My Cousin

When I was a teenager living in my mom's windowless basement in Ottawa, she wanted my cousin to come live with us and for him to share half of my room with him. I was really uncomfortable sharing my room with him because he seemed very off. When I was in my late 20's, as my mom was dying of breast cancer, he reached out to me and was clearly in distress but I had no idea what to do about it at the time. After my mom had died, and after my girlfriend moved out of my apartment, I decided to offer him a room in my apartment, since he was still in distress. Once he moved in, it was apparant that he was a drug addict, but I wasn't sure which drug it was at the time. I came to find out that he was addicted to Lean. He refused to better his life and chose to steal from me and to lie to his parents. He was a very violent person, and I also came to realize that he was most likely physically abusing his wife while he was living in Austria with her. It was an odd experience living with him, but it helped to confirm my suspicions about him as a teenager, and to give me more confidence about my decisions as a teenager in general. I don't regret inviting him to live with me, even though it was objectively a disaster.