epistle #1: narcissus

[i'm starting a series of letters to people with whom i have unfinished business. think of this one as the first letter of magnolia to the jerkfaces, if you're inclined to use biblical analogies. and why not lead the series off with a good old-fashioned dose of all-american vitriolic rage?]

dear narcissus:
well, well, well. i have been waiting for nearly half my life to unload on you. you've always thought you were just this great upstanding person, haven't you? i mean, you lord yourself around like you do. but no matter how many times life has come to you and said, hey, big boy, don't you realize you've fucked this up?, you just laugh it off and go right along the same path. whatever, right? someone will bail you out, just like last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.

in the words of ed helms from the hangover, you're... such a bad person! like, all the way through to your core! you are a selfish, cheap, nasty person who has no regard for anyone but himself. you were so incredibly hateful to me from the time i was seventeen until i woke up and realized that, hey, i don't ever have to talk to you again as long as i live. the last time i saw you, which my god, i tried SO hard to avoid, you were, even in the few minutes i was subjected to you, nothing but awful.

and the best part? you have no idea how horrible you are. you think that because you think something is funny, no matter at whose expense the laughs come, it is just objectively funny. no one's ever allowed to be hurt, offended or anything like that. hell, it was just a joke. the way you can blithely dispense scathing cruelties would be admirable if you weren't a real person. i kinda wish i'd invented your character in my writing. you'd be one hell of a super-villain. the smallest errors - turning away from the stove with the burner on, for example - would send you into fits of i can't BELIEVE you could EVER do something like that? what's WRONG with you? at the time, i thought you were just high-strung. looking back? you're an abuser. and the worst kind: an emotional abuser.

i still don't know how you've convinced another woman to take up with you. the only reason the last one stayed around so long is that the two of you had kids. i still remember what she said to me when she finally shook you off. i saw how you refused to put up with the way he treated you. that mortified me, especially with two of her children in the room to see how i was basically being credited with the death of their parents' marriage. but if that's what it took, then i'm glad. and i never even told the full truth to either one of you about how much i hate you.

yeah, that's right, hate. you are a venal, shallow, small-hearted skinflint of a man, one who seems to take unnatural pleasure in hurting others. if someone told me you died tomorrow, i would be relieved for the few members of your family for whom i still care, because they would be shut of you and your terrible, reprehensible behavior. you are painfully immature and totally unconcerned about your lack of adult skills. you're the living embodiment of the grasshopper from that old fable, thinking that you can live off your parents' largesse forever. 'course, you've come damn close; you outlived your father, and your mother's not longed for this world. you've managed to bleed them dry for sixty-plus years now. why not keep going?

you, sir, are a bastard. plain and simple. and with that, i officially remove you from my life.

[ooh, DAMN, did that feel good! this will have to happen again.]