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.