The Letter Series: FIL

I'd been planning to post glowy photos of the Sprog's first Xmas before delving into family insanity. Unfortunately, family insanity refuses to be ignored-- on a number of levels. So I've decided to address the issue in a letter-- the inaugural missive of a writing/life project outlined here.

So, FIL.

I need to discuss something with you, and the right moment for doing so face-to-face is unlikely to arrive, so I'm writing you a letter.

I don't have the perfect segue into the meat of the matter. I guess I'll start at the beginning.

Last year at Christmas we all went to visit G at her retirement home. While we were there, she reminisced about her childhood in ___. She remembered a friend whose mother danced around a piano. The friend's mother sounded like a spitfire of a woman, a little too lively and vivid to fit in among the more sedate families that likely formed the main part of your mother's girlhood acquaintance. One night, this woman walked into a pond and drowned herself.

At this point in the story, you leaned over to me and said, "She sounds like she was one of those wooooooh! need-to-be-institutionalized types." You accompanied this comment with a "cuckoo" hand gesture.

Of course you knew that was my first holiday trip home after being institutionalized myself. In fact, the Christmas previous I was in the midst of the breakdown that led me to seek help a few weeks later.

Did you think I would find your comment funny? That's difficult for me to believe. I'd like to think it was some ham-fisted attempt on your part to manage your own discomfort. Because if you'd actually considered those words, and said them anyway, you must be remarkably cruel. I cried about that comment whenever I thought of it, for months afterward. And the few people with whom I shared the anecdote were shocked by your callousness.

At the time, I didn't say much-- in part because I was too shocked and hurt to make an earnest reply, in part because I was angry and didn't want you to see your shot had made a direct hit. And in part because you made your comment in your mother's sitting room-- a place where I couldn't fight back.

So I said, "You have to watch out for those." And I left it at that.

Incidentally, the fact that I'm managing a mental illness does not make me like every and any other mentally ill person-- even among those who share my particular diagnosis. So a discussion of a woman your mother once knew doesn't necessarily reflect me. Unless you're a bigot, I suppose.

I'm not even the only person in your family who deals with mental health concerns, though my situation may have been the most acute. But seeking treatment for a medical condition isn't what makes someone crazy. Not getting help when you need it does. In other words, someone who takes medication or goes to therapy isn't necessarily any sicker than someone undiagnosed who does neither.

So, why am I bringing this up now?

This Christmas, you and I were sitting in your kitchen. I made a comment about our crazy neighbor, who lives upstairs. You lowered your glasses and shot me a look over them, wordlessly expressing that I was in no position to throw stones. You know, since I'm crazy.

Well. I could say that I've earned my right to use that word-- that as a member of a group that is marginalized, disenfranchized, and discriminated against, I can use the word "crazy." I could say I'm reclaiming the word, the way black people have taken back the n-word, which they can use even though white people can't without causing grave offense.

But in this case, when I'm referencing a woman who shouts swears at our super, who posts angry notes about imaginary laundry-room infractions, and who walks one of the dozen or so cats that crowd her one-bedroom apartment around our neighborhood on a leash made of repurposed packing twine, I'm using the word "crazy" because I find it apt.

If I, as a onetime crazy woman, am not allowed to describe others as crazy, I imagine you must have had a moratorium on the phrase "insensitive jerk" for at least as long as I've known you.

I know I sound angry. I am. But with reason. And I wouldn't have bothered writing all this out if I didn't hope for some kind of resolution. If you'd like to talk, or write back, I'm open to that. But it's not necessary.

What is necessary is that you treat me with respect-- if not for the intelligent, talented woman I am, then for my position as your son's wife and your grandson's mother.

That marginalization I mentioned earlier, that wasn't just me being flip. The stigma of mental illness is very real. I get more than enough unwarranted shame for my condition from the outside world-- I don't need to get it from my family too.

Cut out the comments. Learn to manage your discomfort some other way.

To a better Christmas Future,
roo

Comments

[Jean]

Really excellent letter. Well said. Articulate, balanced. Not that it's up to me to say, but--well, there it is.

[Kathi]

This is a very powerful letter.

[roo]

Thanks, you two. I appreciate the support.

I decided to mail it. Just got back from the mailbox. We'll see how it goes.

[tracey]

Wow. Brilliant, roo. I couldn't even get through this all the first time I started reading because it pissed me off SO badly on your behalf I had to go calm down, but this is perfect.

I SO wish you could send it but I hope this gives you some catharsis.

I think I've talked on my blog about my FIL who never emails me except to send dumb blonde jokes. That's it. Never anything else. It's nowhere near the same magnitude as yours, but it does anger me. He either really thinks that -- that I'm dumb -- or he thinks he's "relating" to me. I have a good sense of humor but this ceases to be even remotely funny when this is the ONLY email communication I ever get from him. If you're not interested in my life at all, why bother with regular dumb blonde jokes? Why waste even that amount of time on me? I've set up a filter on him -- which is kind of sad. He's my FIL, but I'm sick of it.

I wrote about this once on the blog a while back and some d-bag came on and told me I was overreacting and that the joke I referenced was funny and blah blah, and my blog readers came out in spades to TAKE HIM DOWN. Haha. Longest comment thread ever -- like 150 comments. I think the dude was actually castrated in the end but he deserved it, frankly.

I'm just so sorry that your FIL is saying these things. It enrages me for you. How can he remotely think it's okay? I don't get it. In what social economy is this currency accepted??

Brilliant letter, though. Simply brilliant.