A love-story.
I haven’t posted anything about it before, but I need to get i out of my system: One of my cousins has been in a very unhealthy relationship until quite recently. She’s waved a red danger-flag in the air for a couple of years, but because she didn’t have the courage at the time to break off the relationship, it seemed like most of our relatives had sort of… given up on the situation.
Though I had known about her troubles for a while, she would never speak ill of her boyfriend to me until about two months ago, when she called me, crying, and asked me where I was. At the time I was visiting a good friend of mine to help her with some schoolwork, but at both my friend and cousin have known each other for a good number of years, I suggested she come over as well.
Meeting her at the nearby bus-stop, she immediately hugged me, her entire body shaking, and not because of the cold outside, but because of fear and the constant sobs wracking her entire frame.
Now, there are two things you need to know about my cousin, the first is the fact that she’s hardly ever cried in front of me, and when she has it’s been out of sadness, the second is the fact that she, unlike myself, is a very kind person, timid and sweet. She’s never been in a fight, she’s never had to shout out that something isn’t okay, because she’s lived a somewhat normal life. Unfortunately, because of this, she hasn’t built up that sense of self-confidence that would allow her to just say “This isn’t alright, this isn’t good for me”.
For about an hour, an hour and a half, she sat and cried with my friend and I, not talking much, but to tell me, for the first time, in all honesty, how unhappy she had been and how things had gone up and down constantly over the course of those years. That was probably the first time in many years that I felt she put her trust completely in me and it felt like I was finally part of her life again.
It wasn’t more than two weeks after that, thankfully, that she finally broke off everything, moved out of the house where she was staying with her boyfriend and came to my parents, asking if she could rent out the room in the attic. When I heard it, I almost cried. I was so impossibly proud of her, and I still am as I watch her looking for a new apartment, where she can start over and build up her life rather than spending it catering to the needs of someone who would never reciprocate.
I think everyone knows someone who is on a relationship that they feel isn’t right and I also think that, although you shouldn’t give upon trying to help, you shouldn’t try to force the person in question to break it off. If we try to force a victim away from an abuser, whether it’s physical or psychological abuse, they will cling to the last shreds of hope and naivety that exists in their life rather than accept your opinion right away. The only thing to do is to give help and slowly work with them in a way that they can realise, on their own, that they have to do something about the situation.
As I said, I’m impossibly proud of my cousin for her ability to finally shatter her illusion and start to rebuild herself. We’re hardier than most would imagine.
A hate-story
Now for the negative bit. I realised not more than a couple of days ago how much I dislike some of my relatives. First off you’ll need to know a little bit about my family. My family-tree is huge, I really do mean that. I have cousins all over the place, several aunts and uncles on both my mother and my father’s side. Unfortunately I don’t know much about my father’s parents, but I do know a lot about my mother’s parents… My grandmother on my mother’s side is a hopelessly bitter alcoholic who verbally abuses anyone with close relations to my mother because of her own fixed ideas about how things should be. My father’s parents died when I was little, too little to remember them, actually, my grandfather on my mothers side also died without me having ever even met the man (though from what my mother has told me, he wasn’t someone worth meeting anyway) but my grandmother on my mother’s side is alive and kicking… for better or worse.
Now, it seems like her bitterness has been passed on to another of my cousins, a ma in his late thirties whom I’ve always cherished dearly. My respect for him has plummeted this past year, however. Mostly because of how he manipulates his mother and his younger sister to take care of his son as often as he can (this despite the fact that his sister has a daughter of her own as well as an adopted son from her husband’s previous relationship) and when they don’t comply to his will he will call them disloyal and selfish. Not okay. I don’t have much hope for his girlfriend either, for that matter.
Now, this man has his son a few days every other week, but apparently this is soooooo tiring that he has to pawn the poor kid off on someone else while he and his girlfriend spend “quiet evenings at home” which they obviously can’t do on the weeks that the child isn’t there (go figure).
Somehow this just sickens me.
I could go on and on about this kind of behaviour, but seeing as I’m getting tired, I’ll let you know more as the situation unfolds.
In other news, I might be moving within a few months time and, if I’m lucky enough, I might also get a new job quite soon. This might be a good way of balancing up all the negativity I’ve felt lately.
Well, excuse my ramblings, once again. ‘Til next time.
