Things you wouldn't dare say out loud

Facebook is also for sharing digital equivalents of the chain letter that threaten you with a horrible death if you don't copy-paste/share them to your own page.

And for taking quizzes that give you exactly the badass, weird, awesome result you were hoping for, while stealing your information for identity theft purposes.

You guys forgot it's also for predicting the Apocalypse, broadcasting family arguments, and for trying to get someone, anyone into your bed.

also for people begging for money to pay the rent, then the next day posting pictures of their new nails

It's for inviting people to join an interest page, and not telling them it has a hidden agenda.

Its for Zuckerberg to make money at the expense of America.

I actually flipped the guy off while driving through Castaic just for that...

I call him "Zuckerbucks." Nothing against him, though. He saw a need for Americans to make fools of ourselves online, and profited from it.

he's pretty much doing that worldwide. And paying no taxes anywhere

I'M JUST IN IT FOR THE CUTE BABY ANIMALS!!!!!!

I don't even use the Facespace anymore.  Unless you count Insta.

Kindredsoul wrote:

I'M JUST IN IT FOR THE CUTE BABY ANIMALS!!!!!!

Cute baby animals, you say?
This sounds like a new thread

Thanks for fixing that. I kept wondering what the speed of smell squared was.

I really hate you. Deep down in my heart I despise you and I know that isn't good, but it is what it is.

My father warned me right before he died that once he was gone, your true colors would come out and that you would take everything and ruin the family. My father wasn't perfect, but he had a good heart and I hoped that he was wrong about his only sister being an evil person.

But he was right. You did exactly what he said you'd do. So you changed Grandpa's will and got most of the inheritance and tossed us a few pennies. Fine. I didn't need the money but some my siblings and their kids sure could have. And I'd understand the greed if you were desperate. But you weren't. Your husband is a multi-millionaire. You didn't need that money.

You wanted it all, and you got it.

I could have forgiven that in time, but you also took everything from our Grandparents house. Family photo albums...pictures my father painted. Things that money can never replace. You took them all and didn't invite us to gather a few precious mementos like a normal family would. But you didn't stop there.

I love history, and family genealogy is my new love. I spent so many hours over the past few months building our family tree and this led me to do some DNA testing. When I saw some relatives I matched with I was so excited...finally someone from our family who you had not poisoned with your venom. One of my father's first cousins...her emails were full of love, kindness and wonderful old pictures. I can't put to words how good that made me feel.

But you got to her first. I should have known better...

And then I heard about the family reunion. Three years ago, the entire extended family got together. No one bothered to formally invite us. I'd heard only rumors about it...but this was right after we were dealing with the family estate and lawyers and realizing how royally you'd screwed us. We didn't want anything to do with you and it seemed the rest of the family only heard your side of the story.

But looking at that picture...seeing a wall of remembrance from that reunion with my father's name on it made my blood boil. You sat eating, drinking and spending time with a family who put my father's name on a plaque but didn't bother to invite his children to come in his stead.

And that's not the worst of it. Instead of inviting us, you invited your new "brother" who is the offspring of some woman my Grandfather got pregnant and abandoned many years ago. You brought him in my father's place and made him part of the family. When my sister told me that you most likely gave our share of the inheritance and the family heirlooms to him as well, I was speechless.

But that wasn't enough, was it? You also apparently told the family that my father was crazy and painted us all as troublemakers and bad people. I guess to cover up your misdeeds and guilt, you made us look like the bad guys.

You need to take a long look in the mirror, you cold-hearted bitch.

And don't worry, I'll keep the peace. I will say nothing of your dirty deeds to our kind cousin or anyone else that I speak to in the extended family. I will paint you in a good light so that you can keep up your facade as a loving and caring Aunt. I will not sink to your level and spread lies and discord among the rest of the family.

You created this rift in the family. Only you can fix that, but I doubt you ever will.

Enjoy what time you have left on this Earth. I will never forgive you. But I will celebrate the day that you are gone and perhaps then, I can tell the true stories of just horrible you really were.

Sigh.

Just.

Sigh.

Oh my, Icetooth, I hope you send that to her, what you just wrote here. She should know, or not? You must decide.

Yee,

Believe me I'd love to...but it wouldn't do much good. My Aunt knows what she did and that burden of guilt is on her. There's so much more to the story but I just needed to vent a little.  

Being the better person and moving past all the hurt and blame is the best way to handle this. And I have to remember the good. I am forging a new friendship with a cousin who shares my love of family history. My immediately family is healthy and well and we look after each other. And that is priceless.

We're not perfect. We sometimes fight and argue, but we always have each others backs. I won't waste my time telling a nastybad relative how they should behave...but I can do my best to be an example of everything she is not and never will be.

But I'll be honest...if I could toss her in the ocean for 10,000 years...I'd totally do that!

For a minute there I thought you were writing about my dad

Stay the better person IceTooth. Not the easiest path, but it is the stronger one

Yeee wrote:

Oh my, Icetooth, I hope you send that to her, what you just wrote here. She should know, or not? You must decide.

I, too, strongly advise against it.

I'm sorry to say that there are people like this in many families.

If you even hint that something is important to you, such as a letter or a photograph or a painting, it's gone forever.

YOU CANNOT CHANGE THEIR MIND.

Any effort to do so will only backfire. The guilty party will convince themselves that everything they are doing is for your own good.

All harm, all destruction, all the seeds of ill will that they spread, in their mind they are doing the right thing and being charitable and telling only the truth.

You can't change them, and you can't make them feel remorse. The worse damage they have done is to their own conscience. People my age believe the lies they have been telling themselves for decades.

I would go so far as to suggest counseling to help you deal with the grief they have caused you. I've had good results myself.

It beats having a horrible person live rent-free in your head.

People who accumulate wealth, and maintain it for life, usually do so because they have personal qualities such as discipline and ethics. Money doesn't just sit there. It has to be cultivated.

When it passes on to someone who lacks that character, it's easy come, easy go. Your multi-millionaire uncle's fortune may suffer that fate.

Evil Aunt may find herself outliving whatever resources she has when her husband passes on. Let time take care of her. Don't give her the satisfaction of leaving scars.

Imagine that every material thing your father ever left behind was lost in a great fire. What would he have left you?

Your inheritance is the sum of all the qualities you learned from your father. No one can take this from you. You can share it with your nieces and nephews.

Build a shrine to your father in your heart.

Thank you for the kind words and sage advice, Trollbabe.

I have a book on anger management arriving in the mail today. It came highly recommended from a trusted mentor. I plan on reading it this weekend and working on putting this behind me. It is tricky now that I am getting to know my father's cousin...I'm excited to finally get to know his extended family but the tough part is separating all of the history with my Aunt that this brings back to the surface.

My siblings and I have made a promise to leave all of that behind us and focus on the future with getting to know our cousins without saying anything negative about our Aunt. It won't be easy, but I know one day we will look back and be glad that we did.

You're welcome, Icetooth.

Anger isn't a bad thing. It drives us to seek justice for ourselves and for others. You see much of this in the news today. Justice is light, revenge is darkness.

Winnow-aunt may never see justice. She may live a long, happy life and die with the delusion that everything she ever did was for the good of others..

I am reminded of a book, "The Bosnia List", in which a Bosniak refugee grows up and returns to his homeland. One of the people he seeks out is a neighbor who was nothing but cruel, stealing things from his parents when they were in hiding. When he meets her, she explains casually how she was taking those things home for safekeeping. This is what she truly believes.

Your book is a good first step. Don't expect quick results. Some wounds take decades to heal. Also, if you need help with anger management, don't hesitate to seek counseling.

I've learned to deal with some of life's problems by reading autobiographies of people who have overcome great difficulties.

That book sounds like a good read and really hits home for me.      

Oddly enough, my siblings and I went through this very same thing sixteen years ago after my father had passed away. My mother had died a few years before him and towards the end of his life some of their "friends" swooped in and took advantage of him when he was extremely vulnerable. One in particular somehow was given a key to his house (he was living in another town to be closer to better doctors) and proceeded to take almost everything in the house for "safekeeping". We managed to get a few heirlooms that were left behind but she took the bulk of it and couldn't seem to understand why we were upset when we confronted her.

She gave up a few things after we called her out, but the worst part was that she ended up with all of my mother's handmade jewelry and crafts. There was little monetary value in it...my mother loved to make necklaces, baskets and other creations from things she mostly found in nature. They were works of art and very precious to the family, but we found out that this lady had taken them all, and then denied having done so. She also took the bulk of the rest of our family heirlooms which didn't make a lot of sense. But like the lady in that book, I think she truly thought she was doing us a favor and couldn't seem to understand why we were so angry at her.

We were understandably upset by all this and one of my siblings wanted to hire a lawyer and go after this lady. As you can imagine, all of this made working through the grief of losing our parents about impossible. Anger and grief are a horrible combination and I saw how deeply it was hurting us. I became the family mediator and told my siblings that we needed to let this go. I told them we had our memories of our parents and that was something no one could ever take from us. They eventually agreed and we were finally able to put things behind us.

About a year later I was visiting one of my brothers and noticed a letter sitting in a stack of mail that had been there for quite a while. It was addressed to my parents and had been forwarded to the home where my brother was living which was also the last residence my father had lived at before he died. The letter was from an antique store near our old family home and inside I found a check for $10.00 and a note addressed to my mother telling her that "one of her necklaces had recently sold". It was then that I remembered that my mother had put a bunch of her craft work in this store many years ago. It didn't make any sense as I thought it had all sold years ago, so I called up the antique store and spoke to the owner.

She wasn't even aware that my mother was no longer living. And amazingly enough, she had a huge amount of my mother's craft work in her store! We were thrilled beyond words! My older brother who still lived nearby went and picked it all up and then we met at his house to divide it up. It was some of my mother's best work and I can't put to words how amazing it was to have it returned to the family.

I am not a religious man, but at that moment I had to wonder if there was something out there in the universe that had helped return my mother's beautiful creations to us. I know this isn't something that happens very often, but it is a good reminder to myself with this current situation that letting go and moving on really is the best thing you can do.

It isn't easy. And it takes a lot of work. But all good things in life require the same.

Good grief Icetooth, that is so much like own uncle. When my late aunt died, he took the house and sold it. All of her heirlooms and my late great grandmother's stuff, he split between himself and his daughters. Nevermind the fact we saw them more frequently when they were alive. Plus he lived a short distance away and hardly ever visited.

With that in mind, he will face a greater judge and he will be shown how he wronged others.

Icetooth wrote:

And amazingly enough, she had a huge amount of my mother's craft work in her store! We were thrilled beyond words! My older brother who still lived nearby went and picked it all up and then we met at his house to divide it up. It was some of my mother's best work and I can't put to words how amazing it was to have it returned to the family.

I can so emphasize with this, Icetooth! *so glad for you and your family*

G0lden wrote:

Good grief Icetooth, that is so much like own uncle.

Maybe every extended family has one of these types.

I heard a rumor about an aunt who passed away many years ago. Supposedly a family member stole her jewelry while the others were at the funeral. I hope it's just a rumor.

A friend of mine is the product of a second marriage. Her father married, had a daughter, divorced, married again and had two daughters. He was an amateur singer who was part of a local quartet.

When all three of his girls were grown, and his wife passed away, he spent his declining years alone in a suburban house that he could not maintain. Without the assistance of the eldest daughter, my friend and her sister did their best to look after him, even though both lived out of state.

When he passed away, the eldest daughter demanded the house. My friend and her sister didn't put up a fight.

Later on, the eldest daughter's family put together an online video full of memories of what a great singer Pop was, and how much they missed him.

In contrast, when my own widowed father became terminal, my two sibs and I each assumed responsibilities: hospice care, funeral arrangements, and estate.

Dad sold his house, gave me his car, and didn't leave much, having given most of his wealth to charity.

Weeks after the funeral, we all sat in a bank manager's office and sorted through his will and the contents of his safe deposit box.

I remember saying that Daddy wanted the Rolex to go to my brother. Mom's engagement ring was worth a fortune, and I suggested he get that too, in case he remarried. Sis wanted the sapphire, and I'm honestly not into jewelry.

I said that my husband and I just wanted to be reimbursed for the utilities. Dad lived with us and forgot to pay his share when the cancer reached his brain.

I already had lots of stuff from the sale of the house.

We agreed that Sis would keep the stack of photos and documents, so we could get copies later. Etc., etc.

The bank manager was amazed. He was not at all accustomed to seeing heirs act like this.


The best thing to do with bad history, that will do no good, is to let it die with you.

I remember the time I spent in London in the early 90s.  Mixed spiritual congregation, people from all over the world.  We didn't know our names and I wasn't offended when I was greeted with "Hi Cheesewhite, you new here?" I greeted him back with "Hi Milktea, yes you're right!" and we laughed and had a good time.  There were Porkypinks (probably Irish or Scottish), Choccies, Coffees and whatnot.  Skin colour was basically a manner to identify each other as we didn't have name tags and clothes would change, so "Redscarf" might have been "Greenbandana" the other day.
It was fun and there was absolutely no racism involved in tagging other people by skin colour.
A few days later as more cheesewhites poured in I was called Sea Eyes due to my eye colour (I liked it better than cheesewhite to be sure) and other cheesies and pinkies would be tagged according to their eye colour as well: Skyblue, Mossy, Hazel, Greysky and so on.  Once we knew each other's name, we would use it instead.  But Sea Eyes stuck somehow.

I wish we all could live in that kind of spirit.

BTW, Milktea was North Indian.  Satdeep, if you read this, I'm still here!