Reassessing what happened with my cousin last week.

At the time, to me it sounded like she was saying that I was always there for her, but I never relied on her with my problems, maybe implying that she would have been willing to be available for me and to help me when I needed it.

I realize now that's totally bogus. She was implying no such thing. That was not her point and I was just reading into it, and that is what caused my reaction. Truth to tell, she never made herself available to me. The nature of our relationship is that I was willing to be there when she needed me, but the reciprocal not so much (which is fine).

I forget how it was before she had kids, but how it was after she had kids may have been a magnification of what it was like before. Since she's had kids, I've always been in the periphery, and properly so. In no bizarro world would I think I took priority over anyone's kids. Of course, what it was magnifying from before is another story.

And as her kids grew and matured, she never made any effort to help me have a relationship with them. I never really fit in and they just did what they did and I just floated about doing my own thing. The result is that things have subsequently been awkward and uncomfortable, despite my memories of playing with them when they were younger.

If I was supposedly important to her (I'm not assuming I am), it was never important that her kids knew, remembered or liked me. Not like that was her responsibility. It says more about my personality faults when it comes to kids, but I certainly got no assistance.

Another indication of the nature of our relationship was when we were in their hotel room and her kids were doing their own thing. I was asking questions about what was going on with her cheating husband and what her assessment of things was. I was interested in her situation and wanted to know.

But at some point when there was a lull, she said, "Any more questions?", like I was being intrusive or that all I was doing was asking questions and it was starting to annoy her. The nature of our relationship is that I ask about her situation to know more about her, but she never asks about me.

If you want to get to know someone, you observe, you ask and you listen. She's not interested, and that's just fine. I don't know what I would do if she were interested. But let there be no suggestion that she's ever been interested, much less available, to offer help or support. We talk sometimes, we have good conversations, but she doesn't delve.

(Since our relationship is long-standing and varied, it's not as simple as that. For example I've never liked vinegar, but adopted a taste for it a few years ago. This is not important, this is not something everybody or anybody knows. But we were having dumplings once and I reached for the vinegar and she was surprised. She's not disinterested or non-observant, and she does remember a lot of things about me through the years. Even small things shows she cares.)

But, truth to tell, she never has even been capable of offering help or support. She simply could not handle my issues. In my previous post, that wasn't a trifle when she assumed, practically under her breath, that I would never consider suicide and brushing it away like a mosquito without even asking or clarifying. When it comes to death, that defined her.

She has never handled death well. That's an understatement. No one can ever be blamed for not handling death well. But she gets overwhelmed and falls apart. She becomes unrecognizable. She is so beyond consolable that when her maternal grandmother died, I was completely at a loss how to even approach her.

I was telling her in my duplicitous, upbeat way how I was perfectly happy where I was in life because the whole point of my life was to drive it into a dead end, which is where I am. I was telling her this because it's just the truth. That's about all there is to say about my life and basically I'm just waiting to die, and laughed it off.

My laughing it off was her out. It was a joke and she didn't have to inquire further. If it was me, I wouldn't have let it pass. I would have asked what that meant. What do you mean your life is a dead end? What do you mean you're just waiting to die? I would've annoyed the hell out of me, which is why I'm glad I don't have to be friends with myself.

I would have recognized the dissonance and wanted to know more. And further, she knows about my bank account . . . issues. I'm guessing it was her step-mom, my aunt, who told her what my parents did with the money that was in my account.

She didn't ask how much I have left or if I was worried about it or what I was going to do. I also told her about my probable glaucoma and the blindness that comes with not getting it treated, and she laughed it off all on her own. I'm guessing it was an uncomfortable laugh at not wanting to know too much.

We've known each other a long time. She knows more about me than she's willing to admit, more than she probably wants to know; meaning there's a lot she chooses to ignore. When you've known me as long as she has, there are things that I can't hide, things that just have to come out.

She can feign ignorance about what most people would regard as self-destructive tendencies, but in her it's denial. As much as she's been exposed to through the years, it's ridiculous to look at the whole picture and think, "oh there's nothing wrong there, he'll be fine".

It's not like our relationship is complicated, but there are a lot of threads and tendrils sticking out and going no where. Lots of contradictions and I can't say anything definitive about us without constantly reassessing and taking things back.

I retract things in my last post regarding my cousin. They were immediate impressions and observations, perhaps frustration, but they miss our long-standing past and connection.

She came up to Taipei again without her kids and we got together just she and I, and everything was different. She ended up shaking the foundation of my existence in a way few have done before. She didn't mean to, she wasn't trying to. It's a specific chord that she managed to hit by accident.

She still doesn't know what chord she hit. I don't know if she saw my hand shaking or if she knew I sat back in my chair and froze because if I didn't I wouldn't be able to hold back tears. Or a tear. There may have been only one. But she noticed something and stopped and let me get composed.

We were talking about our relationship through the years and how I'd always been there for her when she needed me. But when her husband admitted he was having an affair, she didn't come to me. She didn't call, she didn't tell me.

I knew that when she finally did tell me, I had asked her why she didn't call me and I remember that she gave me a satisfactory answer, but I couldn't remember it this time and planned to ask her again. Fortunately I didn't need to admit that I forgot what she said before because she brought it up herself. 

She said she didn't want to depend on me as she had in the past. She knew she could always depend on me for support and to be on her side, but she felt that was not what she needed. She needed to get through it without me for her own strength and independence. 

She outlined all the times before when she went through problems and came to me and I was always there for her. During her good times, we fell out of contact because she didn't need me, and I was fine with that. I didn't need to always be in her life. I didn't even go to her wedding. But if she needed me, I was always there.

But she noticed that I never needed her. I never went to her when I was in crisis. She was never there when I needed help. And that was it. She touched something she wasn't supposed to. She noticed. I couldn't articulate what it was, but the conversation stopped and she sensed to stop.

She doesn't know that if anything, my life is one big crisis, basically all the time. She doesn't know how conflicted I am about needing help or accepting help. Even defining what it means to need help or to even want it.

Even just the suggestion of recognizing I may have needed help sent me into emotional shock. You have no idea. You're not supposed to have any idea. But to even indirectly suggest that she might have been someone I might have gone to in times of need was . . . too much.

She placed a loving hand on a wall that is built with bricks of silence and suicide. But what she touched was a breach. No one goes there. No one wants to go there. No one wants me to depend on them. It would be a disaster. And I told her as much.

It occurs to me that she has never seen me vulnerable. This was the first time she ever even scratched the surface, and she got in accidentally through the back door. It's not like I have to be "strong" for her. In our spiritual relationship, we are not only equal but I posit myself below her in many respects. Respect, gratitude, love, intimacy.

But, wow, the things she doesn't know. She doesn't know about suicide; she freely talked about contemplating suicide when she found out about her husband, but in passing she tossed out the assumption that suicide is impossible for me. She assumed it, she didn't even pause and ask, "right?" (I had admitted that in my current life, I'm pretty much just waiting to die).

She doesn't know about the alcoholism, even though every time we meet she mentions that I've been drinking because she can smell it (she's one of those annoying people who can smell alcohol on someone hours and hours later). She doesn't know about the insomnia.

She knows about the past cutting, but she went into denial about it before and that's probably the status quo. I haven't done that in years, but she hasn't followed up or checked that I still do or don't, even as a joke. I understand it's hard. Even Sadie, who had noticed scars and assumed it was cutting, was surprised at the extent of it when she saw it all. I've long stopped trying to hide it.

So Audrey hit an emotional chord. And then she backed off. As she should have as far as I was concerned. She mentioned several times over the rest of the evening how I would hit her emotional chords and keep poking at them. Maybe she was pointing out how I wasn't letting her keep poking. And maybe that's so, but that's what I'm imposing on her. She doesn't want me to depend on her, trust me, it would be ruinous, disaster.

Suicide has been a part of my resonant mental fabric since an early age, and I've learned through the years that I can't trust to tell anything I consider my truth to other people. Layers and layers have been laid so that when my cousin lovingly suggests that maybe I can tell her? Not a chance. Thank you, but no way.

People trying to get to know me, getting under my skin. Remnants of people trying to care. But these are my issues alone. As Audrey tried to grasp what had happened, I even invoked why I ultimately didn't ordain as a monk at Plum Village.

She had previously hijacked my attempt to explain it during her prior visit, but I was finally able to impose it on her this time. One of the reasons I didn't ordain (or more specifically engineered my aspirancy to be questioned), was partly because of one important discussion with the monks about having to deal with issues.

It was suggested to me that personal issues would have to be dealt with as part of the spiritual path. And for me, mine is not a path that anyone else has to deal with whether they want to help or not. If the monks saw I needed help, they would be available to help. Audrey, I'm sure, would be willing to "help" if I asked for it and explained how.

But it's not "help" I want or need. It's the howling abyss I need to face and plunge into willingly and fearlessly to see what it is and put it into my karmic experience.

Walking with her back to Taipei Main Station where she was going to meet her brother to go back to Kaohsiung, she started to flirt with me (she had a glass of plum wine). She thought it was hilarious that when she would hook her arm into mine, I would stiffen and become visibly uncomfortable.

My reactions were purely visceral. I also review them as funny, but . . . different places, different progressions. And I don't see that sort of reticence as permanent. She can flirt, she can be intimate in the future and, well, we have long-standing past and connection.

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