[Sean and Althea] Just in case

Hey both of you.

This is probably not the best way to go about this but I’ve had this on my mind lately and it is not like I can send either of you mail. I can’t be guaranteed that Althea would read a letter or that she is even still in Ohio and I haven’t had Sean’s address in years. So, this is it. Sorry.

Even worse because I can just about 100% guarantee that whatever family is still in either of your lives would not know about this Substack and certainly would not direct you to it. Odd. If I’m such a horrible person (I’m definitely a mediocre mother and light on the social skills in general, but horrible?) then you would think they’d want you to see evidence of that from the horse’s mouth — and if you needed told, I’m the horse. But for some reason everyone wants me shut up and shut out. Now why would that be? But here I am. Hopefully you find me on your own.

And if you do:

I’m at that age where health shit starts happening. I am not aware of anything immediately threatening to my life, but there are some things going on. I have no reason to believe they won’t get worse. Right now it’s uterine fibroids and probable type 2 diabetes. The fibroids are probably no big deal unless I end up sick from the anemia they lead to. The T2D is a different matter. And if I’ve got that — I probably do — then heart disease isn’t far behind. Or stroke; I get migraines and I sometimes develop bouts of high blood pressure. Seems to happen most when I’m the most stressed.

If I just wink out at some random point in the near future then a whole source of your past stories and family history will wink out with me. So I am going to try to make it a priority to put that information together for you. I can’t promise anything because I’ve got some sort of attention-deficit crap going on. But it’s on the agenda. My INTENTION is to have a full set of photos for each of you, hopefully captioned on the backs. Actual photos. Not just digital files.

Sean, I had negatives from your entire babyhood as well and then your fucking grandmother lost them or threw them away or something. She could not understand why I was angry about that. I hope you have never wondered why she and I are no longer speaking to one another. It was her idea, but only because she beat me to it. But I do have a lot of photos. I don’t think I have everything leading up to you going to live with her, but I’ve got most of it.

Althea, I have almost no negatives for you because most of your photos are digital. There are some exceptions. I do have those negatives, only because you came along well after Sean’s grandmother tore my life apart. The rest of it needs to be translated to print photos. I will work on that.

I’ll probably want to write out some stories and things as well. I’ll try to look at it from your points of view: what would you even want to know?

I have to be realistic. This may all just be me projecting. If you gave two shits about me or my side of the family then I’d be hearing from you. I didn’t care about that shit when I was your age either. I thought I did, but I was too easily distracted. And I didn’t have the anger issues with my parents that you have with me (I had some, but they weren’t the same and were not as intense). So who knows whether any of this will ever matter.

But someone from the family might want that stuff. You never know. I cannot vouch for who might end up with my things and I have no idea how you’d even find them. So if you needed another reason to get back in touch with me while I’m still around to make the decisions, here’s your fucking reason.

My website at danaseilhan dot com will always have some sort of up-to-date contact information. It may only be an email address. It will be a postal address whenever possible, though I will have to be careful as I am on my own now and don’t need to be stalked by crazy people. Whatever, it’s there and you can’t say you didn’t know unless you also want to admit you never looked.

Up to you. It’s out of my hands.

A postscript: I don’t want either of you deciding my care if I end up incapacitated. At this point, I don’t know who would decide my care and that’s something else I have to figure out. But I’m trying to envision two people who didn’t even blink when I went homeless making choices for me if I’m comatose or physically incapable and it’s giving me the screaming meemies. No thank you. It’ll be sorted some other way. And for the record? I never would have done that to you. Whatever else my faults or issues may be.

I am not sure I like you right now. But I love both of you.

Mom