Family Problems

I can't stand my siblings right now. Just seeing their faces is infuriating. I need to get this out there.

Okay, so, I should start explaining about my cousin for a second. He's had some emotional problems; his father committed suicide a few years ago and his mother is one of those aloof moms. I guess he's been in and out of therapy, been suicidal and has been prescribed some medication for that. He's also not happy at home because his mom let some guy that she's dating move in and, from what I gather, she's gone more than she's home. We haven't actually been that close with him for a long time because of an incident between his mom and mine at the hospital where his dad died; we're just getting back together in the last six months. He came over on New Year's Eve and we had a quiet evening and he spent the night in my living room. His medication gives him insomnia, so he spent most of the night sitting up with his DS.

The Thursday after New Year's is when it started. My brother came out into my living room where my mom, my grandma, and I were sitting and announced that my cousin stole some money from him. He said that he found his wallet laying on his dresser, empty. He swears that he put it in his desk drawer and that there was money in it. My mom asks him how much, he doesn't know but he knows there was some. He thinks it was between five and fifty dollars. We ask him how he knows that it was my cousin specifically, since he wasn't spending the night in the same room. My brother says that he heard my cousin up during the night.

Now, I feel the need to say that this logic also implicates me, my sister, and my grandmother. I had had too much caffeine and was awake off and on (though I never heard anyone moving around in the house), my sister didn't go to sleep until really late that night, and my grandmother never sleeps a night through without having to get up for one thing or another.

But, honestly, I didn't really have trouble believing that my cousin had done it, for a few reasons.

1) He's been kind of nosey when he's been down here -- he always looks over my shoulder if he's in a room when I'm opening drawers or anything and I caught him last time opening the drawers in my jewlry box.

2) He hasn't really given us reason to trust him just yet. We're still trying to get a good feel of him and how he is.

3) We had suspected him of doing it once or twice when he was a kid, but never had any evidence and it could have possibly been someone else. We never really knew.

So, no one really doubted that he had stolen it, but there still was no real proof that it was him. But my brother wanted to call him up on the phone and tell him off. Everyone else disagrees. This turns into a four hour long discussion of why you shouldn't accuse a person of a crime if you have no evidence, even if you're pretty sure it was them. He goes on to say some really nasty things to my mom, my grandmother, and me.

My grandmother starts explaining defamation of character and how my cousin would have the right to sue him if he couldn't find any evidence to support his claims. My brother starts giving us this story that we could tell "them" if he was called in. I cut him off. I said to him "You want to go against what everyone is telling you. You're going to shoot your mouth off, do whatever you want, and then expect us to support you? No. That's not going to happen." And my mom and grandma agreed with me, saying that it would be his choice to say it and he would have to deal with the consequences. He was very upset with this and left, locked himself in his room. We assume that he never called my cousin, but I'm not entirely sure.

A little while later, after we had all calmed down a little from the argument, the three of us have been talking among ourselves about what else could have happened with the money. My mom suddenly gets an idea that he might have given the money to her to pay for his textbooks, which had picked up on her way home from work, but she's not really sure. Around this time, he comes back out into the living room and starts yelling at us that we all are really closed minded and that we all have no family loyalty and that we didn't care what happened to him and a whole bunch of other things that I wasn't really listening to because it seemed like he was just spitting out whatever popped into his head at the time. He finally stopped talking and my mom is half laughing and she says "I'm pretty sure you gave me that money for your books the other day." He stops. Gets this stupid look on his face as he thinks about it. You know what that rat bastard said to her? He looks her straight in the eye and says, "You should have remembered that I gave you that. This whole thing is your fault." He turns around and locks himself back in his bedroom.

So. After that, we all kind of decide to go to bed. It takes me a while to get ready for that and when I'm done I notice that my brother has moved out of his room and onto the sofa and my sister is sitting next to him. I was too tired to think much of it at the time (it was 2 in the morning; way too late for me). But I get into bed and in all the quiet, he's talking very loudly to my sister about me. I tried not to listen, I really did, but he was so loud and everything else was so quiet.

In less than one hour, he's told my sister that:
1) I shoplift
2) I hate her
3) I blame everything that goes wrong in my life on her
4) I accuse people of sexual assault
5) I'm not allowed to feel good about getting an A on a test because the classes I'm taking aren't difficult enough for that to mean anything.
6) I don't have any friends at school
7) I'm so fat, ugly, disgusting, and stupid that even if I did have friends they'd be too embarrassed to be seen with me in public
8) My major is so easy that it shouldn't even be taught in school
9) I'm so stupid that I probably won't even be able to get a degree in my "joke" major.

And that's just the stuff that I can remember/he said before I fell asleep.

So, as hurt as I was that he would say all of that, I was almost willing to just let it go the next day and say he was just venting from the heat of the night before. But, no.

Since Friday, the two of them have been making these snide comments about my weight, my body, my mind, and everything else that they think they can get away with. I'll tell you, I'm ready to hurt them both.

So, that's the whole story. For all of you that have read this far, you guys deserve some kind of award. Really, thank you. I welcome any comments you have, if you'd like to share them. Do you think I'm the bad guy here? Was I that far out of line for saying that he would be on his own? Any advice for this? Thanks for reading, even if you don't leave a comment. I really appreciate it. :)