My cousin and his wife are in town visiting from the Bay Area, so we had them come over today for lunch and to meet Kaia, as well as to see our apartment building for the first time. Well, this cousin actually has a brother who lives here on the Upper East Side, but because his marriage is dysfunctional and miserable, Chris didn’t want them to come over. So I made an excuse and lied at my visiting cousin’s suggestion and said that Chris got COVID, so no one could come over. It seems a bit ridiculous to make up something like this, but we really didn’t want to be exposed to their negativity and bad vibes, not to mention the massive passive aggression between the two of them. Plus, the last time this cousin came, he barely even acknowledged or looked at Kaia, and he spent almost the entire time on his phone doing whoever the hell knows what.

My cousin and his wife are decent, easy going people. Of the three cousins from my dad’s older brother and wife, he’s probably the most “normal” and easy to get along with. But it’s always weird to think that he tries to gloss things over and make everything seem normal when it’s not. He tends to avoid problems and pretend they don’t exist until they are really, really bad. He doesn’t acknowledge that much is wrong with his brother who lives here; he does at a surface level, but he doesn’t seem to recognize exactly how bad and unhealthy it is, or the fact that his brother likely needs professional help. He doesn’t acknowledge that his own mother belongs to a cult.

On the one hand, this cousin seems to avoid problems and thinks nothing is ever wrong. His youngest brother who lives across the park from us thinks everything and everyone is a problem. There doesn’t seem to be much balance here, is there?