#sorry i just dont rly have anywhere else to dump all this

[nardaviel]

tw suicide in family, transphobia, cops i guess

my brother just called to tell me that our cousin, who we havent seen in almost 20 years, has killed himself. i didnt even think i felt any emotional attachment to this guy, thats how distant we are from his family, but uhh turns out i was wrong i guess

he was out of contact with his family too, except for his sister. probably because of his mother? the one bright spot in this is that her child committed suicide and shell live with that pain forever. if i had to choose one person in the world for that to happen to, theres a strong chance id have chosen her, if not for the fact that those kids would then. be my cousins. my aunt hasnt spoken to my immediate family in almost 20 years, ever since she learned that my brother was a lesbian (he is not, but that was his egg understanding of the situation) and that my mom was fine with that. this is after my mom went out of her way and endured a lot on this aunts behalf when my uncle wanted to marry her. its just the hatred for my brother (and me ig but idk if she even knows im not straight) and the pure fucking ingratitude towards my mother. she didnt even come to my mothers funeral. i loathe her. (then she saw on facebook that actually my brother was trans and she sent dad some weird transphobic stuff for a bit but i think shes back to ignoring us)

but my point is, at the same get-together where my aunt would end up cutting contact with our family, my cousins were telling me and my brother "yeah our mom is weird abt gay stuff, we dont actually care"

and my other cousin, this guys younger sister, worked for some progressive campaign at one point iirc? so i feel like they both thought she was nuts

anyway the actual point is. my uncle, my mothers brother who is not Like That and who still talks to us, could only guess at what happened bc my cousin had largely cut contact. but he had a pretty good guess i think

so my cousin was in the police force, which i forgot about. but he quit a couple of years ago, apparently, and developed drug and alcohol problems. and then he killed himself. and like... i remember him, vaguely, and i know all this stuff about how he reacted to his mother and to being on the force

so all i can think is, he was a cop who wasnt a bastard. and because he wasnt a bastard, being in the force, however briefly, destroyed him. he was a lil white kid from a conservative family who didnt really understand what the cops were like and wanted to do good, probably. and then he got in and he was like "jesus fuck what is this." so he quit, but hed already seen too much and maybe done too much, maybe he had PTSD, and he couldnt cope

he was not old. i dont remember his age for sure but i do know he will have quit the force in his twenties, and i know he went to college. so he wasnt in there for long. i just

this kid, this child. one of five(!) of my dead mothers remaining blood relatives, because my brother and i were adopted. we watched tv together and played together when we were kids. he was a middle-class white guy, he played football in high school, etc, but he wasnt like. fundamentally evil. he was just privileged. he saw through some of his mothers shit even as a teenager. but he didnt see through enough, so he bought into the lie that cops are protectors, and he only found out too late that oh boy is that not true. he quit the force but he couldnt escape it, his time there obviously followed him and haunted him. and now hes fucking dead. that was my cousin and now hes dead and he did it to himself