an email I just sent to a MAGA cousin of mine.

[Attilatheblond]

78. Adult child of an alcoholic here and I have long thought the entire nation needs to attend CODA meetings

You took the proper stand and I applaud your action of cutting this abusive person off.

My dad was part of a large family. Throw in all the spouses and cousins, their spouses & kids after a few years, and it's a VERY large family. My dad went thru every damn one of them, mooching, telling tales of woe, woe he created and that affected his wife and us kids in ways I am still coming to understand at 71+ years of age.

Enabling a chronic screw up and abuser is NOT helpful, as you pointed out. I am in your corner 100% on this one.

Decades ago, I wrote a poem for my dad. The gist was that "the other guy's arm is only so long and you need to stop wallowing in mud, expecting others to constantly rescue you."

When he called out of the blue, years after I accepted the reality that I had to cut him completely out of my life in order to save myself, I knew the man had finally run out of luck bamboozling every one else in the clan. When he was down to tracking me down and calling, I knew I was his last hope of grabbing money to get himself out of trouble. The answer was still NO. I was barely housed and keeping daughter fed, but I wouldn't have 'helped' him at that point even if I had been comfortably situated. People giving him 'help' decade after decade just reinforced his delusion that he wasn't at least partly responsibility for how his life was going.

He died not long after that unwanted call, and I do not feel the slightest remorse that I was the last wall he ran head first into. I am a kind, giving person, someone who usually has put the needs of others way beyond my own desperate needs, but I am not stupid. There was no fixing him and I watched too many others severely hurt, emotionally and financially, by him after they tried time after time.

You did what was necessary and proper. I wish more people would wake up and smell the dark, bitter coffee you finally saw was necessary to sip.