So, here we are. A whole new start to this blogging business. I had a separate book blog that I'll link at some point where I have a bunch of book reviews. I've also had personal blogs where I would just post about my life. It is my hope that this is a mix of the two.
I had all these great ideas about how I would start my new blog about my bookworm side and my personal side. It was going to be such a clever post. Instead, I have something that I need to write to get out there. It's nowhere near what I wanted to post, but it's something that I feel I need to post.
I just did the hardest thing that I think I have ever done in my life. I officially cut off a woman that I had considered a sister for the longest time. She is my cousin, but we were so much closer than that. She truly was like a sister to me. However, over the last several years we have drifted further and further apart. She became a person I just couldn't understand.
This year it has gotten a lot worse. She has become an expert in the art of passive aggressive posts on Facebook. Many of those passive aggressive posts have seemed to be directed at my husband. I had let a lot of them slide, but recently I found that I couldn't just stand by anymore while she seemingly attacked my husband and pulled the victim card for herself.
I finally spoke out about how she posts certain controversial topics and, when someone with a different opinion shares that on her post, follows up with a pity party about how people are mean to her for disagreeing. I finally told her that if she can't accept other opinions, she should stop posting those kinds of topics. She responded with some nonsense about how if I was concerned about her, I had her number. I hold no such concern for her. My only concern was for what kind of example she would present to my three young and very impressionable girls.
Tonight I reached my breaking point with her. She posted some passive aggressive meme and used several very passive aggressive hashtags to go along with it. She essentially wants people who disagree with what she posts to just move on with their lives. In other words, she needs a safe space where her opinion is the only one that matters. I called her out on this. I called her out on her passive aggressive nature as of late and told her that I found it to be a rather immature way to communicate.
In response, she very aggressively called me out on Facebook that she just doesn't care about anything anymore. Her maturity in the whole situation put me in serious question as to whether I was really the younger cousin. She got very catty and I finally realized that she doesn't really bring anything to my life anymore. She's just someone I happen to be related to.
The thing is, the Husband and I had agreed a while ago that my cousin was never going to be allowed our girls. She's not the kind of influence we want them to have in their development. I want to raise my girls to be free thinkers, not follow the crowd people. I want them to respect other people's opinions and keep an open mind about those other opinions - for you never know when someone's opinion could change your own. I want them to be whatever they want to be, but I also want them to understand that sometimes you have to have a stepping stone of a not too great job to get to your dreams. Most of all, I want them to be independent human beings who do not need to rely on anyone to live their lives.
When I think about how I imagined my cousin's role in my children's lives, it was so much different than this. I imagined her having an active role in their lives. I imagined that she would be a role model who could help to shape my girls into the women that they will become. But back then, I still had hopes that she would figure out who she was going to become as a woman. I still believed that she would go somewhere with her life. Instead, six years later, she has remained much the same. She is still relying on everyone else to take care of her, while arguing that she's taking care of others.
I hope that one day she will evolve into the woman that she is meant to be. I hope that her life is filled with everything she desires and that she finds happiness. But I have realized that our relationship really has no future. I just do not see anything in the future that will encourage me to let her in my children's lives, and I feel like my life will not be the worse for her absence.
It's the end. The bridge is burned.
