XII

I've barely written anything about my family.

And there's a reason for that—we're all crazy as fuck; I don't think I'm the craziest of them all, but I'm definitely on top 3.

Anyway, let me tell you what happened today.

My sister—she's one of the sanest of us all—basically decided to get out of the house and go live with my brother—the sanest, in my opinion. This happened because she couldn't handle the toxic environment surrounding her—more on that later.

My father was livid with both of them because, according to him, they defied his authority, and he'll get his revenge, so he decided to stop paying my sister's college tuition and everything related to her—meaning he's neglecting all his financial responsibilities as a father and giving them to my brother and his family—just to see them and everything they have worked so hard to get burn to the ground.

Yeah, he's that petty.

Now, I know there's a lot of stuff I need to explain, so let me start with each and every member of my family.

First is my grandma. She's the one that has like 80% of the wealth of the family—and there's plenty of it. But she has dementia. It's still in early stages, but that means she's unable to make any financial decisions, and that's why, when she started to suspect she was ill, she hired a lawyer and they both made a power of attorney to give one of my uncles—her all-time favorite one—the capacity to do anything he wants with all that wealth and properties and so on.

Also, when my mother died, she took care of my sister because she was just a baby, and that's why they see each other and mother and daughter.

Then is my grandpa. He has like 15% of the wealth. He's the most hypocrite and neurotic person you could ever meet. He's constantly stressed out by both big, small and imaginary problems, and he tries to solve them out acting nice and giving you money. He always says the last thing he wants is more problems, but most of the time he creates them or finds the way to get involved

And there's my father and my uncles, a bunch of immature, self-centered, good-for-nothing, assholes with a huge inferiority-complex—and I know that's very hypocritical of me, but believe me, I'm the most mature, successful and independent being ever compared to them—that have like 5% of the wealth and believe most of the family's wealth belongs to every single one of them, and they will end up killing themselves to get it.

Let's talk about a little bit more about them.

First, there's my father. He's the oldest of them, and he's almost as neurotic as my grandpa. He thinks he deserves everything in the world, so he's always—and I really mean always—complaining about everything. He's constantly looking for excuses to be miserable; he complains when before there's an issue with anything, when's it's happening, when it already happened, when it didn't happen but "imagine it happened. That would be the worst," and when he starts to imagine worst scenarios for that specific issue, like "imagine it happened in the middle of the night, or in the highway, or someone got seriously injured, or killed."

But he's constantly complaining for the money he has to pay for every single thing—except, of course, for all his daily compulsive buys, like shoes, perfumes, clothes, books and pirate DVD's, even though he would only use just like 5% of all that

Because that's the only thing he cares about. Today, when he was arguing with my sister, he told her if she got infected with COVID he'd rather let her die than spend his money with her treatment.

And he really mean it; he doesn't care about any of us. Last year, when my nephew—my brother's first son—was born, he refused to go visit him because, and I quote, "if I end up infecting him with COVID and he dies, my daughter-in-law's family would get mad at me."

Meaning in that scenario he would be the victim, and he only cared about that.

Meaning he only cares—or cared—about my brother because of his success, and how that makes him feel like a good parent, like my brother's success relapses only in my father's guidance and discipline.

Meaning he only cares about me because, despite being a complete failure, I'm useful to him; I'm the one that buys the house's groceries—yep, I'm still living with him—, helps him out in all his petty problems, and make every errand he wants, and I do all of that because that makes me feel I deserve the food and shelter I get.

And he doesn't care about my sister because she's always defying his authority.

Ah, also he's a pathological liar. He'll always exaggerate to make him look like someone interesting, or the victim in every situation.

He also tends to say what he thinks referring to someone else. He would say something like "today your grandpa told me he thinks you're a failure and you should whatever," or "you know everyone in the family is really mad at you, right?"

Yeah, he's extremely annoying when he's in a good mood.

But he get mad extremely easily.

Ok, let's keep going.

My first uncle is the self-centered jackass that will either tell you constantly how better than you he is with the same stories again and again or use any excuse to mock you to prove how better than you he is.

He's also the one who spends tons of money gambling, and drinking and all that despite being unemployed.

And how can he do that, you ask.

Well, that's when my grandpa comes in. He gives a hefty and monthly amount of money to his children.

Also when one of them has an emergency—like they lost it all gambling—or wants to get something pretty expensive that they can totally pay with their savings but for free—like a trip to Europe or a new car—they only need to go pressure their dad until he ends up paying his way outta that.

Then it comes my aunt—she's #2 in my craziness scale. She's the one that gets most of those aforementioned trips to Europe and cars and so on.

She's manipulative and cold-blooded—like a Cersei Lannister, but even crazier.

She's a single mom with a weird Oedipus complex with her dad, because she sees him like the fatherly figure of her daughter and the man in her house, making him pay for every single expense there because "she's a single mother, and she's alone, and she's, as a woman, needs a man to take care of her."

Despite all that, she claims she's a feminist.

She's also living in my grandma's garage, but she convinced her daddy to transform it into a little house.

But the thing that makes her the second craziest in my list is the fact she's extremely overprotective with my 30 year-old cousin—the craziest of them all. She treats her like a six-year-old girl and never leaves her side. She even convinced her to never get married or out of her house so they would be together forever, because she's really worried about her princess, you see, she's only protecting her; she has everything she could ever want with her, so why leave, why being an independent person when you can be with mommy forever.

Yeah, that's pretty crazy, right?

Anyway, the last uncle, grandma's favorite, is a lot like me—or am I a lot like him? He's this dreamer who's constantly avoiding reality with worthless projects that he runs away from when they start to be harder than he thought.

The main differences between us are 1) he's really extrovert and loves to be the center of attention—he'll always try to be the one leading any conversation either talking about his new project or stories about him an all his rich friends, and 2) he had always counted on mommy's financial support.

He has founded a marketing agency, a printing office, a vintage museum—which was really and antique and collectible store, and no one knows why he called it a museum, and everyone's too afraid to ask—he has sold popsicles, churros, tamales, real state; he constantly goes to old places with a metal detector and search for treasures, and now he has a YouTube channel about old coins and such.

There's probably more stuff, but I don't remember it right know.

Anyway, now I'm just gonna talk about my cousin, my brother, my sister.

My cousin, my aunt's little girl, is that, a little girl. She's fixated with Disney and princes and princesses, especially with the Beauty and the Beast—and I think that's because she's a little overweight and her mom has always told her she really needs to lose some weight, so she's being into countless diets throughout her life. But she's also fixated my some stuff she defines as mature and high culture like literature—Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and so on—or movies—like Gone with the wind and the ones with Audrey Hepburn.

Also she's constantly changing her personality and tastes to fit in, like a couple years ago my sister started watching the Harry Potter movies for the first time, and she loved them. My cousin almost mocked her by saying that was "for kids," but my sister didn't care and kept enjoying the Harry Potter books and movies.

Then, a few months later, my cousin started telling us, outta nowhere, all this Harry Potter facts she obviously search and memorize just to get closer to us, specially to my sister, but my sister hates her and her aunt more than anyone else—more on that later.

She's also even more a hikikomori than me—she doesn't have anyone else than her mom, and she spends all her time streaming movies and series and stalking people on Facebook and watching videos on whatever.

She has done that for the last 6 years.

Also, she has also impossible high standards when it comes to man. Yeah, we all believe she's waiting for a rich and handsome prince to knock on her door and marry her and spent the rest of his life living in that house with her wife and her mother-in-law—because, as I said, my aunt would never let my cousin leave her.

When she was in college, she once said she and some friend started looking to study in Italy because "men in this country are just too ugly for us."

She also loves to talk behind everyone's back—because she and her mom believes they're better than anyone else.

But if you confront her she would act surprised and swear either she has never done that or she doesn't remember doing so.

Then she would definitely talk behind your back.

Oh, yeah, she also collects Disney plushies and has them and plays with them from time to time.

With her mom.

Ok, we're almost done.

My brother graduated from law school, has a job at the state's congress, married the strongest and most independent woman I've ever known, and they both bought a house and have one of the happiest babies I've ever seen.

My sister just wants to be a regular girl and hates everyone in the family, except my brother and I, because they're a bunch of hypocrites and they only care about my grandma because of her money.

She hates my aunt and my cousin the most because, when my cousin started to isolate herself, she started to feel bad about her and her aunt, so she started visiting them every Saturday to spend some time with them and watch some movies. One time, something happened and they started arguing about something, and that's when my aunt and my cousin basically told them they were doing her a favor for letting her spend some time with them and reproached all the sodas and popcorn they have given her for free.

She started hating them ever since.

Also she hates them because, when my grandma's illness started, they started to put more and more excuses to avoid taking care of her, and stop seeing her until a couple months ago to try to convince everyone they care about her, so they deserve a big part of her inheritance when she dies.

But the thing here is my sister's constantly trying to be a regular girl by going out with her friends or in dates and son on.

Nothing to worry about.

But my family does worry because that could involve drinking and sex and drugs, so she could get pregnant or be in an accident, and how much they would have to pay to solve that.

Also, what would society say about them—oh, yeah, they also think they are part of the high society and everyone's always talking about them.

So, they prefer to deal with a harmless but mentally ill girl like my cousin, than a threatening but regular girl than my sister, and that's why they started blaming her about everything, making her take care of our grandma when no one else wanted to and call her every time she was out just to pressure her to come back.

She just couldn't handle it anymore, and that's why she left.

And I must do exactly that.