When someone in your family marries into another family, you instantly adopt that family's issues, both good and bad.  My brother married for the second time a couple of summers ago.  I was ambivalent at the time.  I'm ambivalent now.

I just started talking to my mother again and had decided to go ahead and emotionally "adopt" my brother's stepkids.  The oldest kid is in the army and just got shipped off to Iraq.  He's already been married and divorced (annulled?) and has a second fiancee.  He tattooed his former girlfriend's name on his chest.  I don't think he's twenty yet.  He makes lots of bad decisions and I'm very concerned about his life and health.  I hope he hangs around with soldiers who are level-headed and that his commanding officer is a hardass.

His sister makes bad decisions, too.  She's pregnant at 17 and either doesn't know who the father is or won't tell.

They're all fundies, so I wonder if she'd ever been taught anything about contraception or if she'd just been told not to have sex.  As a fundy, she isn't even allowed to consider abortion.  Until recently I was completely against abortion, but since I've been allowed to think it out for myself, I have found myself looking at the issue from many different angles.  When does the fetus feel pain and fear?  How does one weigh that against the pain and suffering of having a child at such a young age and what it does to the hopes and dreams of the immature teenager and her family?  What about the baby?  Will it suffer for having been born to someone so young and immature?  Can the family financially afford another child?

Everyone in the family will probably be expected to help in some way. I don't "do" babies, so no, I won't babysit. Maybe I can help in some other way. When the kid is a little older, I might babysit.  When I was a teenager, my mother had a daycare center full of screaming babies and toddlers.  I just can't stand the sound of a screaming baby.  I'm not sure why it affected me so much.  I guess I felt I had no privacy and that my mother was always focused on other children.  That's ancient history.  I just know that since then I don't "do" babies... *shudder*

I had planned on making the youngest kid a personalized video about sharks.  I was going to send a care package to the young soldier and his buddies.  The now-pregnant kid plays a lot of Counter-Strike.  (That's gonna go the way of the dodo soon...)  Anyway, I was planning to show up in one of her games with a funny name that played on her CS name.  Obviously I can't tell you what it is...was....jeez.

Now I'm feeling that ambivalence again.  I have a lot of issues I need to address.  Most of all I need to address a bunch of health issues.  Also, I was hoping I could leave this county.  Just because my brother married someone, do I have to take on all their problems, too? 

Hell, I don't even like my brother all that much.  I'm ambivalent about him.  I've only asked him for money once in my life, back in November.  i needed money for groceries and he said no.  He's helped me with some things I couldn't do lately (back / neck issues).  Do I suddenly owe him my undying loyalty?  

I'm so confused.  When you love people who are your complete opposite, confusion is the starting place of all your emotions.  My whole family loves Pretzeldent Bush.  No, really.  They do.  Most of them are fundamentalist Christians.  I really and truly detest religion, what it does to the psyche, what it does to families like mine.