My Cousin

My cousin is an amazing person who I love with all my heart. He’s beautifully flawed and wonderfully imperfect, yet my soul calls out to his on a regular basis.
I see him as I did when I was a little girl, but I know all too well that he is no longer the perfect cousin I remember. He is…himself a product of his environment, a childhood of inconsistency and lack of supervisor, where his only friends were the gang members that roamed the neighborhood and his only family hid lies in their truth. How would you blame a 14-year-old girl for getting pregnant when the only love she’s ever felt was in the moment that boy tried to get her in bed? So how can you blame a boy who was never told the truth of his life, when his family never accepted it?
His struggles are my struggles (to a degree), his choices are not my choices but my life has been peaches compared to his. His children symbolize hope and his tattoos symbolize his flaws. I know that if he could he would have chose something different and if he could he would have been able to say goodbye to those he loves, but at his best, right now he can only sit and await the next time he’ll come around.
I love my cousin and long to be near him, as any family member would. I see him as the boy who had everything, I wanted to love him and I did with all I had and still it wasn’t enough to hold him back from a life or disappointment and fear.
My cousin is beautiful inside and out but you may not notice it, his flaws are his own and he’ll own them all, but they all cannot be put on his back when some of the choices weren’t even his. I’ve learned from his life, and I’ve found that even when you have all from the outside inside you may still need. Yourself.