I was just thinking around the time of my cousin Mark’s visit, while making plans with my cousins for Cousin Day Thursday, that I was really happy with the family members I have, because for such a big family (my paternal grandma has 6 kids, so many many extended family members locally), my cousins were great people who have come to my aid, been socially reliable, are responsible and good decent human beings, and are people whom I’d be proud to be friends with by choice had we not been family. And then a little voice in the back of my head had wondered whether in giving credit like this, that I was just asking for Murphy’s Law to strike.

Strike, it did. Right now, I’m irritated and hurt by a cousin who’s holding a grudge against another cousin’s mom and is therefore being hateful to others of us who aren’t even involved, and another cousin who very clearly left us out of a pretty significant event but who unfortunately felt the need to lie to me about it and then include me late. I don’t know how to handle stuff like this. I feel like I need a social advisor. The first cousin, I’m just going to leave alone and let her work out her own drama, and I’m not going to address how she upset me in her string of collateral damage. I’ll just get over it on my own in my own time. The second cousin…I don’t know. Am I supposed to attend even tho I know that within the 60 or so people invited, I didn’t make the cut, and the only reason I know about it now was because I’d unknowingly asked her about it?

And when the recipricol event occurs in the near future on my side, am I supposed to include her?

I was taken back to my childhood and teenager years, in which I’d constantly felt slighted by these relatives, because I’d always thought of them, given them what I could, supported them any way possible even if inconvenient or impractical for me to do so, but the same was not done for me. That was the story of my youth. Even in adulthood, I attended their events, photographed for them, and I can’t think of many events of mine they’d bothered showing up to, even tho they were always invited. My mom had told me that because I’m an only child, these things happen; they would always be in their private circle with their siblings with me on the outside. Well, Allie is MY only child, and I can see this occurring with her, too, where she will love her cousins and want to be around them as they are close in age, and want to do things with and for them, but they won’t think of her or include her when they do special things with and for each other. If Allie is like her mom, this will sting. She will be sensitive to it for a long time, maybe forever. Life is unfair. “I know, but why can’t it ever be unfair in my favor?” Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes) would say.

I think there’s a reason why my closer friends are die-hard friends of mine. They think that I’m an unusually good and considerate friend. I’ve heard this over and over again. I think there are a lot of people like “them” in the world, and less of people like “us.” Those of us who’ve been hurt, flaked on, treated selfishly and carelessly thrown aside by “them”s appreciate the “us”es when we find some. I hope Allie finds more “us”es to fill the special spots close to her heart.

“You can only control your own behavior to do things in the way others OUGHT to have done them,” my judge said this morning after his “How’s mini-minx?” unleashed a purging from me. He’s right. So despite how I FEEL about things, I will still DO what I should do, in a timely manner that is of the utmost consideration, just as I’d always done.