like a block of lead
You know how everyone's family is fucked up? Well, my mom's side of the family is majorly fucked up. Like, HBO series fucked up. My immediate family unit is pretty much the only exception.
That said, here is the latest chapter in our family history, which is actually one of the much, much, much lesser stories of my maternal side of the family tree, but which is one that directly affects me enough that I will tell it in a very condensed form.
To preface, I have a lot of family in the area that I've known my whole life: my uncle and his wife/girlfriend of several years, my uncle's grown son from his previous marriage, and an aunt - technically, a half-aunt, who's way younger than my mom. Her name is Miros. She has three girls and used to have a husband.
Used to. This was before the oldest girl, Cristina, told the school counselor a couple of years ago that her father beat up her and her sisters. Social services got involved and, subsequently, we (my family, my uncle and his wife, my estranged grandmother) found out this had been going on for years. Since then, Miros and the father have been in the middle of an ugly, ugly divorce where the father will blatantly accuse his kids of lying just to get what he wants. It's a good thing any time he sees the kids, it's supervised, and also that Cristina is old and smart enough to say "go to hell" and not even see him. She took the brunt of his abuse when it was going on.
The bad thing is that, while Miros isn't abusive, she's not a good person either. By a long shot. She's the kind of person who serves herself food before everyone else at family gatherings and starts chowing down before the hosts have sat down, and who breaks order in restaurant ordering around the table so she can ask for her food first. And then who never helps pay, even if the dinner is for one of her kids, and who never gets gifts or cards for people on their birthday. Why? Well, she's constantly saying she's broke and puts her siblings and mother in the position of covering her living expenses, but at the same time, she somehow seems to have the money to buy a Wii for her kids (while I was standing in line outside GameStop at 7AM for mornings on end) and for all three of her kids to have DS Lites (I have an old DS) and for her kids to see more movies in theatres than I ever have (even when I could see movies for free all the time the last couple of years) and to buy an XBox 360 this Christmas (I don't have an XBox 360). She also had a pink Motorola bluetooth in her ear the last couple of times I've seen her, along with shiny new shoes.
The thing is, she isn't even indulging the kids for the sake of indulging them. She's indulging them for the sake of keeping them busy in easy ways because she is a neglectful parent. She has a part time job from the morning to noon, and yet her youngest kid, Cristal, who's nine, takes an hour-long bus ride to school (20 minutes by car), takes another hour-long bus ride to an after-school program at a different school (which is apparently more convenient for Miros), and then gets picked up at 6PM. She's also an October baby, so Miros put her in school a year early because, again, convenient for her. Because of this, Cristal is behind all the other kids emotionally and academically and it shows: she has no friends (literally none), because she lashes out at other kids because of frustrations at home and she reads at a second-grade level even though she's smart and curious enough that when I played an educational board game with her the other day, she started reading the cards and getting the questions right all by herself after only a few rounds.
Meanwhile, Cristina (just turned 16 today) kind of reminds me of myself: she's into anime, loves drawing, is musically skilled, and was put in the gifted program when she was in middle school. Nowadays, though, she's barely getting through her classes with D's and F's. When asked why she doesn't push her to do better, Miros says it's because Cristina can do what Cristina can do, because apparently it's easier to make excuses that your kid is stupid rather than giving a damn.
Karina (8th grade, I think) is the middle kid and while she's doing well academically and socially due to being buffered on either side by her two sisters, she's apparently been depressed as hell lately and she's in the middle of figuring out whether or not she can love her father since he only cares about her when he can fully manipulate her.
On top of the emotional stuff, there's the literal neglect: Cristal came over around New Year's so my mom could help her with a project (because apparently Miros is incapable of this) and my mom noticed that her hair wasn't washed. When my mom asked when the last time she showered was, Cristal basically said it'd been a week. A week. And when my mom made Cristal take a shower then and there, Cristal happily bounded along and did it. So it's not even that she's a little kid that dislikes them.
And, the other week, when I took the three of them ice skating at the local rink, I was helping Cristal with skating a lot and holding on to her while I did so, and I gradually realized her sweatshirt was grayish with dirt and it, along with the shirt underneath, had stains/gunk from not being washed.
Their house is also a total mess. This might not be so bad if she, you know, didn't work half-days and had other people covering her expenses. Technically, she should be earning this money from Violeta (my grandmother) by managing this set of properties she owns in the area, but she hasn't been doing even that. On top of the mess, there are tons of animals around: one dog, two cats (one of them is new), two hamsters, and a rabbit. The real kicker is that apparently neither the dog or the new cat are spayed/neutered because it "costs too much."
So, you might ask, what does my aunt do with this free time that's apparently more important to her than her kids, her house, or her extended family?
The answer is her boyfriend, this guy named Cruz. She apparently is so crazy for this guy that she spends all of her time in her room talking to him on the phone and playing the XBox, and when my mom told me that Cristal told her that Miros kept the door locked and never helped her with her homework, I figured it was a story exaggerated by kid-tall-tales and my mom's frustration.
Apparently not, because the other day, Miros called my mom up to tell her that Cristina had, in a fit of rage, taken a knife to the lock on Miros' door and broken it. She'd subsequently locked herself in the bathroom and had been desperately trying to call my mom on the other phone.
The reason for her freaking out?
Miros is pregnant.
Let me say that again: Miros is pregnant.
Now, is she even considering an abortion?
No. For "moral reasons." Apparently the same kind of morality that allows her to be unwilling to properly take care of the kids she already has. And the real kicker is that when she told my mom the situation, she said (and I quote): "Yeah, Cristina thought you were going to reprimand me like some child."
So my mom calls Cristina on her cell phone and basically says "I'm going to come pick you up and you're going to spend the night with us." Cristina heartily agrees.
So my mom picks her up and she comes and spends the night with us, wherein I help her with an essay she has due on Friday. When, the next day, my mom tells me she asked Cristina if she wanted to live with us and Cristina said yes, the only shocking part of the whole situation was that I wasn't shocked. My mom had been talking about the possibility for years and this was just the final straw on top of a mountainous haystack of Miros' selfish irresponsibility, not just for Cristina and my mom, but also for the rest of the family. They're basically disowning her, and they've already written her out of my grandmother's will: her portion of the money is going directly to her kids to help with college tuition.
And when my mom told Miros that Cristina wanted to live with us, Miros didn't even protest. She basically said "okay." She cares that little, and while my mom said she was ready to battle her for custody of Cristal in the near future, we're both pretty sure that won't be necessary. She'll probably just hand her kids over.
I... don't even know how that's all going to pan out. All I know is that the shit is exploding on the fan and Miros still thinks that Cristina is just having an irrational temper tantrum and that she'll be coming home in a few days. And worse still? Today was Cristina's birthday, which was good, because she got to spend it with people who care about her, but which was bad, because her sisters weren't there. She wants to celebrate with them on Sunday, since she wants to get schoolwork out of the way on Saturday, and guess what Miros said in response to that when my mom let her know?
"No, no, I'm busy on Sunday. We should do Saturday."
The woman's obliviousness to her own self-obsession is absolutely spectacular.
And that's the end of my story for now. Except that I helped Cristina get one essay done, and as soon as I showed her the three-body-paragraph structure of an essay (she had apparently never been taught it in school what the hell) she was able to do the second one pretty much all by herself. And then, after double-checking that she was still into drawing, I pulled out my huge basket of old art supplies and gave her a bunch. We both geeked out over everything hahaha. <3
And... that's the end of the story for now.
So yeah, bottom line of all that is that my cousin Cristina might be permanently living with us. She's staying in my brother's currently unoccupied room and I cleared out and cleaned up my old iMac for her over there. She's v. disappointed it doesn't have internet, but I ordered her an external wireless USB adapter that should hopefully fix that. XD Anyway, if you've been wondering where I've been lately, that's most of the reason.
Also, ON A SLIGHTLY LIGHTER NOTE: Andrew and I got Bay Cities today and somehow all of my timing was perfect for my appointment afterwards and then meeting up with my mom and Cristina at a bakery after that. Later, Andrew, Jenny, and I were supposed to go for our weekly ice skating tonight but I realized I couldn't because of Cristina's birthday and everything. So then Jenny calls me up and our conversation goes as follows:
Jenny: Hey!
Me: Hey!
Jenny: So, are you busy tonight?
Me: You know, I'm really sorry, but I don't think we can do ice skating today - it's pretty crazy with my cousin over here, and it's her birthday, and -
Jenny: PFFFFFFFFT, ice skating? I WAS TALKING ABOUT SUPERNATURAL.
Me: OH. OH.
Jenny: YEAHHH.
Me: Well, yeah, we can do that over here with her, so I think that's okay!
Jenny: Okay! ...Yeah, I think we need to let Andrew know that we should pick a new day of the week for that.
Me: .........Probably.
So I went and picked her up from work, then came home (after she found a shoe bargain), and while we had dinner, she, my mom, and I all started FANGIRLING AHHHHHH over Supernatural being on SO SOON and OMG JENSEN AND JARED and OMG THEY'RE SUCH GOOD ACTORS WHEN THEY CRY THEY BREAK OUR HEEEEEAAARRRRRTSSSSS, to which Cristina laughed and my dad was like "............what in god's name is wrong with you people."
So, of course, Cristina got roped into watching MONDO BIG-SCREEN BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT STEREO SOUND DARK ROOM HD Supernatural with us crazies, and LOL IT WAS SO FUN we like got that whole contagious scare thing going where we started SCREAMING at the creepy parts and AHAHAHA. Was AWESOME.
Also, Jenny and I joked about seeing My Bloody Valentine 3-D PFFFFT.
...............Then we decided to go on Tuesday.
That said, here is the latest chapter in our family history, which is actually one of the much, much, much lesser stories of my maternal side of the family tree, but which is one that directly affects me enough that I will tell it in a very condensed form.
To preface, I have a lot of family in the area that I've known my whole life: my uncle and his wife/girlfriend of several years, my uncle's grown son from his previous marriage, and an aunt - technically, a half-aunt, who's way younger than my mom. Her name is Miros. She has three girls and used to have a husband.
Used to. This was before the oldest girl, Cristina, told the school counselor a couple of years ago that her father beat up her and her sisters. Social services got involved and, subsequently, we (my family, my uncle and his wife, my estranged grandmother) found out this had been going on for years. Since then, Miros and the father have been in the middle of an ugly, ugly divorce where the father will blatantly accuse his kids of lying just to get what he wants. It's a good thing any time he sees the kids, it's supervised, and also that Cristina is old and smart enough to say "go to hell" and not even see him. She took the brunt of his abuse when it was going on.
The bad thing is that, while Miros isn't abusive, she's not a good person either. By a long shot. She's the kind of person who serves herself food before everyone else at family gatherings and starts chowing down before the hosts have sat down, and who breaks order in restaurant ordering around the table so she can ask for her food first. And then who never helps pay, even if the dinner is for one of her kids, and who never gets gifts or cards for people on their birthday. Why? Well, she's constantly saying she's broke and puts her siblings and mother in the position of covering her living expenses, but at the same time, she somehow seems to have the money to buy a Wii for her kids (while I was standing in line outside GameStop at 7AM for mornings on end) and for all three of her kids to have DS Lites (I have an old DS) and for her kids to see more movies in theatres than I ever have (even when I could see movies for free all the time the last couple of years) and to buy an XBox 360 this Christmas (I don't have an XBox 360). She also had a pink Motorola bluetooth in her ear the last couple of times I've seen her, along with shiny new shoes.
The thing is, she isn't even indulging the kids for the sake of indulging them. She's indulging them for the sake of keeping them busy in easy ways because she is a neglectful parent. She has a part time job from the morning to noon, and yet her youngest kid, Cristal, who's nine, takes an hour-long bus ride to school (20 minutes by car), takes another hour-long bus ride to an after-school program at a different school (which is apparently more convenient for Miros), and then gets picked up at 6PM. She's also an October baby, so Miros put her in school a year early because, again, convenient for her. Because of this, Cristal is behind all the other kids emotionally and academically and it shows: she has no friends (literally none), because she lashes out at other kids because of frustrations at home and she reads at a second-grade level even though she's smart and curious enough that when I played an educational board game with her the other day, she started reading the cards and getting the questions right all by herself after only a few rounds.
Meanwhile, Cristina (just turned 16 today) kind of reminds me of myself: she's into anime, loves drawing, is musically skilled, and was put in the gifted program when she was in middle school. Nowadays, though, she's barely getting through her classes with D's and F's. When asked why she doesn't push her to do better, Miros says it's because Cristina can do what Cristina can do, because apparently it's easier to make excuses that your kid is stupid rather than giving a damn.
Karina (8th grade, I think) is the middle kid and while she's doing well academically and socially due to being buffered on either side by her two sisters, she's apparently been depressed as hell lately and she's in the middle of figuring out whether or not she can love her father since he only cares about her when he can fully manipulate her.
On top of the emotional stuff, there's the literal neglect: Cristal came over around New Year's so my mom could help her with a project (because apparently Miros is incapable of this) and my mom noticed that her hair wasn't washed. When my mom asked when the last time she showered was, Cristal basically said it'd been a week. A week. And when my mom made Cristal take a shower then and there, Cristal happily bounded along and did it. So it's not even that she's a little kid that dislikes them.
And, the other week, when I took the three of them ice skating at the local rink, I was helping Cristal with skating a lot and holding on to her while I did so, and I gradually realized her sweatshirt was grayish with dirt and it, along with the shirt underneath, had stains/gunk from not being washed.
Their house is also a total mess. This might not be so bad if she, you know, didn't work half-days and had other people covering her expenses. Technically, she should be earning this money from Violeta (my grandmother) by managing this set of properties she owns in the area, but she hasn't been doing even that. On top of the mess, there are tons of animals around: one dog, two cats (one of them is new), two hamsters, and a rabbit. The real kicker is that apparently neither the dog or the new cat are spayed/neutered because it "costs too much."
So, you might ask, what does my aunt do with this free time that's apparently more important to her than her kids, her house, or her extended family?
The answer is her boyfriend, this guy named Cruz. She apparently is so crazy for this guy that she spends all of her time in her room talking to him on the phone and playing the XBox, and when my mom told me that Cristal told her that Miros kept the door locked and never helped her with her homework, I figured it was a story exaggerated by kid-tall-tales and my mom's frustration.
Apparently not, because the other day, Miros called my mom up to tell her that Cristina had, in a fit of rage, taken a knife to the lock on Miros' door and broken it. She'd subsequently locked herself in the bathroom and had been desperately trying to call my mom on the other phone.
The reason for her freaking out?
Miros is pregnant.
Let me say that again: Miros is pregnant.
Now, is she even considering an abortion?
No. For "moral reasons." Apparently the same kind of morality that allows her to be unwilling to properly take care of the kids she already has. And the real kicker is that when she told my mom the situation, she said (and I quote): "Yeah, Cristina thought you were going to reprimand me like some child."
So my mom calls Cristina on her cell phone and basically says "I'm going to come pick you up and you're going to spend the night with us." Cristina heartily agrees.
So my mom picks her up and she comes and spends the night with us, wherein I help her with an essay she has due on Friday. When, the next day, my mom tells me she asked Cristina if she wanted to live with us and Cristina said yes, the only shocking part of the whole situation was that I wasn't shocked. My mom had been talking about the possibility for years and this was just the final straw on top of a mountainous haystack of Miros' selfish irresponsibility, not just for Cristina and my mom, but also for the rest of the family. They're basically disowning her, and they've already written her out of my grandmother's will: her portion of the money is going directly to her kids to help with college tuition.
And when my mom told Miros that Cristina wanted to live with us, Miros didn't even protest. She basically said "okay." She cares that little, and while my mom said she was ready to battle her for custody of Cristal in the near future, we're both pretty sure that won't be necessary. She'll probably just hand her kids over.
I... don't even know how that's all going to pan out. All I know is that the shit is exploding on the fan and Miros still thinks that Cristina is just having an irrational temper tantrum and that she'll be coming home in a few days. And worse still? Today was Cristina's birthday, which was good, because she got to spend it with people who care about her, but which was bad, because her sisters weren't there. She wants to celebrate with them on Sunday, since she wants to get schoolwork out of the way on Saturday, and guess what Miros said in response to that when my mom let her know?
"No, no, I'm busy on Sunday. We should do Saturday."
The woman's obliviousness to her own self-obsession is absolutely spectacular.
And that's the end of my story for now. Except that I helped Cristina get one essay done, and as soon as I showed her the three-body-paragraph structure of an essay (she had apparently never been taught it in school what the hell) she was able to do the second one pretty much all by herself. And then, after double-checking that she was still into drawing, I pulled out my huge basket of old art supplies and gave her a bunch. We both geeked out over everything hahaha. <3
And... that's the end of the story for now.
So yeah, bottom line of all that is that my cousin Cristina might be permanently living with us. She's staying in my brother's currently unoccupied room and I cleared out and cleaned up my old iMac for her over there. She's v. disappointed it doesn't have internet, but I ordered her an external wireless USB adapter that should hopefully fix that. XD Anyway, if you've been wondering where I've been lately, that's most of the reason.
Also, ON A SLIGHTLY LIGHTER NOTE: Andrew and I got Bay Cities today and somehow all of my timing was perfect for my appointment afterwards and then meeting up with my mom and Cristina at a bakery after that. Later, Andrew, Jenny, and I were supposed to go for our weekly ice skating tonight but I realized I couldn't because of Cristina's birthday and everything. So then Jenny calls me up and our conversation goes as follows:
Jenny: Hey!
Me: Hey!
Jenny: So, are you busy tonight?
Me: You know, I'm really sorry, but I don't think we can do ice skating today - it's pretty crazy with my cousin over here, and it's her birthday, and -
Jenny: PFFFFFFFFT, ice skating? I WAS TALKING ABOUT SUPERNATURAL.
Me: OH. OH.
Jenny: YEAHHH.
Me: Well, yeah, we can do that over here with her, so I think that's okay!
Jenny: Okay! ...Yeah, I think we need to let Andrew know that we should pick a new day of the week for that.
Me: .........Probably.
So I went and picked her up from work, then came home (after she found a shoe bargain), and while we had dinner, she, my mom, and I all started FANGIRLING AHHHHHH over Supernatural being on SO SOON and OMG JENSEN AND JARED and OMG THEY'RE SUCH GOOD ACTORS WHEN THEY CRY THEY BREAK OUR HEEEEEAAARRRRRTSSSSS, to which Cristina laughed and my dad was like "............what in god's name is wrong with you people."
So, of course, Cristina got roped into watching MONDO BIG-SCREEN BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT STEREO SOUND DARK ROOM HD Supernatural with us crazies, and LOL IT WAS SO FUN we like got that whole contagious scare thing going where we started SCREAMING at the creepy parts and AHAHAHA. Was AWESOME.
Also, Jenny and I joked about seeing My Bloody Valentine 3-D PFFFFT.
...............Then we decided to go on Tuesday.