Today, my cousin, who is taking three months of unpaid time off to “tend” to his two-year-old son, and I were having an instant message conversation online. His baby, who supposedly needs five different therapists five times a week because of multiple learning disabilities that he and his wife believe the child has, is being smothered by the two of them. They could probably give my mother a run for her money when it comes to who can be the most overprotective parents in the world.

I’m telling him that I think he and his wife seriously need to consider marriage therapy. They clearly have no respect for each other and don’t listen to each other at all; she calls him an “awful father” every day. He has no respect for her job and thinks she should fulfill traditional female roles at home and not do paid work, even though she loves her job and works for a company that takes pretty good care of her. I tell him that I’ve done therapy before and found it very helpful. He is clueless. He asks, “Why would you need to go therapy?” All three of my male cousins lack any sense of emotional intelligence, so I responded, “To deal with Ed’s death, the circumstances around it and how it came to be, and to come to terms with how stupid people in our dysfunctional family are like you.” His response? “Oh.”

Sometimes I read certain entries on this blog, and I can’t help but think that if someone else read this, they’d think I’m making up all these stories. No, this was not made up. This is real… sadly. I wish I were making this up.