Yeah another "CT is going through some shit, get a fucking blog" post.

But I just need to get this off my chest.

My friend's sister passed about a month ago. Not a huge impact on me personally, but my heart went out to my friend for her grief.

Another friend lost his 15 year old son two weeks ago. That one gutted me. It still lingers. Services are next Friday and I'm amazed he's dealing as well as he is. My heart is bleeding out for him. They're devastated.

****

Now my aunt got gangrene and didn't catch the infection right away. So she's in ICU, and the doctors are giving her a ten percent chance of survival, even after a surgery.

I have a lot of complicated feelings. I buried the hatchet with her personally, but haven't entirely been able to let go of some of the fucked up things she did to us as kids.

she took us in when we got taken away. I was 14 with four younger siblings. This is after she adopted one of my other siblings. On the surface, what a saint.

Except we just went from one abusive, neglectful frying pan and into a slightly more stable frying pan. She was Mom Part II, and like my mom did, made me the maid/butler/cook/etc for my siblings while she drank, smoked weed, and went out until 4 am.

I didn't respond well to this, so we entered a pattern of her kicking me out and then calling the police to report me as a runaway. She did this enough that none of my friends parents would allow me to come over, because they were sick of cops showing up to get me.

Just a really weird- and cruel- form of abuse right there.

Her son ran up hundreds of dollars worth of 900 number calls. She kept my clothing allotment to pay for it, and blamed me for it, even though I was at that point living with her friend after getting kicked out again. Again, I was 14.

But the big one, is after I got kicked out for good and was placed in foster care. She took my siblings to our 76 year old *great* grandmother's house "for the weekend" and just never came back for them. Just dropped them off like a litter of puppies. I called to find out what was going on, was told it was none of my fucking business, and when I said they didn't even have clothes, she said she'd "drop the rest of their shit" off later.

There's a lot of little details between these bigger stories. But it took me until around 2019 or so before I was able to bury the hatchet with her, in hopes of also putting those feelings behind me.

We never developed a new relationship, but we've been fine. If we see each other it's all love. I even convinced myself that she deserves a proverbial A for effort for at least trying to keep us together.

But the fact is, she did that shit for the money. Straight up and down, and the way she handled the situation only did more damage.

I want her to survive this. I don't wish death or incapacitation or any of that. And it's really selfish of me to make all this about me and my fucking emotional baggage. But that shit has been a slow volcanic eruption for me since yesterday. It's not easy to just "get over it", or "stop living in the past" or whatever the fuck. I literally can't stop that. Well I can/am through therapy and medication, but situations like this bring so much to the surface that becomes hard to manage.

There are other family dynamics- particularly with one of her sons and the sibling she adopted. I am at odds with both of them. I want to go be with the family while everyone is waiting for answers. But I also don't want any of that animosity between us to be a distraction, on some "WTF is he doing here" type shit. But the fact is I just want to go show support and don't want to be a distraction.

And I don't know how much of this is overthought. I'll probably head out in a bit and see what's what. perhaps it's a narcissistic thing to even see it through the lense of, "how will they react to me", I don't know. but I think that's just part of me dealing with the rush of emotions I'm now dealing with.