The Visit

Because my mother lives about a half hour away from where the job fair was last night, I tried to pay her a visit after work, but there was no moon, no stars, and the sky was pitch black. I couldnt find her house! What is that?! So I made a quick U-turn and went to visit with my cousin instead.

                            

OMGG... These girls could be us. Yep, I'm the one on the right. LOL...

My cousin has never married and has no children. She works at the school and the school is her life. She plays guitar and sings in the church choir. Her mother went to heaven a few years before I came to the Valley, but she is the baby in a large family of boys. Her brothers live close by and they have always been there for her whenever she needs anything. Even though many people like her, she has always looked for me to share her feelings of low self-esteem, her loneliness, and her suicidal thoughts.

She came to the door in salt and pepper hair. I wondered to myself if I have I been away that long, but no, it hasnt! Every single room in her house was in such a mess, but she didnt seem to mind one bit.

Like little children, we laughed and caught up on things and then we got serious. She had a "silent heart attack" last year which was a wake up call for attempts at trying to do better with her diet.

Some people live their whole life expressing suicidal thoughts and living their lives of self-destruction, their versions of slow suicide... addictions, overindulgences, self-punishments. When death faces them in the face, however, they realize that they really do not want to die. Counseling with my cousin has been such a hard uphill battle for me, because she focuses so much on what she hasnt got instead of being grateful for all that she is and all that she's got.

My cousin has always been overweight. Food has always been her comfort and she has deliberately eaten her way through her loneliness. This health problem has made her take a serious look at her diet, which really contradicts her slow suicide with food. Being a diabetic never stopped her from eating anything she wanted, but now it seems that she is more conscious of how much she is eating and she has added some healthy foods to  her diet. In between the pizza, the sweet pastries, the taquitos, and the tortillas, she has added some salads, veggies, fruit and nuts. All those times she used to get upset at me for eating healthy! This is incredible. That is such a giant step for her. Yay! 

Although she has never been married, her weight problem has never gotten in the way of her love life. She talked about the last lover in her life...  a man who couldnt keep his mouth shut about their sexual life to her friends. When he dumped her, she told him that he was never going to find anyone else to love him the way she did and that he was always going to remember her. She warned him not to do the same things with his next girlfriend that he did with her in bed because the way he makes love to a woman does not turn women on. She also reminded him that she had to teach him how to please a woman and he still didnt get it right. She must have finally listened to my words, because being a man's doormat has always been her norm.

It took her 49 years, but my childhood friend has finally grown up. =.)