a letter I need to write to FOO

[Blueberry]

enF finally answered today. It seems as if he and M have actually been looking into things rather than playing around with me and procrastinating. He did answer a question or two and he has promised that they will send money next year and continuing.

Even though I was getting ready to do without, I'm not going to turn the money down now, but I am noticing my reactions. The contact with the information has worked a bit like  well, I'm reacting as if has been done whereas all enF did was answer my questions. I feel all grateful and that's dangerous for me in FOO. Because I feel guilty. "Oh, those poor people they probably don't actually realise what they did to me". Whether or not they do is irrelevant, the fact is any contact with them is bad for me and the amount they'd like (phone calls, chatty emails from me) sends me reeling.

I feel sad too and think I feel sad for them. But really I should feel sad for myself. While writing that out, I could feel myself getting back in my own body, moving away from FOO. Their sadness isn't my lookout.

[Blueberry]

the fact is any contact with them is bad for me and the amount they'd like (phone calls, chatty emails from me) sends me reeling.

Reading the above is revealing. enF phoned a friend of mine today (with whom he has had contact before) and when he didn't get through to her, he phoned her husband to inquire about me. Her husband told enF as far as he knew I'm OK, that I spent some time with his wife this week (so she presumably would have mentioned if I'd been in a bad way). Maybe the husband said more too, maybe had a nice little chat with enF? Not that I can change that. I've told my friend before that I'd like her and her husband to keep me out of any contact with my parents. She accepted that and told her husband and since then he has stopped asking me about enF in any kind of chatty way.

I don't see this as a breach on their part, but as a problem on enF's part.

A problem to deal with. What to say? What to say? (Rhetorical question). Go read on OOTF probably.

[Luke57]

Hi Blueberry,

I empathize with the tough situation you are in. Having money issues with FOO is never easy, especially when it feels like they have a noose around your neck. I can relate to what you're going through. My F died early, while my GF was still alive. The way the wills were at the time would've benefited me more than my M. But she got my GF to change his will days before he died. He was riddled with cancer and probably wasn't completely aware of what he was doing. She got everything while I got nothing. I felt like it was definitely punishment for me being NC with her.


I'm sending positive thoughts your way, hoping you find the resources you need. I especially hope you can continue your role here on OOTS. I appreciate the assistance you gave me the other day and for checking back on my well-being. I'm in a much better place now, less triggered and back on track, thanks to your help.


Luke

[Blueberry]

Thank you for the positive thoughts and empathy, Luke. I'm sorry how badly inheritance went in your case. It's good to hear you're doing better now though, better than the other day.

Maybe it's good for me that it's turning out this way. Idk. Just a thought. I'm not connected to FOO only financially, but also emotionally. I think it's taking me a while to come unstuck from FOO but maybe that's just my journey? I won't be giving up moderating because of this FOO stuff anyway. It no longer throws me quite so badly.

[Luke57]

Good for you, Blueberry. My thoughts are with you on your journey. 

[Blueberry]

Well the actual email I sent to enF a couple of days ago - man, does that have me on tenterhooks! Even though there's nothing enF can do in retaliation via email and he won't turn up in person (too far away) or even phone and get at me that way. These FOO 'rules' and the years of emotional abuse - man, does that have a huge influence on how I react.

Among other things, I want to check my email for other reasons. So, since I can be better at being accountable to others rather than to myself, I'll just say here that even if there is an email from some FOO mbr, I won't open it. I'll just ignore it.

[Luke57]

Blueberry, I think that's a great plan of action! I'm pulling for you. Stay strong. 

[Blueberry]

For some years I was helped financially here and there by rich FOO, they dished it out in smaller and smaller portions, using it as a way to be cruel. Finally they stopped giving even that altogether. I always felt like I was being paid for my services, it was money for abuse.

The portions haven't changed noticeably but it's the correspondence about them that has. They pretend not to understand me, they don't get back to me. Stringing me along. The "not understanding" is particularly bad because that's what they always did in my childhood - pretended I was defective in my ability to communicate and stupid as well. So I really feel your point now here, ah, it's money for emotional abuse.

I know how hard it can be to feel you have to silence yourself and your integrity and that you're being paid off to be quiet. It's not the sort of thing that promotes healing.

Can you be true to yourself elsewhere, here, with people who are good enough and safer than FOO? Do you feel you can put on a show with FOO to the extent needed without losing yourself in it? Can you do it consciously, while continuing to heal, while separating from them emotionally?

No it certainly doesn't promote healing! It's beginning to feel as if "putting on a show for FOO" isn't going to work, especially as they seem to be showing their true colours. I think I need to go through with the healing on all levels, it's a sort of cleansing I think. Getting rid of FOO's influence in me altogether.

Not that I'm going to send them a letter and tell them to keep their stupid money themselves or anything quite that risky, but slowly learning to act towards them the way I need to, as an adult instead of as a frightened child, is the way to go. They will notice the change. They already have. I need to be true to this change in myself and see where it takes me. On to more healing probably. Even though I've just had a few days of shakey state, a few days of feeling like I'm going backwards. But only a couple of days really, not the weeks and months it used to feel like.

With this old post, I see how long this money discussion has been going on with M and F and how much I have progressed. It's certainly not possible for me to put on a show for M and F, a pretence that I haven't changed, so that I get my inheritance. This because the change comes through in my behaviour and in my words. It should too. It's an integral part of me. I'm done with splitting myself into parts to be acceptable to FOO. I used to hide all my ICs and disregard them too when around FOO. It's hard for me to believe that now, but I did up until 2016 at Horrible Event No. 2. Or I'd say to my ICs that those bad things that happened were done e.g. by B1 when he was a child but now he's changed and he's apologised. Until I noticed that he hadn't really changed, in the aftermath of Horrible Event No. 2.

This new suggestion from M that it could be a loan  Hello??

Probably I should try to write a Non-Sender letter.

[Blueberry]

This is of course NOT a letter I need to write to FOO or that I will send but it's the same topics as those letters above I needed to write.

M,

I am flabbergasted. You claim to not know what that large sum of money was about despite the fact that we started discussing financial issues 3 years ago and despite the fact that I said in the aftermath of Horrible Event No. 2 that it was clear I was never going to really heal and would never be able to support myself properly. I remember I also said it was clear to me that my problems weren't just going to go away.

If your memory is as bad as your last email suggests, then why didn't you write the decision to send me money annually down in a safe place?? I don't believe your memory is that bad though. I think you're just messing me around, you and F. You're showing me you're not reliable. Maybe it's even a form of retaliation for my setting boundaries. In the past you and F have claimed that "of course" there were no strings attached to money, but there seem to be huge ropes attached actually.

In this latest email you exclaimed at the information that I have no Little Furries anymore and that if my decision to part with them was a financial one then you and F would have been glad to send me money. Hello?? You just want to control what I spend my money on. It's fine if it's something you agree with but not if you don't. Or not if you think I ought to be able to manage some other way. You just want to control me and my life. You want me to have to justify my expenses. That would even include justifying vet bills, if I had Little Furries still. You'd ask "How much money do you need for your Little Furries?? Are you sure that's not a mistake??"

Don't tell me that my Bs have to itemise their expenses when they get money from you. I don't believe it. You still want to treat me like a child, as if I have no idea what I need and what things cost, and as if I have to have the same priorities in life as you.

You're just trying to mess me around as usual. But it's not working to the extent it used to.

Blueberry

[Blueberry]

To M,

I am so angry Do you have any idea how much effort it was for me to debate all those financial matters over the past few years??

FYI my combined income (w/o any help from you) is below the poverty line, well below it, below what welfare recipients get. At the end of your emails you insist on writing "Love". Is that what you call your attitude and behaviour towards me? I don't want to see what your behaviour is like when you don't 'love' anymore!! Oh, wait, I know already. Been seeing it for years. F wrote a year or two ago that you want me to be moderately comfortable, that's why you wanted to send me money annually. Below the poverty line is not moderately comfortable.

You want to send me money for something you agree with. A few years ago out of the blue you offered to buy me a cargo trailer for my bike, which I turned down. That's not actually what I need. I need a bike mechanic to inspect and repair my bike sometimes. I need new items on my bike sometimes, e.g. new brake blocks because the old ones wear out. That all costs money. Oh I know you assume the 'bike club' should do it for me. It's not their job. 

And I know your other thoughts on this sort of topic because I've heard them all before. I ought to be able to repair my own bike. Or my husband ought to be able to. But I don't have one and that's my fault too (in the eyes of FOO) because if I wasn't such a loser I'd have a husband. And if he couldn't do the job of bike mechanic then he would be a loser, so I would have married a loser and it would be all my fault. Strange idea of love.

I don't want to do a big JADE here. You don't deserve it. If you're memory is as bad as you claim, you won't even remember later anyway or be able to find the email again to re-read.

What you've done now with your "I can't remember" is do exactly what I specified I did not want to happen. I did not suddenly want to be confronted with "we can't pay you that annual money after all because...." and you and especially F opined that you don't need to finalise anything to do with the inheritance because it's unlikely that you'll both succumb to dementia at the same time. The latter seems to have happened. Even if it hadn't, there are plenty of other scenarios that could get in the way. Ha, ha. Of course you don't have dementia. You're just messing me around, you're manipulating, you're lying. You've been pretending to care about me, but you don't.

(I notice as I write that my painful throat which felt like a combination of allergic reaction way deep down in my throat combined with tonsillitis is lessening. That is because I'm naming what is going on. I'm not hiding it any more. I'm not protecting FOO mbrs any more.)

FYI it will be almost impossible for me to ever earn anything above the poverty line. If I earn much more on a regular basis, I'll lose my pension. That's certainly not a bad idea because at least the state wouldn't be covering me, a foreign national, anymore for damage incurred by abusive upbringing. I would love to not need support from the state, but it's very, very unlikely to happen for reasons that you've never been capable of comprehending so I won't try to explain again. I would also love to feel absolutely secure here, that no political change could occur here which might lead my present country to act like yours (of which I'm a citizen) and 'send me home' for being a burden on the state. Receiving an annual amount of money from you would help my case in being granted citizenship here, as I have already explained.

You don't deserve any of these explanations from me!!! Keep having to remind myself not to JADE. 

What I need is reliability! So that I can plan somewhat, make decisions now that have repercussions in the next couple of years. I don't need to be messed around by you and lied to. Aside from having no idea what it means to be poor, you have no idea what that is like when somebody is not otherwise healthy. You have no idea of the stress you are adding. Or maybe you do, and you just don't care.