Growing up I was the black sheep in my family, I didn’t really fit in with the older guy cousins, and the one cousin my age talked to ants, sniffed markers on the regular and I’m pretty sure was on the verge of very dark things. This left me to roam at the family get togethers and mostly hang out in the corner listening to music and trying to get through so I could move on to more fun things until the next family event.
This was not the family that I spent most of my time with, this was my biological fathers family, when I was born my Bio-dad (BD) ran and hid and forced my mom to reach out to his parents so they knew they had another grand child. He finally came around and would spend occasional time with me, but there was always the feeling that he despised having a child so young. On one of these visits I had rented some movies and was hanging out at my aunts house to watch them while BD was off working. The only free TV was my cousin Marie’s bedroom tv, she was off at her friends house for the day so I plopped down on her bed and spent the afternoon watching movies. She came home later that evening and we decided to go walking for awhile until dinner time. This was the start of finally having someone to hang out with in that family.