I wanted to revisit this episode for a while. I wrote a post when starting this blog back in 2015 remembering an episode where a first cousin named Natalie came home to visit with my mother. Because yours truly can be the “brooding” type I stayed in another part of the house while my mother and her niece were entertaining.
I was on the computer at that point surfing the internet just doing what’s normal for me. My mother felt the need to pull me upstairs complaining that I needed to speak instead of being downstairs uninterested and oblivious. The excuse my mother used was that I had footage of the previous year’s reunion and the laptop I was using was the only computer in the house where my mother and Natalie could watch the footage.
Well here’s where things just didn’t go well. Nat got very excited to see me and while I was very short when she just got so aggressive with her attempts to reach out. I was not feeling this at all, and Natalie was either very oblivious or just wanted to break through. Meanwhile most of my answers to her was uh-huh, OK, nuh-uh, alright. I didn’t want to waste too much of my breath when I was more into cutting this off quickly.
My mother I recall just seemed very uncomfortable as her head was down I noticed at one point. Things took a turn when Natalie decided to state for the record – “I heard you got a little girlfriend“. Well now there was a trainwreck right there and part of the story I talked about this girl I called Nicole and it just didn’t work. Perhaps your hero just ran her away in spite of himself either way Nat decided to get in on this and I really wanted to cut this off. Once it became clear I wasn’t feeling it she finally sensed that this isn’t going where she wanted it to go.
She piped it down and sat back on the sofa, I hurried up and got out of the living room.
You know there were some questions I never answered. Well yeah in the heat of that moment at that time I definitely wasn’t feeling having to discuss what happened with that little girlfriend. She probably didn’t know that this was a very touchy subject and if you will it was a failure that I was still smarting from. Someone told her and she just go so excited and just didn’t know that this was really a negative subject for me. I also hardly updated anyone didn’t see a need to with family I just dropped it, this was one of those things I talked too much about.
If it was so built up in Nat’s mind it definitely was in mine until it fell apart. Not really her fault it was just how I handled it back then. I just didn’t want to talk about it and she was the last one that yours truly wanted to say anything about it to.
Another thing I mentioned back then was just that we’ve had some odd interactions where she guts upset and often I don’t come out well for it. I suppose she has some expectations that once I walk over them she just has a problem. For example, I didn’t know that she didn’t like shrugging – well I need to tell that story one day. In some cases if she had a problem with something she didn’t always handle them very maturely. But then in some of those incidents she was young and I’m betting some of this is her background especially with a mentally ill mother.
I’m willing to bet her own “maturity” causes her to not to be very upset with me. She’ll quickly forget what happened and try to be friendly again. It could be that she just wants to drop what upset her and certainly she’ll drop it once she felt as if she addressed it. Meanwhile I can hold onto stuff for a long time, while she moves forward I’ll turn around and say leave me alone.
Which for most of the last decade after graduating with my undergrad degree she largely has. I’ve been to a handful of reunions in the past decade and I’ve not seen her. I understand it’s usually vacations and when the family plans reunions it seems many of them are last minute. Once Natalie and Nate makes their plains there’s a scheduling conflict.
I did note that she sent me a friend request on facebook and when I didn’t accept or reject right away I eventually saw that it went away. Sometimes I might accidently hit a button whether to accept or reject and don’t recall that either way with Natalie, perhaps she just got tired of the waiting game or changed her mind. If she doesn’t take my actions very seriously, I’m sure she thought about some of my actions towards her over the years.
Oh and let me mention this, Natalie on the surface is very nice. On the other hand Nat has that angry side and its a side Ive encountered on occasion. And on this day at home, she exposed it especially after trying to figure something out about this little girlfriend. I can cause her to drop that happy smiley “mask” sometimes.
Finally another thing to add is that she was on the little girlfriend trip long before this. When my brother got married she started talking about it and had herself a “forced laugh” when she queried me regarding a dance I shared with some woman at the wedding. To be honest I don’t really remember who that “cougar” was but Natalie wanted to talk about it. When she found out I was going to visit another one of my uncles at a neighborhood watering hole she still had to state in a silly way that “maybe you will find you a girlfriend”.
Two of my uncles – one I don’t care for the other I cared for more – likely heard that remark and gave no response. Either they didn’t get it or they weren’t amused. Perhaps while her comment was thoughtless because we were going to a bar. At that time I wasn’t yet 21 and since my uncle at that time was middle-aged who knows what type of women I would find there. She probably didn’t really know…
Either way I’m planning to make yet another reunion over the summer. Perhaps we shall see how that turns out for yours truly. Will Nat and Nate be there this year?
Meanwhile feel free to check out The Cousin and Signals which are the most relevant posts to this revisit.
Feeling No Love 