From: "Jessica Murray" <dfhldgdhdlhfdla@gmail.com>
To: the surviving uncle’s email address
i'll be picking my stuff up and leaving on monday.
it
turns out d has a bunch of them. i'm hoping he'll let me sort through
them. there's only a handful more of them that i was hoping for, but, if
not, in all honesty, the fact that i have at least a few is sort of
enough. most of the stuff i wanted is really easy to find anywhere: dark
side, sgt peppers, aladin sane...stuff that you can get for $1 at any
garage sale...but stuff that i was really attached to. off of the top of
my head, the only other things i was hoping to find were joe's garage
and the apostrophe/overnite sensation split.
she's actually
giving me a lot of stuff, and i appreciate that, and i do trust her to
at least not destroy the things i have. i can only hope that trust is
properly placed. if there's significant damage, i'm going to have to sue
her. she *is* legally obligated not to harm property that doesn't
belong to her, and she understands that. if she chooses to act
otherwise, she'll have to take responsibility for that. i don't want to
do that, obviously...
the thing i understand is that this isn't
actually about me, even if it seems like it is at first. when she's
upset or does things that don't seem to make much sense, it's rarely
about what's on the surface. what she does is pick scapegoats and then
heap all kinds of abuse on to them. i mean, she's obviously upset right
now, and has a good reason to be. what she's doing is taking out all of
her grief and anger and frustration and hurt on me because i'm the
scapegoat she's picked for that. she doesn't require a good reason to do
that. often, she doesn't require any reason at all, or will make up a
reason to justify it. if i want to get clinical, it's sort of a classic
example of somebody passing on abusive behaviour across generations.
so,
maybe she's a little upset that i wasn't there at the very end. i don't
really know what to say other than that my relationship with my father
is something that existed between my father and i. i spent a lot of time
with him the week before i left, because i wasn't sure if he'd make it
until i got back. and i even asked her - is he expected to make it
through the week? should i reschedule? and she told me it would be fine
and i should go. on top of that, i had a really emotional conversation
with him the night before i left. it was a goodbye call. it felt final.
despite what she said about him making it through the week, when i left i
felt the goodbyes had been said. i expected to not see him again. and i
was at peace with that. again, that's between me and my dad, not
between me and the stepmother.
to an extent, she might be
internalizing that. she told me he'd still be here when i got back, and
he wasn't, so she might be feeling guilty about that. of course that's
not her fault, and i wouldn't blame her for it. but if she *feels* like
it's her fault, then her response would be to reject that guilt and
project it on to somebody else. and, of course, i'm the convenient scape
goat. it's even easier, in this circumstance, given the context.
so,
she would be able to construct an elaborate fantasy about me not loving
my father as a shield to protect her from that guilt that she shouldn't
be feeling in the first place. if i didn't love my father, i shouldn't
get anything from him.
this seems complex and arbitrary, but she
has a lot of complex issues, and i've dealt a lot with them over the
years. i feel i have a certain power of psycho-analysis through
experience. it's certainly *something* like this - she is *somehow*
projecting all her hurt and sadness on to me as a release, and it's
neither my fault nor does it really have much to do with me at all.
but, you're right - i can't talk it through with her. i always needed dad to do that.
it's just a few more days...
when
i'm gone, she'll key on somebody else. it's not going to end until she
can come to terms with things and understand what she's doing. but,
realistically, just about every approach has been tried over 35 or 40
years, so i don't know what's going to happen.
there were
frequent occasions when my dad talked about leaving her. he always said
he couldn't leave her because she'd self-destruct into a rage and
possibly even harm herself. i'm a little worried she's in the process of
doing this, but i don't know a way i can help and i'm even worried that
if i try it'll make things worse.
i'll probably wait until i leave and then send something to her brother, ferris.
j
