From Grief to Anger to Sadness and all Parts in Between..

As a child, my world was far different than most. In so many ways, it was like being caught in a hurricane. So long as I could just hover there in the eye, things could be fairly calm. Obviously though, the immediate surroundings were limited and my ability to reach out to others was limited at best. In fact, beyond my classmates at school, the only other people I really had encounters with were family members, such as my cousin.

My fair haired.. blue eyed.. baby faced cousin. Oh how I had felt so inferior to her as an adolescent. She seemed to have just the right hair cut.. while my mother was still trying to cut mine herself... and just the right clothes.. while my mother was guilting me into wearing the most hideous pair of bell.. scratch that.. those things could be strung up in the tower of Notre Dame.. bell bottoms. I remember watching her and her friends. She seemed popular. Dont get me wrong, I had friends too. I just dont think I had really paid myself that much attention.

In high school, we were going to school together again. I got to see her first hand and we were sharing the halls of school again. Now she was smoking and well for the lack of better words, having sex with just about any hormonal male on campus. Our paths in school took two totally divergent courses with hers going into the gutter and mine going a more moderate course. After we graduated, we both went our separate ways and I didnt hear from her for a long, long time.

Fast forward fifteen years.

We both moved back to the same locale. Cousins reunited. We started hanging out. But gosh, I was a little - perplexed? Perhaps as a child, youth gave me a willingness to turn a blind eye to behaviors that now as an adult, I found disturbing at best. Far worse was that as an adult, even older than I, she had not grown past these behaviors at all. If anything, she had acquired even new habits on top of the old. So, rather than being able to bond in a substantial and significant way with her again, I could only handle intermittent contact.

And so then, at some time after that.. I shared a thought regarding her with someone I should not have. She and I had gone out the night before and had dinner and drinks at which time she had been a little concerned that she would be in a bad spot because she had actually had sex with almost all of the male staff. It was the fornication part that was disturbing per se. Rather, it was that she seemed to feel so upset by her own actions and then helpless to control them. That it was sexual was truly symptomatic. I shared this concern and then was paid back ten fold for it.

Actually. It was perceived as ego. I didnt realize there would be a price to pay for that misunderstanding until later but by then it was too late. By then there was no going back.

I love my cousin. I truly do. Even now as word has been filtered to me that she's fallen ill in the last week. A small cell cancer of sorts. My family is telling me she has about six months if this version of chemo theyre trying now does not work. I have spent this past week consumed with a mixture of grief and guilt and anger. My family has huddled around her and they should. Part of me wanders back to the girl i was that had wished to be her so many times. Part of me wants to scream because of all the things that have happened. Part of me wants to hide away, far from them all.