Hypocrites. Two-faced people. Frauds. Those people who act nice to your face, and sometimes don’t even put much effort into pretending then, but really have no use for you. It’s worse when they are your family. I just got reminded of that…again. As I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten better at removing people from my life that are no good for me. Sometimes that has to be family. I’ve had a lifetime of not feeling like a part of my dad’s side of the family. I felt like I had moved past that hurt. I actually started to think that maybe immaturity on the part of my cousins might have been in play and maybe they were different people now.

I’m far from perfect, but I’ve put in quite a bit of work over the years and I have grown. I’ve learned to consider what other people may be feeling that would make them act the way they do. I try to put myself in their shoes. I look for the best in them. I’m sure that comes some from general maturity, but mostly from Bible study.

But the hard truth is that some people don’t change, they don’t grow, and they are just generally unpleasant people. This was proven to me in a big way this week. For the entirety of this year so far I have been really limiting my time on social media. I closed my TikTok and Lemon8 accounts. I closed Instagram and opened a new one just for communication from my kiddos and I’m rarely on Facebook. So I was surprised when my mother called and asked me if I had talked to my aunt recently (on my dad’s side). I said no, not in a little while. She said my cousin had desperately asked for prayers on Facebook. So I messaged her and she gave me a clipped response and said she’d have our uncle ( my dad’s brother) call me. He did. He explained the saga that had been going on since Thursday with my aunt (dad’s sister & her second husband). It was now Saturday evening. That’s right. No one in my family even considered calling me or even sending a quick text. Not even that uncle, my dad’s baby brother. I tried not to take it personally, but it still hurt a little bit. He later sent me a message sometime in the wee hours of Sunday morning saying that my uncle had passed away. That’s all I heard.

Yesterday morning, around 10:00, I called my aunt to see how she was doing and tell her how sorry I was. Her husband was a hoot and I always liked him. He was actually nicer to me than a lot of my family and he had been in the family less time than anyone else! We talked for a few minutes and she said they were going to the funeral home to make the arrangements and they would let me know what they were. Guess what? They didn’t. Last night I looked on Facebook and there they were, shared by my cousin. Once again, I’m an afterthought, not even that actually. They just don’t think of me at all. This was the last olive branch I’ll be extending. I will go to the funeral home out of respect for my uncle and my aunt. I know she is devastated right now and though we aren’t close I don’t think she would deliberately try to hurt me. My cousins, however, could care less. That is clear and that is fine. If something happens to my aunt one day and I actually find out about it I will of course pay my respects. The same goes for my dad’s brother, but I’m through thinking that we are family.

So, to answer the prompt, these are the people who make me nervous. They make me very uncomfortable and I hate that, but I clearly can’t change it at this point. I’ve reached out at times in the past with no success. I know they had a complicated relationship with my dad when he was alive. We all did. And my mother didn’t let me spend as much time with them when I was growing up, but now I see that maybe she knew what she was doing on that one. If you have family that is special to you let them know. I think I’ll tell my cousin Elizabeth that I love her right now. She’s one of the good ones on my mom’s side who has always loved me unconditionally.

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