After your visit for my 50th birthday it was clear that the only hope of arresting our growing disconnection was to address it with truth. I knew the chances were low, but your narratives and resulting distance were hurting me so deeply that I was willing to take any chance to have connection with you again before it was too late. Knowing this in my heart is why I am at peace now, no matter who of you – even all of you – thinks my words are laughable. I don’t laugh at you all, I just have compassion and sympathy for you with your unprocessed anguish which causes your internal and external conflicts.
As was skilfully put to me, it is not me that is so despised from being the target of all of that repressed, misdirected pain. The real me is unknown to you all, through your choice, because since 20 when I did not to return to the farm you’ve preserved your fragile union by projecting onto me an almost villainous persona fueled by a collective and fierce avoidance of truth. Even before then the harsh home environment made it very challenging for me to undertake normal adolescent development – afterall, being the butt of the joke and being laughed at by the whole family is a situation I became well acquainted with from childhood through to adulthood.
No wonder I am an enigma to you.
Your more recent self-loathing-induced expressions of racism towards me, and therefore us, was already challenging enough to forgive. But now that so little care was shown to us as my wife battled cancer these past 18 months, the callousness of your embittered behaviour is laid bare to a point to be unforgivable.
Since I will no longer make myself available in any form for you all to project that bitter anger towards, I introduce Scarecrow Brett, an AI artistic expression of your manifestation of me that was and always will be available to you to avoid uncomfortable truths and the need to take responsibility for your behaviours and actions.
I can’t help you any more than I already have, and you have finally killed within me the desire to try. I’ve saved you in the past, but as has always been the case, only you can find the peace you have been searching for.
You transcribed this passage and sent it to me, omitting the final two lines because they did not fit your narrative of me while deep down you know I have done the work to save myself and have become the man I was never shown how to be and who you will never know.
“We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.” President Franklin Roosevelt’s 4th Inauguration speech, as WWII drew to an end (he died before the atomic bombs were dropped.)
© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2026
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