Dearest Cousin Austin,
Let me speak to you, again, in parable. Let's say we (our family) owned a vineyard. On this vineyard, there were only so many grapes; and while we were all welcome to the grapes, there were still only so many. Now, people like my dad, and your dad, and, a little bit, my mom, are/were eating more than their fair share of grapes, or, in "reality", were eating the family grapes "wrongly".
Gary is likely poisoning the harvest while still eating the "good" grapes; my father is taking the grapes before they are ripe and possibly robbing other vineyards; and my mother is drunk at the bar, NOT leading by example... but pretending to really, really hard. Jessica has, like, rejected the good grapes for the bad because she is trying so hard not to be like your mother, Caitlin is drinking sour wine, YOU are working very hard in a possibly-fallow field, and I am standing across the street in a patch of wildflowers, watching all this, shaking my head, drinking water, and eating carrots.
Of course, our vineyard is not unlike all the others and is not exactly "special". It is run by the same rules and has much the same expectations, characters, and "faults" as most other vineyards, so its issues are not *really* anyone's fault.
Now that we have some sort of foundation, why, if I have merely pointed out the truth about our vineyard (and vineyards in general) and you all are starting to see that I have done so at great cost to, and with little payoff for myself, why are YOU, Austin, my dearest cousin, still speaking as if I do not speak truth? Because let me tell you what else I also see, about YOU, dear cousin, that you may not see, but likely do.
I see you telling me, decades ago and before you married her, that Brooke was pretending to not hear you, or understand you, when you told her to turn around on her 4-wheeler and go back to find a wayward Caitlin. I remember your saying she was "acting stupid" because she was lazy, or just didn't want to do what you were telling her to do that she didn't want to do, but that needed to be done regardless.
Years later, I hear a wayward Brooke herself, telling me, in a sort of resigned exasperation and in a quick moment of truth in your driveway, that you and she appeared now to be "going in different directions". I see you two not celebrating your 10-year anniversary, not buying each other gifts for X-mas, and no longer looking with longing at each other at all. Truly, you all hardly speak, except as pertains to daily living, and you make food together with little joy at all, as far as I can tell.
You, yourself said to me on the phone that time, with a flutter and a falter in your voice, that "Brooke was smarter than you". We both know that isn't true and that you, truly, have settled for your father's life, marrying your Teresa and taking up on "the family farm". You certainly could have had a much larger life with a temperament, face, and mind like yours, though I do not care that you didn't. My point is this: you, too, suffer in the vineyard, though I think you may tell yourself that you do not.
I know this to be true, because of the time Caitlin and I spent with your family years ago, that day in your pool. You see, I was watching closely every symbolic action that was taken that day, on guard for any perfidy, which I found in the form of YOU. And though the symbolic narrative I saw that day may not be fully realized yet, and I truly hope it never will be, I am still concerned enough to tell you that if you ever "put your feet" on Kensie's "float" again because Brooke won't let you "put your feet" on hers, and then when Kensie rejects your feet and you throw her fecklessly into the water, in retaliation, against her, a child, YOUR child, like a child, I will have more words for you than these, ok?? You got that, mister?!
Because my father liked to play that game with me, except it went more like this: him beating my ass while falling on top of me and choking me in what I can only imagine was his own sexual frustration. So please, do yourself a favor, and DIVORCE Brooke if she is not matching you as you would like, because you deserve a woman better than one who will wear a leopard-print bathing suit to a pool her husband paid for and then not let him put his feet up on her float (that he also probably paid for). I would never do that and the right woman wouldn't either and Kensie shouldn't have to deal with anyone's feet yet, especially YOURS. Yes, Brooke is kind and stable and smart enough and a good mom and whatever else you like about her, but do you really, REALLY love her- just as she is?? Does she challenge you? Does she thrill you? Excite you? Make you curious? Do you discover the world with her, really lean on her, explore each other in more ways than sexually??? I think not, though, of course, I do not know...
Because I happen to believe a few things about the children you two have made together that I think you may want to know. I believe people have children not just to further their bloodlines or see themselves anew or make their mark on this world; existentially, people have children because they need a living embodiment they can spar with in real time, about issues they, themselves, cannot resolve without that living embodiment of their issue(s). In short, one day, your children will challenge you (possibly beyond what you, or they, can take or handle, and sooner than may be expected...), and if you don't resolve some of your issues before that time, they will blast you with them very hard, as I do my own mother. For Life's Will WILL NOT be thwarted, and, in the end, everyone gets its message eventually...
Because you see, I am my mother's shadow, meaning I am the shape of what she is, but the darker side of her, her absence, the place inside herself where she looks not. THAT is why I am so "led by my feelings": because she is not. She represses her emotions so very, very hard, and I understand why, of course. Growing up with Papa and Grandmother at that time and in that way, this was a coping mechanism, and I get that; but this faulty reaction to her own feelings has carried on far past its due date of usefulness in her life, and Tracey's lack of/repressed emotion has found life in me, giving me my over-emotional state (as you all see me). Also, I represent her repressed sex drive and desire/tendency to be sexy, which is why I'm such a flagrant freak. I *try* to repress it at family functions, but I am quite prurient away from you all and don't even try to hide it (as no one should, since sex is a celebration).
My ultimate point being: you will not like life if you continue this way. You will not like your life, your children's lives, and certainly not my life. If you continue to go through the motions, and fulfill your duties as you see them, and live your sexually unsatisfied life, and whatever else you do with your days of quiet desperation that comes out not at all except as grey hair, you will not like your life and at the end of it, you will be sorry/in pain just like your father's father was at his death. Our family will not like life, your kids will not like life, Brooke will not like life if you all continue as you are.
You know, I ran into a projection of her working in a wonderful place called Incredbowl by the Mall of Georgia. This "Brooke" was blonde and beautiful and had married into a powerful family of devout Christian Koreans whose patriarch was a preacher. She had taught herself Korean (though they had not asked her to), she had borne her husband three children, and yet she was currently spending her days working at their business, as the counter girl at Incredbowl, taking orders. She told me in confidence one time that she was afraid of her in-laws and that she and her husband were hardly in love anymore and that he wouldn't let her have her dog, though she had just flown it in anyway, from their old home where she had been happy, but which she had been convinced to leave, so she could spend her days working in his family's shop, as a counter girl, taking orders...
I just don't know if there isn't a better life out there for the both of you. And while I hate to think of the pain the kids might go through at your divorce, I went through it, and really, I was glad when my shithead parents divorced. They used to scream all night and keep Caitlin and I up until we both suffered from lack of sleep. So, if you don't really, really love her anymore, and if she doesn't really, really love you anymore, and if y'all can't fix that, and don't want to, and both of you feel it should be done... LET IT GO.
Let your marriage go. There are so, so many people out there to love and let love you... Many, many women would be so very glad to have you; and many, many men would be so very glad to have her, too...
What are y'all even doing, anyway?? Living life side by side, but not in love, not making love like either of you wants to, just because you feel you should stay married??? Because it's "easier", or it's "for the kids", or it would be too embarrassing to get a divorce?? You know what's worse than all that? Growing up children of a loveless marriage. I WOULD KNOW, BRO.
And if you both decide to separate, it will not be failure, but progress. And people will understand. It will be two people, who met very young and made a life together and produced beautiful children, but are done with each other now, having grown a little differently and in different directions than each other, and who are ready for a new path; though they will always be friends and co-parents and have the utmost respect for each other...
This is life, and it's not unholy, or unusual, or even a problem if you don't let it be. It is what it is, and it isn't what it isn't, if you don't let it be. Just... think about yourself, Austin. Think about what YOU want and what YOU deserve and if Brooke can really give you that and if you can really give her what she wants, too. Cuz to me, it seems like she really just wants that glossy, magazine-cover, picture-perfect-life y'all "have" (which we can all see you don't have anymore, given your inability to look happy in pictures when you're not [which I think is commendable btw and akin to my "over-emotional-ness"...]). And, you know, that's fine: just let her find someone else who thinks that way, too, because I just don't think that surface-style is you anymore, if it ever was. I think you want something and someone deeper, more substantial and more "real", and basically more meaningful than a "pretty picture"...
As for me, after being cast out of your lot, and having almost no support anywhere, and being made to very nearly lose my mind with double-dealing loneliness and, like, crying myself to sleep for a year and a half, I have found love again and am hopefully sapping you fools of the sex I deserve. Because you see, somehow, sex within a family is something like a zero-sum game (much like the grapes on "our" vineyard...) and I have been at the shit-end of that stick for a while now, having a mother who is devilishly selfish in that area, and all the evil uncles one could never hope for...
But I have a
magical,
committed,
thrilling
man in my life now with whom I can share, explore, and create... and no one can tell me SHIT now.
There are only so many paths to take in life, given the cards we are dealt at the beginning. Being born of near-noble birth with great beauty and brains and bursting with talent, I could have gone the way of Edie Sedgwick, and been a gay guy's poppet, languishing away on drugs- trying to forget my abusive father, wasting my many privileges and talents, and then dying in squalor; and that is likely what "they" would have wanted for me.
But instead, I took a path more clear and more rocky at the same time, and followed... not exactly Christ, but the female version: The Magdalene, who is just a crunchier, stronger, more volatile version of the male Christ. And the Rose Path led me to stand up for myself, and all women, and take control of my life and the world, as much as possible, and in as much as it pleases God. And while you all conveniently "forgot" me... I remembered myself and "found" the hidden, unknown prize for which I "sacrificed" you all: true love. Love beyond family or friends or even life. I found love for myself, and love for a people that didn't love me back and, finally, love for a man who loved me beyond even a time when I didn't love him...
ANYWAY... I am a prescient, perspicacious, nonpareil of a person and one day, you all will know it fully.
I have stopped having dreams you and I are married, having divested myself of that black-magick path and found the narrow way, not the "broad way", which you seem to still (want to) be on, with the trite, uncourageous, harried life of one grubbing after the lesser god of mammon... Sooooooo... have fun with that... or don't.
It's up to you and I have no real preference in the matter.
I want you to leave the bs behind, but if you don't, I ain't gonna die and you will face it one day, through your children. But do I want you to see the light?? YES, COUSIN AUSTIN, I DO, and really, I have hope only for you in the family now.
So...
Leave that way and come with ME
through the eye of the needle
and see the sky as it was meant to be seen:
with crystal vision and crystal clear.
Or don't. Whatever. I tried... 
Blue Skies, Cuz
Yours Truly
Eli
