to you or to me or to both.

I treated you with gratitude because you were the only one in FOO to apologise to me a) for what you did and b) on behalf of the family as a whole for what it did as a unit. Because M and F never apologised for anything, this seemed huge. And so I was grateful.

I now realise that gratitude was the wrong reaction. It left me vulnerable in a still-disordered family. It left me vulnerable to attack from our mutual SIL. It left me looking up to you still; still the little sister looking to her big brother for protection.

You did protect me when I was small, you protected me from much bigger children who would have beat me up. In that way, you made M's life easier. Without you, she would have needed to collect me from school every day the way another mother did her child in my class. But because you protected me outside the home, you were somehow then allowed to treat me as you wanted in the home. M said so. That was always her reason: "well he protects you at school".  Brilliant. So you got to decide how to treat me at home instead as compensation.

M was paying you off because you relieved her of arduous work (collecting a 6 year old from school). It wasn't just that year either. You continued to treat me as you wanted and M continued to trot out her excuse long after you ever needed to protect me, long after we were in different schools and lived in other parts of town.

You've helped me financially on and off since then. I thought it was because you'd changed. But I know now after Horrendous Event that nobody in FOO has really changed. So you were playing Generous Big Brother and I was grateful. But still not treated as a proper human being with own thoughts and emotions and just as much right to proper treatment in FOO as you. I'm done with gratitude now!

_______________________________________________

[Blueberry]

To SIL2,

I'm so angry at your treatment of me. I'm hurt too. I see your manipulation now. Your attempts to curry favour with me when I first got to know you.

I'm jealous of you too, I admit it. You're an alpha female in my FOO. What you think and do is oh so much more important and more believed than what I think and believe. You know that. You know you can treat me how you like and nobody will curb your behaviour or stand up for me.

You think you're so knowledgeable about human characteristics, human relations and about psychology because you did a course on it during college. Your branch of medicine has nothing whatsoever to do with psychology and psychiatry! But you think you know it all and unfortunately my Bs both believe you. I know far more about what I suffer and similar aspects of psychology than you do.

You're similar to M. You think you're a perfect person, you can't imagine how you could be like M, but you are. The scathing remarks, the put-downs, the inability to put yourself in another person's shoes, manipulation, gaslighting. You put words in my mouth. I think you're a BPD Queen/Witch combo. So much is about appearance for you. When I dropped something on the floor and made a little noise before a family event started, you shot me a look. If looks could kill.... During the event a non-related person dropped something and made a noise. You sniggered. Then I understood your reaction to me. You saw me as an embarrassment to you because I was in your 'party', an extension of you. Not that people round about would have known. And you snigger about somebody who's not in your party. You fit well with FOO, who divide the world up into us and them or winners and losers. If you don't divide people up like that, you can look at people and rejoice at the good things that happen to them instead of sniggering at their slip-ups.

No wonder I'm so triggered around you. For M, I'm part of her entourage too. She couldn't see me as a separate entity, I don't think she can now either. She felt embarrassed by me. But you're triggered by me too. Instead of accepting me the way I am, you push me around like M did and does, try and manipulate me, try and push me into things I don't want to do. 

I tried with you. I put up with all sorts of stuff from you for the sake of your H, my B, and so as not to create a fuss, the way we're not meant to in my FOO, or because I was a guest in your house.

__________________________________________________________________

But I'm back in my head, whereas my feelings are    and 

[Blueberry]

To F,

I've been thinking about you since yesterday, since I saw in the news that there was a bad road accident near you. Would I be ready for you just to die? No, I wouldn't actually. I'm not healed enough for that. Unfortunately, there isn't a way round this. I wish I could talk to you and you would understand. But I've tried often enough. I know you can't understand or don't want to. You "can't" means you're "not able to". It doesn't mean I haven't been explaining properly. Unfortunately you believe the latter and so does M.

I still miss part of you. People round about here used to tell me you obviously did me good because when you visited I was less depressive, I smiled more. That was before I realised how much you were stabbing me in the back, that was before I finally knew that you were never going to support me when somebody else's interests got in the way.

Apparently it's normal to side with your spouse against your adult children, or at least to be on the same page as them. You're not actually always on the same page as M when you're with me on your own and she's not always on the same page as you. You never have been, you spent my childhood fighting with each other about things small and large, but not about the really important stuff - M's treatment of us kids. So you're meant to be on the same page as M, but that doesn't mean you have to fight her battles for her. She ought to be able to deal with her own against me. Everybody else in FOO including you expects me to fight my own battles or put up with everything and everybody more like. But certainly, there's nobody in FOO who will fight my battles with or for me. Nobody who will stand up for me against my sibs or sister-in-law, or against M.

It's good that I wrote that out because now I feel less sad and weepy. Not that I was crying, I just wished I could. 

I haven't heard from you since I sent you a limit. But I'm getting used to that a bit. If I set a limit in FOO, it's accepted now but whichever FOO member (or other ones too) retaliate with even more versions of silent treatment. I'd be going against my better judgement if I told you that my limit-setting is done to protect myself and my very shaky emotional state from you all. Whereas you apparently don't need to protect yourself from me, you're just retaliating. Like way back in my teens where you and M both reacted like so "You don't want to be addressed by your nickname, so we won't use it". Me: "I don't want B to use it, it's not appropriate for somebody who beats me up." You still stopped using my nickname. That hurt me at the time. It was as if you couldn't separate yourselves from him, as if you were hurting me to get back at me 'hurting' him. Though I was just setting the only limit I could to show I didn't approve of the way he was treating me. Later came "You're not speaking to your brother?? Then we're not speaking to you."

You guys are so messed up. I am too unfortunately. If I weren't anymore this wouldn't still make me sad. 

Blueberry

[Blueberry]

Dear SIL1,

I feel moved to tears when I read your last email. Telling you that would just make me even more vulnerable in FOO however. But you are the only adult in FOO who seems to understand a bit and the only one who seems to wish me well. The only one not going in for retaliation along the lines of: "you set a boundary?? Now I'm setting you an even more drastic one." The only one who seems to understand green when I say green, instead of understanding yellow or even purple.

I think when you write "Love" to close an email, you actually mean it, or at least you have some appreciation of me as a person. You don't treat me as family scapegoat. Mostly I appreciate that you seem to stick to what you told me years ago: you just have to try and get on with your in-laws, you don't have to reform them. Which means you're not trying to reform me and attempt to prevent me from rocking the family boat or anything like that.

I really, really appreciate this. I also appreciate that you sometimes send me a reply or a couple of sentences about your boys or a pic or two. Of course SIL2 doesn't get a chance because I don't send her any correspondence at all any more. There's a reason for that though. There's a reason, a good one (!), for me continuing to send the occasional email to you and B1, both together.

This is really not to send. I wish I could tell you this, but I can't. I don't want to triangulate or drive a wedge between you and B1/your H. That's not fair to you or your relationship to him. Probably it wouldn'T be fair to him either, though I'm not really too concerned about fairness to him. It's not as if he's too concerned with fairness towards me. If it weren't for your boys, I probably wouldn't try with either of you. Keeping contact with your H is more about the boys, with you it's both about that and because I genuinely appreciate how you're treating me, which is better than any of my close blood relations do.

BB

[Blueberry]

To B1,

You're really weird, you know? Since I would never write this to you, I can word it how I want.

I remember at the end of Horrendous FOO Event no. 2, you said your boys would "get over" me leaving early and them not seeing me for the rest of FOO holiday, though they'd been told they'd have a whole further week with me, and also that they'd get over not even getting to say 'Goodbye' to me, not finding out I was going till I was already gone.

Now you're intimating that your youngest little one still remembers and talks about me. You know, maybe he didn't get over it quite the way you expected? Maybe the Scapegoat Aunt is more important than you think? Both your boys were enjoying their time with me at Horrendous FOO Event, before it got really horrendous. I could tell the way they were reacting and telling me about their favourite things and asking me about how things are where I live. I could tell just the way they trusted me.

Well, I can't change how you think or see it. They are your boys, you decide how you deal with them and me. I appreciate that you do send a pic from time to time if I ask. It's just I mentioned in passing at Horrendous FOO Event what your older boy asked me about the previous time he'd seen me - that was something he'd carried around with him for four years before asking me. I can't tell you why he didn't ask you, but it just shows how much children notice when the adults around them think they don't. So God knows what your children are carrying around from the aftermath of Horrendous FOO Event. You seemed to assume they wouldn't carry anything. 

They're your children, you get to decide who they interact with. Even though you've always said your oldest one has a keen sense of who his FOO is and that his extended FOO is important to him, you threw away his chance of having meaningful contact with one aunt. Like with everybody else in FOO, I suppose you never thought that would happen. You probably didn't imagine for a minute I might finally stand up for myself and think to myself "I and my well-being are even more important to me than contact to FOO, even to my nieces and nephews." And then that I'd act on that.

Blueberry

[Blueberry]

I wrote a missive here to one B but since my T has OK'd it as me not throwing myself under a bus, I've removed it and will be sending it.

The 'blank' after writing it just seemed to be the usual fear that I was exposing myself too much to criticism and/or attack from FOO.
_________________________
Then I'm blank, but that's why I'm taking this to T tomorrow.

[Three Roses]

 

[Blueberry]

Having sent that one, I went on to send two more FOO missives and another two non-FOO emails. As usual doing one difficult-to-do task made it easier to do a few more. I even still have my email open. This is new. Up till now I've usually closed it to protect myself from a response, though one has never come that fast before. some time ago I'd even turn off the computer and leave the room. Small steps, small steps.

[Three Roses]

 

[Blueberry]

The FOO email I wrote and sent a couple of weeks ago was to a sib about contact to his children, me asking for a bit more, especially to get email photo send-outs of my godchild, same as her other close relations and her non-related godparent do.  The result: (sigh) more contact from various FOO mbrs. No phone calls, they haven't breached that rule, but Christmas wishes and cards and chit-chat, and asking for information.

I know this is all a process, so I don't have yet to decide what to do about any of this. I might get to the point where I let contact with my godchild go for the sake of my own health.

The latest email photo send-out includes one of SIL2 all by herself. If I had it as a printout, I'd tear it up or even snip it up into little pieces. Not that I'd ever attack her physically and in fact I can't even stand up for myself verbally towards her or rather the powers-that-be in FOO don't allow it. But I still have to figure out if I can detach it from the other photo. I'm not too talented at computer stuff. If I can detach it, I'd probably just delete it and then have the photo of my nieces with a few other people in the photo. Those other people aren't my faves either but I can choose to put up with them for the nice photo of the little ones. Those other people don't invoke quite such bad feelings in me as SIL2, though maybe they should and maybe that will come.

[Blueberry]

To B2,

You sent me a chit-chat email recently. I asked for more contact with your daughter, my god-daughter, not with you. When I read that email, I'm enraged How can you?? How dare you just write to me as if nothing happened in FOO 2 1/2 years ago? As if you did nothing? As if you didn't mention anything like me "ruining the family holiday"? How dare you pretend you're still caring younger brother? Why on earth do you think you know more about that pressing political problem than I do anyway?? It doesn't affect you. Why are you giving me suggestions? Don't you think I might have figured out what to do about it all by myself??   

____________________________
I'm not really feeling the anger, but having started to express, maybe more will come later.

[Blueberry]

Another email today from enF and my answer hasn't changed much. Not that I'm sending this, but it's what I feel now.

Dear F,

I've explained as much as I could in the past. I can't explain more and I won't. Because it gets thrown back at me in some form or other.

I'm so sad that when I'm alone with you we can have quite a good time together, e.g. good conversations but that was before the last Horrendous Event. I'm sorry that the only adult member of FOO who wished there was some way I could stay on was an SIL. The rest of you were either easy on me leaving or positively helping me go. While I did appreciate you driving me a small part of my long journey home, I'd have appreciated it even more if there'd have been someone among my blood relations asking me if there wasn't some way I could stay. That would have involved somebody helping me stand up to the other SIL as I think everybody actually knew. You blew it, you threw it away, you nailed your own coffin shut. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I'm wise to your tricks too. I know you're sending Flying Monkeys. I know that when you say "I" you really mean "we". You're asking me partially to save M from pain, maybe even to avoid problems in your marriage. Yes, if you want me back, you'd have to look at your marriage, and my siblings would both have to look at their roles in the family, change their ways of dealing with M, so that the other SIL doesn't scapegoat me because she's not 'permitted' to say and do to M what she'd really like to. But she is to me. Yes, this SIL knows no one will protect me or even stand with me. It's pretty obvious really. And I'm not strong enough to take you all on at once. I decided some time after Horrendous Event that my state of health is more important to me than contact with any of you. There is no safe place for me within our family.

I know nothing in our FOO will ever change to allow me to be a part of it on my own terms. As an adult who can even ask for what I want. And who's not blamed for "everything going wrong". Things might not have got so far as the Horrendous Event if I'd felt able to ask for what I wanted: accommodation on my own. But I couldn't because I couldn't bear thinking about M's haranguing and postulating about the inconvenience of me being somewhere on my own without a car or a mobile phone.  I know in the distant past you told me I have to learn to put up with those kinds of comments. Why?? Why can't and shouldn't M have to learn not to spew her anger and rage over who knows what onto me? I say "who knows what" because it's not really about the lack of a driving license or a mobile phone.

Anyway, I know why M doesn't have to learn to keep her comments to herself. But it's way too difficult to explain to somebody who can't look at the complexities of a dysfunctional family or even see that this is what we're dealing with here. Not only is it too difficult, but it's just not worth it. It won't change anything, it won't give me anything, except possibly remarks I've heard often enough, like I "have to get over this".

At or after the Horrendous Event you undoubtedly thought things would continue as always. Right at Horrendous Event I couldn't think straight enough to know they wouldn't either. I was putting all my powers into staying upright, into not dissociating, into not ending up in a trauma ward, into being able to function long enough to get home in one piece.

But pretty soon after I knew. That was it. All of you adults except the one SIL went one step too far. That was the one event too many.

Blueberry

The difference this time is that I'm not feeling much.

[Phoebes]

Blueberry,

I've often thought we have very very similar families and experiences..this is another proof of that. I'm so sorry as I feel your pain and experience so poignantly. I believe you, as I can so relate. I'm so sorry for your experience and the child that didn't get to be a child or develop in a healthy way because of your FOO's selfishness. They took it away, and now WE get ALL of ourselves. They can't have any of us anymore.

With Love and Understanding,
Phoebes

[Blueberry]

Thank you Phoebes, that means a lot.