Prison Break

Yesterday, I had to drive my aunt-in-law to the airport. She’s moving away across the country to be closer with her real family. The send off was a bit bittersweet. Of course I’ll miss her and of course I’m happy that she’s going to where she wants to, but her departure means life at home will only begin to be harder. When she was still here, sometimes she would pay for our groceries, she’d breakfast cook for the entire household at 7 in the morning, and could help my immediate family take care of our other, more needy, family members.

Now that she’s gone, there’s no one to cook food other than my mom, which is gone for most of the week. I can manage. I know how to cook, and even if what I make tastes nasty, I’ll eat it with no regards. It’s my other aunt and uncle that I’m worried about. With no home cooked meals, they’ll throw tantrums that I’ll have to deal with. They won’t eat the food I make because they’re not used to my tastes. They want food from their homeland, but I don’t know how to cook that. They’re also completely inept in the kitchen so they can’t even cook for themselves if they wanted to. Even if I can cook the food they like, I can’t do it everyday and new meals each breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They refuse to eat leftovers. So as of lately, I’ve been their personal DoorDash/Grubhub/Uber Eats driver.

Before my aunt-in-law left yesterday, she’s been out of commission for a week. Another family member that was like a mother figure to my mom from another city has been getting old and frail, so my aunt-in-law wanted to help my mom out. On the weekdays, my mom and aunt-in-law would live with that family member to take care of them, and on Friday nights, my mom would pick up my aunt-in-law after work and drive her back home. I now realize having so many family members and not being about to give out names might make this very confusing for you readers. Are you guys able to keep up?

Anyways, now that my aunt-in-law is gone, my mom will have to take care of that other family member by herself and leave me with the other people (aunt, uncle, and cousin).

My aunt-in-law has worked hard. She helped us out so much more than she needed to. I also got a bit attached to her since she was the only one out of the other people that thought of me as an actual human being, rather than a food delivery person or personal chauffeur. I’ll miss her, but she deserves better than this, too. If one of us can escape from this hell hole, I’m glad it’s her. She said she’ll only leave for a few months and then come back, but I feel like that was a lie.

I feel like this diary entry was all over the place. Her leaving is still so sudden and new. I’m not really sure how to process it yet. My feeling and thoughts on this subject are all over the place, but I know that I definitely am not mad at her in any way for leaving. My aunt and uncle are mad though. Even if those two are a bit on the “special” spectrum, they also know that her leaving means their lives’ will be worse, too. So they resent her for it and none of them wanted to go see her off.

My cousin, on the other hand, is sad about her stepmom leaving. She came crying to me one night saying “Everyone I love always leaves me”. I don’t particularly like that kid, but I’m not some monster. I consoled her a bit reassuring her that the stepmom will be back in a couple of months. Now that makes me scared what she’ll think if the stepmom decides not to return. But again, I don’t really like kids, especially her, so if she gets heartbroken about it later I don’t really care as long as she doesn’t bother me with her crying. Just to preface, this doesn’t mean I wish the worst for the kid, I just simply don’t care. Whatever she feels doesn’t necessarily affect my life, until she comes to annoy me.

It’s funny because on other days, my cousin told me she hated her stepmom. My uncle is extremely hands off on his kid, but ever since the stepmother came into the picture, she’s more hands on and yells at the kid a lot (rightfully so). I’ve stated before that the child is very misbehaving, so the stepmom had a lot to yell about. Then, my cousin would go in my room and bitch about her stepmom and saying how she’s so mean. My cousin told me she would even purposefully insult the stepmom’s cooking right in front of her face saying either “this is too salty” or “this is bland” even if it’s well-seasoned. It’s interesting to watch my cousin switch up her feelings so fast now that she’s driven her only mother-figure out of the house. I guess that’s what she gets. Even I could see that the cousin was equally as ungrateful. The stepmom would splurge on clothes, shoes, toys, and snacks for the kid, but of course the kid had a vendetta against her because the stepmom wasn’t her “real” mom.

TLDR: One of the prisoners found an escape, and although bittersweet, I’ll be here to root for their success.