hope

I’ve been thinking about my cousin Alyssa a lot today.

I rarely talk about my family here, besides mom dad and brother, but alas, other family members exist.

I’m one of 4 grandchildren, the oldest, and the only girl…that is of you don’t count Alyssa.

My aunt and uncle had her when my aunt was 19 and my uncle was 26, they weren’t married, and didn’t know if they wanted to be together forever, so they gave her up for adoption, even though they got married less than 2 years later and have two sons that are now 17 and 12.

She’s about 2 years older than me.

When I was 14 she got in contact with my aunt and uncle, and she wanted to come live with them, be part of my biological family, her adoptive family apparently was not so good…

My uncle teaches special ed, he doesn’t make very much money, and my aunt is a full time stay at home mom, so they didn’t have enough money really to take her in.

She didn’t graduate high school, ran away from home, married an abusive guy and ended up in a women’s shelter in Texas.

The rest of us kids in the family have had pretty much every advantage that we’ve ever wanted. My family isn’t super rich or anything, but I’ve never had a struggle for anything, any comfort or resource. It was just assumed that I’d go to college, that my life would follow a normal middle class path.

Alyssa got such a short end of the stick really. I mean, I don’t know how she really feels, we aren’t close (and we have very different interests) but I do know that she’s family, and that she wanted to be part of mine and was denied.

Sometimes we’d go for years without mention of her ( my aunt and uncle are in contact with her but they don’t share details)

But now, she’s back, living with my aunt and uncle. I’m 12 hours away, and I’m probably not going to be back until may, and I doubt we’ll have any interaction, but part of me secretly hopes she can be part of my small, standoffish family.

Here’s to second chances 🙂

phoebe