The following are the letters I wrote to my family. When these were written, it was intended that they would be private to the people they were addressed to, however I have since been accused of being a bully for the words I have written. As such, I have deemed it necessary to make sure there is a public record of the words that were said.
I have reason to believe that these people mean me harm, mean those I care about harm, and this is my attempt to have things documented if they decide to act in a more harmful manor then is already addressed in these letters.
I recognize that I have no evidence that what I say here is truth, and that the human brain is fallible, but I have written this down as factually as I can. These are my version of events.
These letters were placed where they could be found by their intended recipient on the morning of my 32nd birthday.
Dear Pamela Rae Wilsonsage,
Take this with all the pain, anger and finality that is intended.
El C. Jezek gave up on you years ago. Perhaps it was when you left them at the Clark county fair multiple times in one day, driving home, forgetting you had a child. Maybe it was when they were sat down by our father and he explained that they were a thorn in his side, and were only conceived because you were desperate to hang on to a relationship with a man who had already cheated on you, even before I was born. Were you engaged? 2 months before the wedding, it seems likely. You would have been 6 months pregnant. Maybe El gave up on you when they would call and ask you for help because we were being beat by our father, and you did nothing.
Despite what Jana may have told you, it was not because of your inability to acknowledge their status as a valid member of the LGBTQ+ community, accept their chosen pronouns as valid or understand the fluid nature of language, or the ancient nature of the singular “they,” but as you should already know, that *has* prevented any healing of your relationship. They literally sat you down and explained the abusive nature of Jana, and let you know that if she moved back in, that they would move out. Perhaps you missed the subtext; yet again, you were ignoring a call for help from your youngest child because you care more for your relationship with a toxic, abusive person. You have proven our fathers words.
I gave up on you many times, but most completely at 14 years old after I called a hotline. After they called the cops I spoke to Jasmine and she dismissed and abandoned me. I spent several hours in an interview room telling complete strangers how I was violated. After a rape kit and a sandwich at the hospital, you came in with grandpa and asked me one question; why didn’t I tell you? Tell you what? About what? About events that you didn’t care about, or about abuses that you participated in? This question has haunted me for 18 fucking years. I have never once forgotten just how involved you were.
I lied to the cops, the case managers, and Casa workers all those years ago. Perhaps you believed me, perhaps you forgot. James remembered. He even brought it up in his confession that you knew and were involved, but they took my word over his. What reason did I have to lie?
You see, for years, I was told this story about a group of kids and their poor mother who had done nothing wrong and her kids were taken away. Here is where the details are fuzzy, and I am certain that they were changed to make the story even worse. The plight of these children were made out to be bad, and the mother to be a pitiable martyred saint. All that was wrong was that the house was messy, and the couple was not well off. If that is the case, why doesn’t Jana talk about them? Do they not speak with her? What reason could they have to stay away? If Jana is such a good person, such a decent mother, where are her children?
This here is my final communication with you. It is one-sided, so I do not want, expect, or require an answer to these questions. I want you to think about it, think about what you have chosen, what you have done and are left with. You read that correctly, I am done speaking to you. Since you like to ask questions you already know the answer to, and Jana likes to lead you into thinking it’s about petty things. I will explain, though I suspect it will be mere moments after you have read this (if you even spend the time to read it) that you forget, assume I am blowing things out of proportion, or flat out ignore this because “it’s just Anna, having one of her moods again.”
1. You have regularly proven you care more about your failed marriage and the man you married than the progeny of that marriage. Are you still mad at me for losing your wedding band? Was the “worst divorce” you ever “went through” really that of one of your friends and not the one you were litteraly in? Not the one where you willingly signed away your parental rights? Is it really necessary to bring up “the sperm donor” in conversation so much? You recognized that names could mean a whole lot to a person, so you stopped saying his first name. Referring to my father in such a fashion really conjures an image of sex doesn’t it? That’s not exactly what an abuse survivor wants to hear. To hear their abuser brought up regularly in conversation, let alone in a term that directly relates to that type of abuse. Speaking of names and your understanding of the importance of them, I understand you are proud to be a “Krehbiel,” but you never changed your name back, Mrs. Wilsonsage.
2. You claim ownership of me when it’s convenient to piggyback on my accomplishments, especially ones that have nothing to do with you. *I* chaired GameStorm 20, not “your Anna.” *I* own Arbitrary Crafts, not “your Anna.” *I* was in The Crucible in High School, not “your Anna.” “Your Anna” does not exist. You do not own me.
3. You minimize me to womanhood. “Hey Anna, can you ask Fargo if he can repair the sink faucet?” Ah yes, I fixed that faucet. “Hey Anna, can you ask Fargo–” You know he’s not your handyman, a plumber or your personal slave, right? I don’t exist merely so you have another way to ask my husband to clean your gutters, fix your PC, and change your oil.
4. You commandeer my hobbies. Firefly, HexBug, certain authors. This isn’t about us having the same hobbies, no, that would be normal. This is about me introducing you to something by asking you for it. You would ask me about it, I’d explain, sharing my excitement, why I want it, and you would go out and buy a bunch of it for yourself. I was a little child asking mom for a toy, which even then she bought and kept for herself. I got my first HexBug 2 years ago. You’ve been collecting them for years, ever since as a child when I introduced you to them. I was in high school. 16 years ago.
5. Birthdays. Just everything about birthdays. One year, I exaggeratedly pretended to forget it was your birthday while preparing to hand you a carefully picked out gift. You yelled at me. I was called out by you and your friends for being a villain and upsetting you. Why would this bother you so much? You regularly forget mine and El’s birthdays. Like, for real, not a joke. Not acting. Receipts you forgot to remove proving the “gifts” were randomly grabbed off of Walmart’s shelves were purchased that same day. Gifts that still had their price tags on them. Birthday cards still in their original plastic, let alone unsigned. We hand made you gifts, for example the Tarot card banner that has never been put up, despite grommets being installed. We personalized our gifts to your interests. I had a journal engraved for you. Shame I “forgot” your birthday that one time, despite it being on a hard-to-forget federal holiday, and being scheduled on my phone, at the time with a 24 hour alert. Don’t worry, I’ve turned that off.
6. You cannot communicate with anyone. Hilarious story; this one time, for my birthday, I received 3 cakes! …because nobody could be bothered to tell anyone else what they were getting. One of them was a giant doughnut, specifically a Bavarian cream, a known favorite of mine. I don’t know what it tasted like because everyone ate it, assuming I had some already. Nobody asked me. I was given excuses, not apologies, but I was expected to forgive. I mean, why does it matter? There was still plenty of the other two cakes left. Even now, I cannot expect a message I have given to you to reach Karl, or for Karl to pass a message on to you. Do you still insist I never told you about the leak in our ceiling every time Karl takes a shower? There’s a pretty big hole now. Fargo Cut away the moldy drywall and pulled the insulation away. Maybe we can fix it from underneath, on our own, since we can’t get you guys interested in helping or even caring.
7. You play favorites with your children. This is despite not caring about us at all. There is no other way to put this. I don’t remember why I was upset, or whose office we were sitting in the lobby of, but I remember you telling me I was your favorite. Is this because you only had El to hold on to our father? Is this because I look like my father? Either way, it is disturbing, and even at the time I had received no comfort from the statement. You know who else told me at that time that I was their favorite? James Raymond Wilsonsage.
8. You believe Jana over people who have never lied to you. She said I unfriended her on Facebook because she used the bathroom downstairs. This is false. She is referring to the times I decided to lock the downstairs bathroom because we repeatedly asked her to do two things; clean her period blood off the toilet seat when she was done, and not to flush tampons. I know you have never lived in a house with a septic system before (aside from the decades you lived in the house on Dollar’s Corner, and the over a decade in this house, but that doesn’t really count, does it?) Perhaps you didn’t know; tampons do not dissolve, and can cause major issues for septic plumbing systems. This is why we buy Scott brand toilet paper, because it is septic safe. Additionally, the lower portion of this house drains through a pump and grinder system, and tampons are too large to fit through the grinder, so they sit just this side of it, eventually causing clogs that require the grinder to be disassembled. It’s a shitty process that we like to avoid, especially since you can smell the back-up, and the grinder can get so loud when it is dry that it can be hard to sleep. It only gets dry when it is clogged. So, we asked her to stop, and she did not, so I started locking the door.
Now, I cannot say for certain that this is the inciting action that lead to me unfriending someone who was never my friend. She would yell at me for doing laundry when it had *only* been a *week* since my last load. She bullied me about the nature of my psychosomatic allergies. When she moved out of the downstairs room, we were left to clean up numerous uncapped needles, dog shit and moldy old food. She would regularly use mentholated products despite knowing I have an extreme allergy. She has also caused Fargo and I to be excluded from traditional family outings because she “didn’t think we would be interested.” Nobody asked us. She yelled at me for being ungrateful for being gifted an expansion pack but not the base game, because I “should be more clear” when listing both on a wish list. I’m Sorry, but I thought you were gamers and understood “expansion packs,” and “DLC” usually require the base game, which was also on the list, so it should have been obvious I didn’t own it.
She is wrong about language, both in the historical context and the modern one. We frequently use “they” in a singular context when referring to a person when we do not know *their* gender. See? Like that. Oh, and historical? Read some goddamn fucking Shakespeare. “There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend.” Gee, sure looks like a singular they to me. Additionally, language evolves. Consider computer, automotive, television, robot… none of these words would mean a damn thing to Shakespeare. Stating that El should not self-identify as non-binary because “words don’t work that way,” is not just factually wrong, it is 100% transphobic. Jana doesn’t like El because they want to be what they are, not what you, or she thinks they should be.
But I guess I am just being petty about someone using a bathroom when I unfriend a toxic, abusive, and occasionally *literally poisonous* individual. How about the time she told me a woman could never disguise herself as a man? She’s a transphobic bitch, and you chose that abusive ass as your friend. You want to live with that hate when your own child is trans. You know, the child you look over the top of to ask where I was.
9. You blamed social workers for your children being taken away, when no one had spoken to one until 4 years after you signed away your parental rights. I am a *big* fan of Lilo and Stitch, Stitch as a character, and the subsequent franchise. As such, I own a lot of Stitch themed merchandise; shirts, skirts, pjs, patches, pins… I keep most of the pins and the patch on my jacket. If we are at home with no one to hear this tale but me, or out on the town where you can tell someone new, inevitably, when someone draws your attention to my numerous blue alien dog pins, you have to say that you couldn’t watch the film. Because it had a social worker in it, and you were traumatized when your children were “taken away.” You watched The Watchmen. It has a rapist in it. Weren’t you traumatized because your daughter was molested? No? That’s just as accurate to *your* trauma, cause it didn’t happen to you. But you were there for some of that and participated even. Most people don’t have threesomes with their children. I remember. I was there.
I don’t entirely blame you. A large part of my trauma is from a man who was thrown in jail for “10 years,” let out early on good behavior, stalked me to my therapists office (BTW, that’s how I found out he was out), and made sure to tell everyone that had a chance to speak to me that he “forgave me.” Like I did something wrong. I was manipulated into the position, and James used your loyalty and awe to manipulate you. But you were an adult, and had years where you could have said something to someone. When you were asked multiple times to help you could have done something, said something. Instead you just stare, like a deer in headlights. Why didn’t I tell you? You. Fucking. Knew. Why didn’t I tell you? I already did, you were there for it, so I already knew you would do nothing.
I received your text message on the 4th of July, 2023. I deemed this to be a lie in extremely poor taste, and to prevent you from being tempted to insult me again, I have blocked your number and I have deleted our communication history. Whatever you were to me, it does not matter anymore. You have hurt me too much, and I will not allow you to hurt me again. You do not love me. Love is not some word to use when you feel bad about making someone angry and want them to like you again. Love is caring. Love is wanting the best for someone. Love is not gaslighting, arguing and love-bombing cycles. Leave me alone.
Never again,
Anna Holiday
To Karl Krehbiel,
Take this with all the pain, anger and finality that is intended.
While I have determined that you are not the worst of my childhood villains, you definitely were a villain. I am not interested anymore in educating you or explaining to you the wrongs you have done, or how your opinions are not valid. You will revert to saying horrible things about “diversity politics” the very second you *think* I am out of earshot. I am giving up on pronouns, women’s rights, racism, sexism, trans rights, children’s rights and all the other things that you are wrong about. You do not deserve a second more of my time.
This letter here is me scrubbing this shit off of my shoe. I am done pretending you could ever be a decent person. I am done with you. You are disgusting to the core. Leave me alone. Do. Not. Speak. To. Me. Ever.
Fuck off,
Anna Holiday
To Jana Ford,
Take this with all the pain, anger and finality that is intended.
You have always been wrong, you will never learn, and I am done trying to explain ANYTHING to you. Do not speak to me again. Even my cats hate you.
Fuck off,
Anna Holiday
On the Sunday following my birthday the letter I had addressed to Mel (Melvin Krehbiel) was left on the windshield of my van. What follows is a transcription of that letter, word for word.
I find regret that you have chosen a path of causing pain. You have chosen to be cruel.
I will continue to advocate for the owner of the house. Continued bullying will be resisted. And make no mistake, you are a bully.
I am happy to help you find a new place to live, as you have burnt your relationships in pam’s house. It is not healthy for you here.
It distresses me that communication with EL is so poor that this is the first I have heard of their -current- medical issues as related by you. Perhaps that contributes to the priorities you have mentioned.
Your remaining relationship with Pam is Tenant and Landlord. You should remember that. Your relation to Karl is, I understand, none. With Jana, I have no knowledge.
Your relationship with me is damaged. You show awareness of this. Ignore Karl if you must. Bully pam or Jana aT your peril. As per your evident need, I reply writing without contact. One last thing: If I only see or hear from you when you are in distress, that too is an unhealthy relationship.
go to page seven if you want to reply, go to page 32 if you burn the letter. MK
This letter has been photographed, documented and will be burned. I will be making plans to move, but I will not do so with Melvin’s assistance, as that would lead to both permanent unpayable debt and them having knowledge of my new living situation. If I am a bully, they would have no reason to want to know where I live, so this should work out fine for the path they have chosen.
This will be a long process, and I may end up moving to some place I can sleep in my van, because we do not have any financial aid.