If you don't know how much I love my cousins, you don't know me at all. Sometimes my cousins don't know how much I love them, but they don't know me completely either. People (in general) expect you to be just like them, especially when you're "supposed" to be: if you've shared the same culture, upbringing, etc. The more you have in common on the surface, the more we assume we have in common when it comes to world views, values and methods of thinking. Then, even when we do have the same values, there is a still a chance we'll go about things in different ways.
My cousins are my brother. I mean that quite literally. My brother was the eldest of us, being 11 years my senior. My brother was fun. He was respectable, a gentleman, had an amazing smile and could make anyone laugh. I do this thing when I laugh (if I laugh real good) where my tongue rolls... well, I used to. No one can make me laugh like my brother did especially when he would tickle me, hard. My brother was my exact opposite. Me as a guy. I was just him as a girl. When I was 10, I quit ballet and started playing basketball --partially because I liked it better & partially because it was something I could do with my brother. My brother treated me like a princess and he treated whores like whores: Make you feel pretty, but how much do you derseve really? (He loved him a stripper tho lol) He taught me everything I need to know about men and their relation with women. I had a father for 9 months but he passed in a car accident about a half a mile from my house. 1989 was a tough year for my family, but I can't quite remember it. 1993 was worse. There's this little kid's book called, "The Night Dad Went to Jail." They haven't made one about Mom yet, but when a mother leaves the family, it's most likely it falls apart --even if it doesn't and especially if Dad doesn't exist. For two years, I had a mom, a brother and a sister... somewhere. I lived with a stranger in my own home. My best friend was a Black lab. I missed my brother most because he was the one who never wrote...
