Bratty’s letter came floating in the mail just before my birthday in 2019.  As we recall, in my letter to Bratty I had pointed out that her behavior at Thanksgiving was not about lactose intolerance since she ate at Boston Market the next day.  Unfortunately, Bratty doubled down on her excuse.

She was sorry I was confused so she decided to clarify things for me.  I should have remembered that one time during the Summer of Terror 2.0 she had requested that we go to a vegan restaurant on her birthday.  Therefore I should have known she wanted vegan options at Thanksgiving.  Furthermore, she is lactose intolerant and only lactose intolerant people can determine when they can consume dairy or not.  She said she sometimes gets ‘violently ill for days’ if she consumes dairy (um, that is food poisoning – not lactose intolerance LOL).  And she also clarified that she and her Dad had a ‘tradition’ of going to Boston Market before dropping her off at the airport so she sacrificed herself on that occasion to honor her father.  Bratty also explained to me very specifically that she eats ‘vegan food, fish, and meat substitutes’.  She said that at least 4 times in the letter and just like that – ‘vegan food, fish, and meat substitutes’ because I’m clearly obtuse and require an obnoxious amount of repetition to comprehend a simple request. 

We can note here that Bratty clearly stated that fish was part of her diet.  I actually still have the letter so I am 100% certain.  I highlight this because it comes up again during her next visit to us.  I also showed SO the letter and he said while they’ve gone to Boston Market before he wouldn’t characterize it as a tradition.  He hadn’t wanted to go that day either but did so at Bratty’s request.  

Bratty also wrote in her letter that she sometimes ate dairy to appease other people because she was overly considerate.  She also described feeling very guilty for requesting special accommodations for her so she often just ate what other people wanted.  But I still should have known better (somehow) so Thanksgiving was my fault.  I was pretty sure we really weren’t getting anywhere on this point so I decided to let it go. 

I did write back to Bratty and again tried to establish a good conversational tone – just writing about things going on in my life.  Bratty also wrote back and over the next few weeks letters were ping-ponged back and forth.  Most were short and filled with a lot of small talk but I still felt like it was progress. 

Until one day a longer letter arrived from Bratty.  She started out with describing her struggles at school and she admitted her mental health was not good.  She also admitted that she had felt resentment when SO had brought up the topic of her moving out just before Thanksgiving.  Bratty recalled that SO moved out when she was 14 and she had really needed him during that time but didn’t get to live with him again until she was 17.  She felt like she would never get those years back and that she couldn’t speak to SO about her feelings because he didn’t like to discuss the past.

I was stunned that Bratty opened up to me about this topic.  I showed SO (who was aware that she was struggling with mental health issues) and he was surprised as well.  He said he was always happy to talk to Bratty about anything but Bratty was the one who never wanted to discuss the divorce.

I wrote back to Bratty.  I made sure to validate her feelings and said it made complete sense that difficult emotions were resurfacing.  I also let her know that in my experience with SO he was not hesitant to talk about the past and encouraged her to speak to SO when she was ready.  I told her she was brave to acknowledge that she needed help and encouraged her to continue working with her therapist.  I took almost a page to go through all of this because I didn’t want to minimize the importance of the topic.

I also wrote to Bratty that while she had feelings around moving out we (SO and I) still expected her to follow through with that in the next year.  I learned later that Bratty took offense at this and went silent – no more letters.  A few months later when she had her meltdown with SO she told him that I had told her to ‘just get over it’ which is not at all what I wrote (which SO had seen so he knew that was not accurate).  Looking back, I believe she was trying to manipulate me into letting her stay in our home longer.  Bratty does have a pattern where she ‘tries out’ different versions of victim mentality to elicit sympathy and then manipulate to get what she desires (in this case, to not have to move out).

At the time the letters simply stopped coming, so I had no idea if I had offended Bratty, if she was bored of writing, or busy trying to salvage her post-bac grades.  Unfortunately, Bratty did continue to struggle with the program overall and with her grades, and we’ll see what happens in the next chapter.