“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist .” – The Usual Suspects

I was being hit from all directions that winter. The troubles with Shane were only coupled by my troubles with my sister. She was now the executrix of the will. Despite everything I had said to the estate lawyer, despite trying to get a lawyer myself by that summer, despite screaming at the top of my lungs that she was actively trying to ruin my life, no one listened.

She was addicted to cocaine and when my mother was alive had done everything in her power to make me unwelcome in my parent’s home, the house I happened to be living in at the time. I missed that house. I dreamt about going back there so many times that year, to sit on my own bed, to lay across my black carpet or lounge out by the pool, to feel connected to the sense of family that I was losing quickly– I just wanted to be home. Those days were over though. I had to be content with being home with Shane now, for he was all I had.

My sister attempted more underhand things with her power as the executrix that winter and early spring. She was low-balling me on the price of the house and when I didn’t want to settle for the measly sum that she pretended the house was worth, she found more loopholes. Apparently, in order to make sure that nothing was stolen from the estate in a normal situation, there was a law that stated the executrix could decide who had access to the home, who was able to have a key to it and whether or not any other people could be there without her presence. She basically owned the home without paying me now.

She was going around from family member to family member, telling everyone how lucky she was to inherit so much and making up reasons why I didn’t deserve anything. She spent money from the estate on buying things for the home– things she could use while living in the home and things I could never even glance at without her permission.

Two of my aunts had tried to talk to her, but she just continued to repeat that I didn’t deserve a thing and that she would be better off if I were dead and that she never wants to speak to either of them because they are trying to get her to treat me with respect. I was not worthy of respect in her eyes, nor in Shane’s at times. There were times I cried myself to sleep, knowing that no one gave a damn about me only to have dreams of being safe in my childhood home. Sometimes it was just better to stay asleep.

I spoke up, I spoke out but no one wanted to back me up.

She was doing drugs and she was getting scary to the point of threatening people.

When her lawyer told me I was not allowed to have a key to the house, I lost a bit of myself that day. My parents would never want me banned from the home I grew up in– maybe my mother had kicked me out on the streets, but my father would be livid and equal parts heartbroken.

That summer, I had turned down getting a lawyer because as angry as I was I could never sue my last living family member. Now though, since she wanted me out of her life and banned from my parent’s home, I had nothing to lose.



I was so ready to do it. I had names and numbers– I could follow through on it. I could stand up for my rights and against the financial abuse that was been lashed out upon me.

Then, I received the following letter from my cousin, a rough and tumble sort of person who wouldn’t back down like my aunts, but who also seemed to want me to play nice with my sister. He lived about 300 miles away, so he didn’t really know what’s going on up in New York– or what the past history between me and my sister consisted of up to that point. I tried so hard to cooperate with him, but I just wanted to grab him and make him see my sister for who she really was.

JUSTIN: I think its time for you and Melissa to work out your differences. I can mediate if you want. Breaks my heart to know what is going on between you two.

ME: Justin, I know you want everything to get fixed between me and Melissa, but I don’t think you know the whole story. She has been doing coke for years now and has been stealing from the family for years. She sees me as nothing more than an obstacle in her way of getting more money or property that she can sell for drugs. She was supposed to move to Florida with her boyfriend, but they broke up because he didn’t want her doing coke at his place anymore. My sister was the reason I ended up moving out of the house in the first place a year and a half ago because she was threatening me. I found out she did drugs, had full proof after finding it in her coat and she did everything in her power to make sure I didn’t tell anyone. It was about that time that Aunt Shelly tried to get help for me, because I almost had to check into a shelter before my friend took me in, and my mother was going to give me some money to get my feet on the ground (because at that time she had just bought Melissa a new 25k SUV and gave her 13k dollars which Melissa spent on drugs), but then Melissa threatened Shelly and told them both that “[I] doesn’t deserve as much as me, she doesn’t deserve anything.” She didn’t give a shit that I was sleeping on couches and practically homeless, she pretty much told them that she didn’t care if I died and she would be happy if I did. Then, when my mother died, she told me that I wasn’t welcome in HER house and I couldn’t even stay there during the wake and funeral. About a week after my mother died, she was walking around telling Shelly that she was so lucky to have inherited everything, without seeming upset at all about losing my mother. Shelly tried to mediate and Melissa told Shelly that she wished she was dead. And all the power that my mother gave her in the will has gone to her head. You can talk to her if you want but she is not in her right mind. Many people have tried to have an intervention with her but she’s cut all of them out of her life. I can’t talk to her because she’s ignoring me, not answering emails or phone calls and promises to call the cops if I stop by the house at all. I wish things would work out but I am all out of ideas. She really doesn’t care about family anymore, just money and drugs. She doesn’t talk to anyone in the family and threatens those who dare talk to her. I don’t know what to do at this point, but if you want to talk to her, as you have not been cut out of her life yet, I think maybe she would listen to you.

JUSTIN: She wouldn’t dare threaten me. I have talked to her in the recent past about making you two reconcile and at first she was resistant but did come around. I don’t know what it would take for the two of you to reconcile but i would do anything to make it happen. There is so much bad blood, but you two are family and you don’t have much of that left. I don’t know what it would take for you to move past all the shit that has happened but I know we need to start somewhere. I love both of you and want to get this fixed.

ME: I don’t know what to tell you, Justin. I haven’t done anything to her except get in the way of her drugs and money, the two things she cares about– the only things she cares about. She told one of our aunts that the world would be better if I was dead because then she would have inherited everything. How am I supposed to fix that? What am I supposed to say, ‘sorry I’m alive’? She needs professional help and rehab, and she wouldn’t get it for the boyfriend that she supposedly wanted to spend the rest of her life with, why would she get it for me, someone who she wishes dead, or her aunts, both of which (Aileen and Shelly) she told never to speak to her again? I don’t know what to do. I honestly wish things were different, but how do you reason with an addict? She chose drugs over her own family time and time again, and she has no intention of stopping. If anything, her problem has only gotten worse since she’s inherited a lot of funds to further her addiction. She won’t answer my emails, won’t talk to me on the phone, when her lawyer tried to call me in for a meeting to mediate between us two she started screaming at me over the table and when she was finally gone and stormed out of the room the lawyer said he saw my point of view over hers and thanked me for keeping my cool when she was screaming at me. What am I supposed to do?

There was just no arguing with her. Or with him at that rate.

My whole family was gone, I was the only person to walk away from that mess with a clear head and my sister was just dragging me through the debris one more time, only this time, for the grand finale, cocaine was her drug of choice not just alcohol, and she also wanted me dead instead of just being emotionally abusive while drunk.

He continued his Facebook messages about how I was wrong and how he just wanted to fix things:



JUSTIN: I think you’re wrong. I spoke with her and she seems fine. She doesn’t want you dead. She wants to resolve this too. I can be a mediator if you want. I can fly up there one weekend if you want and we can all get together and work this out. She told me that as executor she could collect 10 percent if she wanted to but isn’t. So maybe she isn’t as money hungry as you think. She has also spent 36k paying off debts and some other things. She is also putting a lot of money in the house. It was in pretty bad shape. There was a water leak which left black mold all over the place. I just don’t think she is as bad as you think she is. She wants to work things out too. I tried calling you last night, I’ll try again tonight because I hate typing, my fingers are getting tired from trying to type all this from my phone. Let me know what you want out of this and what would make you happy. I don’t think just because she is offering you a payout doesn’t necessarily mean you need to accept it unless you want to. She did say they would use an appraiser and not just make a number up.

ME: I’m not making this stuff up, Justin. If you had been here the past two years you would understand.

JUSTIN: I’m not saying that you are making anything up. I just want to try to help to make things better.

ME: Things can’t get better with her, because she is a user and a manipulative liar. She says she’s taking money from the estate to fix up the house, but that money is supposed to be split evenly between us and not just used for a house she has clearly stated is hers and one which I can’t enter. She was the one who smoked in the house and let her animals pee in it for the past two years after she got me kicked out of the house, and now she’s using money from the estate to fix up her house while she was the one who broke it in the first place, while I’m out here sleeping on couches and not having enough money to even eat. What about that seems fair? I’ve been calling and emailing her for weeks just so I could enter the house (and honestly, the fact that I have to get her permission to enter the house that was given to both of us and that half my stuff is still in is absolutely ridiculous). She’s ignored all attempts to get in touch with her, and I was unable to get stuff from the house that I needed to go away with this weekend. Thus, I had to spend MORE money just to replace my stuff that she’s basically holding for hostage at the moment. And she’s not “fine”. I was there when she was melting the drugs with her spoon, I found the baggies of white powder in her coat, I’ve seen her stealing money for years from people’s pocketbooks in the house so that she could score drugs. I heard her laughing after she kicked me to the floor and was kicking me in the stomach while I was pretending to play dead just so she would stop kicking me, while she was saying shit like “You’re not unconscious, stop faking.” She’s been threatening members of the family and the day after my mother died she told me pointblank, “If you piss me off, you’re going to be the next one we bury in this family”. Also, the day my mother died, she told [grandpa] “When you die, I’m getting all your money too, right?” How can someone say that to someone who just lost ANOTHER daughter? I’m not going to make nice with someone that deranged and abusive. And you asking her if things are fine, since she’s a damn good liar and has fooled so many people thus far, isn’t really the definitive proof needed. Of course she’s going to lie to you. She’s lied to everyone. And in the end, several people have come forth (Aileen, Shelly and Carlos) to tell me that I was right. How is talking to her going to make anything better?



He never responded to that last one.

There was no sense bashing my head against the wall trying to get through to him. I was so exhausted from spending so much of the past few months crying over the fact that people were trying to force feed a relationship with her to me while finding out I didn’t have equal access to my family home.

I couldn’t go there anymore and if anything happened between me and Shane, I would be out on the streets for sure this time. Everything with him felt so much more real– we had to make it work now. I was an heir to quite a bit of money and property, but so close to losing everything while the executrix of the will traipses about freely. I was less a part of the family, less of my parent’s daughter. I was nothing in the grand scheme of things. No one would listen.

I had no choice but to accept the low-ball price on it, I thought. To get anything at all, I would have to accept any offer. I just wasn’t ready to sell that last part of myself yet. I wasn’t ready to rip the one last tether to my family that I had left.

Added to this was the fact that because of the passage of a new law in New York, I came to realize that since I had been in the psychiatric hospital I was now disqualified from inheriting my father’s gun collection. He had been an avid hunter and owned rare and expensive rifles and handguns. He made me promise to take care of them when he was gone. They were currently with a friend who had a gun license, but I had been working on the process of getting a license and getting them turned over to me before I was homeless and before everything else happened. When I found out that I was barred from inheriting them, I became incredibly pissed at Shane. He was the one who had called the cops that fateful day and at the time I believed it was only because he wanted to discredit me and stop me from speaking to anyone about his abusive behavior.

I laid in bed the day I heard of the passage of the new bill, too depressed to get out or do much of anything. Shane came home that day from work, bringing me home a balloon to make me feel better. At the time, I saw it as nothing more than his way of saying, ‘I’m sorry I cried wolf and turned you into a second-class citizen by taking away your second amendment– Here! Have a balloon!’ but now I wonder if it was my own actions that led to this anyway. I only had myself to blame there and there have been times I was glad not to have easy access to lethal weaponry.



I worked on selling my car instead. It had become a lawn ornament because my sister refused to sign it back into my name. It was only in my mother’s name because we had put it under her insurance– but I had paid for it completely. I wasn’t sure if I was technically supposed to be selling the car since it wasn’t in my name and it was therefore part of the estate, but at that point I didn’t care and the person who bought it for junk didn’t either.

Shane tried to help me deal with my sister as best he could. He went to the lawyers with me, did research with me and when I couldn’t stop crying, he would hold me and make me my favorite goopy eggs or crepes. When the lawyer told me I couldn’t contact him or ask him direct questions because my sister had demanded no one speak to him except the executrix, Shane called him an asshole with me. I had a cheerleader and the little bit of support that I needed.

He had a limit to how much of the lawyer and accountant nonsense he could take though. One day, when he was driving me to my accountant, he was getting morose about a friend of his who had died back when they were kids that he still thought about from time to time. I was too busy trying to think of what to tell my accountant about my beneficiary forms, so he didn’t think I was listening enough. He scoffed, “It’s not like you’d understand.”

“I understand death very well, actually.” I told him, suddenly coming back to the conversation that was going on in the truck. I couldn’t believe he had said that to me. “I’m on my way to handle this stuff only because I understand death all too fucking well.”

“Forget it.” He said, but by then we were already pulling into the accountant’s office. “Just forget it.”

I rolled my eyes as we both got out of the car. I couldn’t take him right now. “Shane, I am really stressed out right now. If you’re going to help me, then do so. If you just want to fight then just leave me alone.”

He turned around and headed back to the truck.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’m leaving you alone. Like you want.” He said. I muttered whatever, but didn’t actually expect him to drive away. He left me standing there– completely without a ride home and about twenty miles away from where we lived, just before an important meeting where I was already stressed out enough as it was.

Yet, I knew that it was mostly my fault. I had told him to leave– so he did.

I decided I was going to be a big girl then and there though. I was going to handle my shit.

I went in to talk to the accountant, switched the IRA from my mother’s name into my own, set up some income plan from the new IRA, set up a new beneficiary and generally get things kosher over there. I lost some money due to not having done it sooner, which sucked because it wasn’t actually that hard to do once I talked to the accountant truthfully about what I wanted to do with my money. I was so afraid to make the wrong move that I didn’t make any move at all and lost about 2k in the process. I was slowly learning the hard way that I had to speak up more for what I wanted and be brave enough to go get it.

It sucked that a lot of these big decisions were things that I didn’t understand. In my head, I was still a kid. My family was absolutely chaotic at times, but it still sheltered me from dealing with a lot of things I was beginning to deal with now—lawyer, money, estate, IRAs, taxes. My head was going to explode from all the stress of learning everything by fire.

The accountant waxed on poetically about investment capital net gains and percentage rates of stuff and things and this number and that number and why this is a Good Thing– and I was just really fucking lost by the end of his diatribe and just nodding in what I believed were the right key parts of his long winded speech. He was a great guy, he worked with my dad for many years and seemed to be taking care of me really well, but I was scared I wasn’t cut out for making all these decisions.

It didn’t matter though. They had to be made.

It was like I was on a tightrope, balancing all these new things and all it would take to topple me over is a good gentle breeze. It didn’t help that I couldn’t really count on anyone else. I felt like I either did everything absolutely 100% correct all the time or I was dead in the water.

I could only hope I did the right thing and made the right choices.

One of the choices I was most proud about was choosing a Socially Responsible Investing plan where I was able to pick and choose what kind of businesses I didn’t want my money going towards (either by their name or by the kinds of things that they’ve been written up for– I chose environmental issues, workplace/labor relations issues and human rights issues). The last plan he had drawn up for me had me giving a large share of my money to be invested into BP which just made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to give money to people who were actively screwing me or the planet over. Why bother doing business that way?

The plan would also kicks me back some income each month to help with bills and such, so it was better than the lofty ‘when I retire after I’ve lived through the next few decades then I’ll have money’ plans my accountant thought I would like at first. He obviously didn’t understand my situation until I explained myself, which was also a lesson for me. I had to thoroughly explain myself to people or they just wouldn’t understand. I was still just trying to make it through the year without winding up dead.

When I got out of the accountant’s office, I realized I had made all the tough decisions by myself and I somehow managed to make it through the entire meeting without throwing up from fear. Though, now I had no way home and no phone with which to call and apologize while begging Shane for a ride home. I just ended up walk, hitchhiking a bit and then illegally riding the train back to the station closest to Shane’s house.



On the train, I just sat and thought about all the other things I needed to do in order to get my life in order. I had to go through the process of selling my family home to my sister, moving all my things still left in my parent’s home to somewhere stable, work on cleaning everything from the fire at my landlord’s house from months prior, file my taxes for the first time, buy a new car, try to understand what forms I needed to own a car ( my mother used to just say ‘here’s your blah-blah-blah card, you need to keep that in your car’ and handle all the paperwork– I was a bit sheltered in that respect), maybe work up to buying a home in the future with or without Shane, settling down (preferably with Shane) and just becoming stable for the first time in years.

Shane was not pleased when I finally made it back to his house that night. He didn’t know where I was for hours and had been expecting me to at least call him. He never thought I could make it back to the house without a phone or money. He just ignored me for a while, making it very obvious that he didn’t want me there because I had disrespected him by not needing his presence at the meeting and telling him he could leave if he wanted. I wondered if he was also pissed off I had made up my own mind about my own money.

I figured all I needed those days was one thing to blow me off course, knock me down and destroy me for my life to be fucked. I was so anxious all the time, just knowing I was going to screw something up big time and be paying for it the rest of my life. I hoped it wouldn’t be my choice to trust him, though something told me that was a safe bet.

“I want to write a performance piece where I come out and say to the audience, ‘This is a 25-minute piece I’ve written to describe my thoughts on life’.. and then just headdesk the piano for 25-minutes, filling the auditorium with one long excruciating note.” I wrote on Facebook that night. Life was just utterly fucked sometimes.