Realizations

There's nothing like a good dose of reality to get you panicking.

This morning, my mom informed me that my tita aleli was coming out of remission. Two years ago, she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. She was already suffering from osteoperosis, so things spread quite rapidly for her.

I'd been out of a job for six months then, and since I wasn't doing anything I went there to keep her company and look after my 15 year old cousin Lara. My aunt has always been crabby, but the pain just made things tough for the both of us. And my younger cousin--who was always kind of sheltered--just...dealt with it.

I don't have any siblings, but for those few weeks she latched on to me like I was her big sister. I've never taken care of anyone before, so this was a new experience.

It's a little different from looking after a baby or a toddler. You don't don't change diapers (which i've only done twice, in my shorts stints as impromptu-friend-and-sitter) and there's a lot less chasing around.

Instead, you graduate to giving more lectures and not a little hand holding.

For a few short reasons, I was at least grateful for that. Couselling was always my forte, and i've spent more time being sounding boards and dispensing advice over coffee and donuts, or just driving around or sitting up sharing worries with people than I have taking care of a kid under 10. I probably wouldn't know what to do.

She probably wouldn't have gravitated to me. But she did.

The weird thing is that Lara is the type of kid who--had we been of the same age and not family members--I would have just ignored. We have nothing in common. Not to mention the fact that she reminds me of that brief window in time where I was a teeny bopper 13 year old who read Tigerbeat, something I'd like to have expunged from my memory.

She's very nice, very sweet, somewhat flakey, and though she got decent grades, she was most definitely not an intellectual.

She once made me read a copy of Love Stories, a series of teenage romance books that I was hooked on when I was a high school freshman. Tired and sentimental, I took the book and settled down for some very light reading.

The story turned out to be a poor, teenaged adaptation of Love Story by Erich Segal- which, if you look at it, is what A Walk To Remember turned out to be, only slightly more decent.

I was around her age when I read Love Story for the first time, and though we do not have -ostensibly-the same literary taste, I thought i'd lend her my copy of Erick Segal's great novel, thinking that this would elevate her literary palette.

She hated it. Said she didn't understand any of the jokes and preferred the melodrama of the watered down, campy version.

But she said she loved me anyway, and proceeded to brush my hair.

Okay, so maybe i'm a snob, but it's a running joke that I usually administer IQ tests to people before they become my friends. There's nothing wrong with some mindless reading, but to compare some annoying git trying to write a run of a mill love story to a literary great--gimme a break.

I don't do well with--everybody else. I can stand in a party and entertain them, but I can't hold more than 30 minutes of conversation with them without feeling like I scrambled eggs.

In all my life, i'd always been different. I was never with the crowd, but was always backed away, watching them. It didn't matter whether I was currently with the in crowd or the outcasts or the misfits, I just never went where everybody else did.

And yet here is my cousin, Plain Jane, and I love her with no condition and she in turn, loves me.

Who watches those smarmy filipino teen sitcoms on Sundays and has a different crush every week and has pin-ups all over her bedroom walls. Who at 16 still reads Love Stories and Nancy Drew. Who can charm the pants out of anyone. Who puts up with me watching Trek when i'm sleeping over and roots through my bag, cleaning out left-over receipts.

I am Daria and she is Hillary Duff, and I do not want to change a thing about her.

And now that my aunt is dying, all I can think of is her. How situations might change, how she might move with us.

Finances aside, there is no question that I will end up raising her, as I did during most of the time that I was with her.

A 24 year old trying to lead a 17 year old. She looks up to me so much that I have no idea how to tell her that I still feel a lot like a kid.

That I have trouble making decisions too, that I don't exactly know where life takes you. That things at 24 aren't as stable as you might think it will be at 17, and looking at where she is and where I am now, the only thing I can tell her is "shit kid, it doesn't get any easier."

I guess this me really scared.