Cousins

I don't know if my brother and sister sometimes feel the same way I find my self feeling most of the time. Growing up, I would have told you that we had a pretty tight-knit family. We even grew up with 3 of our cousins. I mean I got taken around and what-not all through middle and high school. I pretty much felt like that was where I fit. 

For so many reasons that make us look like the dysfunctional rednecks we are, I have come over the past few years to feel that this family is worse than The Family. In fact Mario Puzo couldn't write the Corleones  this way. We make Washington and its politics look like a day in the park. Think a trashy, vulgar, less-restrained version of the Windsors. The minute you turn around someone will be pulling a bag over your head and then stabbing you in the back. 

Not to mention that these 3 cousins became "born-again". This led to many disagreements even about language, what church we went to (we've been going our whole lives, they started in high school and or college), and that alcohol was a demon. Imagine what they'd say reading this and hearing my dirty, blasphemous, mo mouth just flapping away. 

My oldest cousin contacted me tonight. My other cousin had called me a month back, wondering what he had done wrong. My father's mother (who I used to be very close with), is lucky I call her every so often. It's hard to forgive for wounds that you realize have been perpetuated for years, things that you thought were true have turned to lies, and the people who were supposed to love you are the first ones to gnaw on your carcass just to get ahead. So I find it hard to establish any kind of relationship, not only because of this, but also because of me now being out, and finally being OK (being really pretty good), after years of praying and starving and wishing to be different, what kind of relationship do I establish with people who think I'm a sin?  Don't get me wrong, I have to respect them putting themselves out there like that, but I'm still waiting for the knife in my back.