(This post is directed at a few people who don't seem to think I made the right decision.)
For a long time I was the one everybody worried about in my family. Not that I didn't give them good reason with the accident and the bad habits and chain-smoking of women that followed. I was really good at hiding the worst of my ways in the beginning but then I slipped up and everyone found out about them and I got a thousand versions of the same lecture. So I learned from the experience and became even better at covering my tracks. But there was still worry and whispers about what I was doing. I didn't like who I was becoming but I made no effort at all to change. Even after I finally figured most of it out and came out of the fog I could still sense that everyone expected some sort of relapse into my old behavior. I couldn't fault them for that since I've always had self-destructive tendencies. But it annoyed me that they didn't seem to trust me to live my own life.
You would think that now that I'm a parent and I've been on the straight and narrow for some time now that they would all back off and trust that I've done the whole learn from my mistakes thing, right? Wrong. There are a few holdouts but none more vocal than my cousin, who is like a brother to me. We've always had a hot and cold relationship, we have very different personalities. He's almost exactly one month older than me (and I mean almost to the hour we were born, it's creepy) and thinks he always knows best. Out of the six kids in our household, the two of us were the only ones who could not get along for more than a few days at a time. When we were 8, I allegedly pushed him out of our tree house for trying to boss me around (I say allegedly because I have no memory at all of that time and there were no witnesses). A year later he jumped out of a closet in the middle of the night and scared me so bad that I was afraid of the dark until like five years ago. I love him but I don't like how he gets on me when he thinks I'm making the wrong decision. It's never, "I don't think this is the way to go but it's your decision and I support you." It's always, "You're wrong, this is wrong, you're stupid if you do this."
Awhile back he announced his plans to marry his girlfriend of two weeks (they've known each other for four years but had just started dating). I told him I thought it was too soon but if it really felt right to both of them and they had considered it thoroughly, then they should do it. And that if he wanted anymore advice about it, he could come to me. It would be nice if he could follow my lead and say something supportive about my decision to help a friend through a rough time. But no. He thinks my decision to help this friend through the death of someone close to them is just the latest in a long line of wrong decisions I've made (and he's not the only one but he's the only one who has made his feelings known). He thinks this person is going to suck me back into their life and hurt me but I know better. And I'm not the kind of person to just walk away from a friend in need, especially one who helped me through my father's death last year. I don't feel like I owe them anything, I just feel like it's the right thing to do. My decision to get involved was one I made with both my head and my heart. But Mr Know It All and company disagree. Maybe they're right, maybe I care too much. Or maybe, juuuuusst maybe, I'm the one who knows what's best for me this time.
