Day 7

Thoughts lead back to her home situation. She was currently paying rent for a room in an apartment she was in with her aunt and she was helping her cousin rent a new place in turn downtown. Without her help financially with the place with her aunt, her cousin would not have been able to leave with peace of mind to rent the new place. While her cousin insisted the new place was theirs to share, she didn't really push to put any of her personality or things there beyond some clothing and toiletries, because she believed her cousin really needed to have a place of her and truly experience that so she could understand what it meant to be on her own.

She had been on her own for so long, she appreciated having use of the toilet and having a space to call one's own, and only felt it was a fitting gift to not intrude too much into her cousin's new place. Her cousin would be nearby, but if there were any issues, she could easily get in a cab or on the train and be there in minutes to check in on her or even stay overnight if her cousin was having a bad night. Her cousin had multiple health issues, but was fairly independent, just needed that extra insurance in case her cousin needed anything.

She was proud of her cousin, who had also just started going back to school after a decades long absence. She could see the independence growing in her cousin, and she was very proud and happy for her. She knew her cousin needed this and deserved it. Her hope was the co-dependence issues would lighten considerably once her cousin got a good taste of going back to school and having her own place, that it would snap her back to her true reality of where she should have been all along and get out there in the world, socialize, build relationships, and live her life without being at the mercy of family members who used guilt and obligation to control her cousin.

When she would come home, her dog would be in her aunt's room, so she would have no choice but to call the dog, who by now was old and couldn't jump up or down from furniture easily. The dog had to be lifted or carried. One time she came home and called out to the dog and didn't hear anything. Her aunt was in the kitchen, bustling about. She saw the dog staring at her from her aunt's open bedroom door. The dog was on the bed but could not climb down. She had the dog's coat in her hand, and put it on the dog and picked the dog up and put her down on the floor, and walked out.

Her aunt was surprised to see her in the room and waited for her to leave with the dog. Once her cousin came home, her aunt complained about being surprised about seeing anyone in her room.

When she got home from walking the dog and picking up dog supplies like wee wee pads and snacks, she was immediately greeted by her cousin, who informed her that going into the aunt's room was a no-no, and that she had essentially 'frightened' the poor aunt, who had emphasized to the cousin about almost having a heart attack.

She was unsure why her cousin would even bother stating anything about this, considering that her cousin knew how dramatic her aunt could be. The aunt made it sound like she had simply sashayed in there and made it her home and hung out with the dog, when everything was done under a minute - she hadn't even secured the dog's coat with the velcro, simply put it on and picked the dog up and put down in one fell swoop.

She just stood still, as she was still in the process of taking her coat off when her cousin relayed the story. And she could only sigh and reply, "Well, I had made noise coming in to the house, had even made a noise for the dog to come to me and she hadn't, so I followed to see where she was, heard your mom in the kitchen, and went into the room because the dog was staring at me from the bed which is JUST inside the bedroom door."

"Did you have to put her coat on? You could have just grabbed her and gotten out of the room," her cousin said. So it was her fault. Again. How stupid of her to look for her dog and go take her for a fucking walk. Everything was a drama as far as the aunt was concerned, who had no job, no man and no life, so would basically make it her business to stir up everybody else who actually had lives and things to do. How easily she could make her cousin, an otherwise sane and smart grown woman, a fucking puppet who would become transformed into an anxious furtive unrecognizable creature who cowered in the darkness and would allow her mother to bully her until she finally would snap and let unleash her anger which would give her a break a couple of days from the annoying aunt but never did solve the problem, it would just repeat, endlessly, as it had been this way for years.

This is why she found it so vitally important that her cousin went back to school and got a place she could call her own. She had to reinforce to her long-suffering that she did not need to put up with familial abuse and did not have to cater to anyone's ignorance, loneliness or fear. If her cousin's mother got too stupid, the cousin could escape, and decide whether or not to pick up the phone when her mother would call (and you could bet she would if she didn't hear or see anything or her in an hour). Her cousin disliked her mother's behavior but she also was used to it, and knew this was the mother's way of showing care.

Meanwhile, this left her as the odd one out, and the cousin would act as the buffer when the aunt was displeased about something and had something to say. The aunt had long worn out her welcome as far as she was concerned, but was continuing to help pay her rent in order to continue having a convenient spot near her work place. However, she didn't have much freedom, could not invite people over, and was not allowed to linger in the living room or kitchen. The kitchen was an issue, as that was a communal space, but to the aunt this did not matter. The aunt was not the best housekeeper in the world, but she could live with peanut butter smears on the knives as she made them.

Once in a while, she would take all the utensils, and put them in a tub of hot water and bleach and clean them thoroughly and put them back in the rack once she was done washing them. Her aunt would then complain that someone touched the utensils, never adding a thanks for cleaning them. She had to buy her own pots, pans and knives to cook with because her aunt was particular about anyone using her things, even though her aunt's stuff was usually notoriously spotted or had specks of hardened food on them, and she found herself re-cleaning her aunt's stuff when she had to use them. She would leave them spotless but the aunt would still find something to complain about. She would clean off the stove, clean out the sink, but god help her if she left something wrapped in a plastic in the refrigerator, as the aunt found that sloppy!

Yet looking inside the fridge, it cried out for a good bleaching and cleaning from long ago spills and just generally dust that got in from the opening and closing of the door. The aunt would ignore that, and continue to bitch and moan about anyone else using any space she considered hers yet her aunt could barely scrape the 1/3 of the rent she was required to pay up to recently, when her cousin finally moved out and reminded the aunt that now the aunt would have to start paying 1/2 the rent, which upset the aunt greatly -- the aunt would have to cut down her spending sprees at garden places and 99 cent stores and ordering through clothing and wig catalogs.

Meanwhile, despite paying half the rent and hardly home because she worked full-time, she would clean the shared communal space of the bathroom, which the aunt basically neglected even more than the kitchen. She and her cousin would take turns cleaning the bathtub, and she would clean the toilet and sink and rid it of hair, toothpast gobs, and other stains. She would run a quick duster on the floor to pick up all the stray hairs that would collect into mounds if you let it, because the aunt didn't "see" this collection and would just use the bathroom and keep it moving yet would bitch if the toilet paper ran out and hide a roll in her room to punish people in the house for "going through" the toilet paper so quickly. She would pick up two rolls for situations like this and re-stock the bathroom as well as keep an extra roll in her room for whenever her aunt would decide to get stupid and ignore the theatrics.

She would rather laugh and keep it moving, but this annoyed her aunt. Her aunt felt it was disrespectful to laugh, and took it as a challenge to her authority. Of course she wanted to commit the aunt but her cousin would not hear of it. Her cousin's guilt would crush her and her cousin preferred to play martyr than to be practical and realize abuse is abuse whether it's a family member or a stranger doing it and let her aunt run the show.

She found herself getting angry with these thoughts. Eventually a decision would have to be made and only her cousin had the key to stop the bullshit once and for all. She reminded herself that her cousin was getting to see what she had been missing all these years, and she wanted to give her cousin the chance to relax and breathe, as her cousin had given her, and then to see where the chips would fall once school was done. Her cousin would have to decide what she wanted to do with her life, and if that meant continuing to care for her mother, there was nothing she could say or do about it. But she would leave, her obligation done. She gave her cousin the chance to figure things out, and that was the biggest show of love she could give her cousin. If her cousin wanted to go back to the way things used to be, that was her business and her right but SHE would extract herself from the equation and move on. Let someone else have the headache and heartache, she would be free.