Friday, May 27, 2011

Where I Stand

I love my family but I wish it was easier to do so.

We didn't search this out, it was information given to us by someone who thought we should know. Mom, upset, posted on Facebook.



An Email



After not hearing back, I was sent an email.




I then responded:

Subject: A Reply

Aunt Donna,

The first email you sent did nothing but make my mother out to be some misinformed, vengeful simpleton and it is entirely appropriate that she did not respond to you or wish to speak to you. Neither of us had any intention of responding. Not until the email you sent me forced my hand. It was clear you were really looking for some kind of response.


Whether you plan to forward this or not, I don't mind or care and might even prefer it if you did send it. I understand why you might not want to. You seem to apologize but in reality do nothing of the sort. It isn't an apology for you actually regretting your actions or feeling remorse, only that in some way there may have been a problem for me. So, thank you but no, the emails don't really affect me. Even though it appears to be your intention, it doesn't really affect Mom either.


You are correct in assuming that I understand you had a need to respond in some way to my mother's comment on Facebook. The problem is that it was the wrong response. I don't blame you for trying to still believe that Rob is a good person. I made that same mistake. For future feuding, when the family chooses the next person or persons to have on the outs, attempt to befriend them first. That way they are more susceptible to your persuading and might just believe you when you tell them they are wrong even with evidence to prove they are, in fact, right.


Your lack of surprise at Mom's actions to no longer be your friend on Facebook might be because you already knew you were not being a friend to her to begin with. It wasn't until this year that I truly understood just how outcast we had become.


I was fine knowing that we are the newest gossip topic, each gossiper spreading another rumor and then peppering that rumor with blatant lies. I was fine knowing that the family had decided to "pressure" Rob, as he put it, into ransacking the old place with his mother and his aunt, two women who had no right to ever be in that house. This because the family doesn't bother to attempt a conversation with us over anything that counts, yet a Facebook message is cause for the Guilmette alarm to sound. As with any type of fight, one could say it is the fault of both parties. I could take some of the blame as to why we were outcast. I didn't attend Christmas, I didn't crash a recent wedding I wasn't invited to, and I don't go to the Family Outing. I decided to stop trying to be part of the family as every time I did go, I felt awkward and unwanted.

There are certain people who have continued to be supportive, who I still see and hope to see and care very much about. And all this would be entirely too easy if I didn't care about any of you. It's when you all get into this petty backstabbing group that things go wrong. Donna, I know that you have taken it upon yourself to be the family spokesman, everyone goes to you and must go though you for contacts and information. I doubt, however, that any information in your "inquiries" came from a credible source. Were the inquiries to a detective of the Somersworth Police Department? Because there are a few things I believe you are missing. Is your information coming from Rob? I would very much like to see any of the family give Rob their keys and go away for a week if he is the trustworthy guy he must be claiming to be.


What he has done, what the family has done, has hurt me more than you could possibly imagine. From a family that I trusted and loved so deeply I have only been kicked, insulted repeatedly and forgotten. From Rob looking me in the face and walking by me in the store when I went to greet him, to Brandy saying she was the youngest child, thereby removing me from the family, to you, sending me an email in what seems to be an attempt to turn me against my own mother. I am finding it increasingly hard to remember any good things about an awful lot of the members of the family. So if my mother's post was hurtful, a simple Facebook post, I'd hate for you to ever experience 1/100th of the hurt the family has caused me. Has caused us.

My dad was a good man. He cared very much for his children, of which I am one. The way you phrase these emails, as I'm certain the family phrases everything, I am not included in the list of his children. This is one of the biggest faults any of the family could make. My father chose us, he was never forced to love us. He chose my mother to be his wife and he chose me to be his daughter. An amazing daughter, by the way. I never forgot a birthday and tried extra hard when it was clear on his face that his other children had forgotten him. I have a list of attributes but most importantly I loved him with all my heart. Wrongfully, he assumed that the family would love and accept us as he loved and accepted you all, something he must not have learned from his siblings but was kind enough to pass it to at least one of his daughters.


When you say that my father was very close to his children, he was close to all of us, and he would be ashamed of his family. He would be ashamed of his son for stealing from anyone, again, but most of all stealing from his step-sister and step-mother. Step-sister, I'd like to add, is a distinction that only Rob and Brandy made as well as calling our father “my dad” whenever they spoke of him. It was never just “Dad” or even “our dad,” implying that he was only theirs.

The funny thing about all of this is that my mother and I had moved on. I wish we never found out about Rob or that anyone brought it up again because we had no intention of dwelling on it any longer than we had. We have a different place, we have rebuilt the list of items we had lost, or at least most of them, we still talked to the family members who cared to talk to us and we were only looking to the future. I am very angry and probably will be for a long time over many of the things that have been done in your family, to us and to others.


Other than this ridiculous detour Mom and I are certainly “okay.”


I do hope that you are also okay. I currently can not forgive your actions but that doesn't mean that I don't love you. I am just disappointed.


-Leah






Tonight I feel lighter.