Regina Noctis

*eyes package that arrived in the mail today, addressed to me under my username and my mom by her real name*

*eyes *

You’re my prime suspect, you know.

(And if I’m right, thank you.)

We got a call this afternoon. It was the psychotic cousin. Though he was originally scheduled to be released in February, it got moved up and he was released today. Everything is back to being locked down. Windows that wouldn’t lock now have metal bits in place that keep them from opening. Mom is back to being on edge, and spent much of the afternoon crying in terror. Grandma is grousing and mistreating Mom because she won’t agree that it’s okay for Grandma to bring the “poor baby” home. Once again, the grandmother unit has conveniently forgotten how horrible, chaotic, and dangerous it is to have my cousin living here. She flatly refuses to believe any of the things he has done were that bad. We can’t even get rid of the mattress he ruined, because she won’t believe that he saturated both sides of it from end to end with urine. And she certainly won’t believe that he was planning to kill us all, in spite of the bullet holes he painted on the pictures of relatives in the house – three bullet holes in Mom’s face, one in the neck and one between the eyes on my uncle, two in the chest on my aunt, etc. We also found in the back yard the targets he’d painted and practiced shooting at, one for each of the people he’d been plotting against. I’ve also got letters in my room. He wrote them before we got him out of here last time, then crumpled them up and threw them all over the floor in his room. They were all written to his ex-wife, and range from obsession and verbal abuse to death threats against Becky, Becky’s mother, and Becky and the psychotic cousin’s children. The night he got arrested for breaking into Becky’s house in Bakersfield, I think it likely that he’d gone there to make good on those threats. It’s a frigging miracle that the night he was able to get to Bakersfield the house was empty. Becky and family had left that afternoon for a trip to visit some relatives up north.

When the cousin called today, he had the unbelievable nerve to ask that either Mom or I drive up there, pick him up, and bring him back here so he can pick up some of his stuff. Mom and I had a similar reaction of “Go fuck yourself.”

We’d heard that the cousin would be getting out this month instead of February, and didn’t know when. So I’ve been in what I think of as sentry mindset since the start of October. Every noise has me on edge and ready to fight if necessary. If I do manage to sleep, it’s a very light and unrestful sleep, and every noise of the house settling or the cats chasing each other or – well, anything – wakes me up ready to defend either Mom or myself from possible attack. I keep a phone by me to call 911 at any time, and plan to go buy a baseball bat tomorrow.

As Mom said when we were locking down the house and all the outbuildings that we could, we are back to being under siege, and it’ll continue either until he’s dead or jailed again.

There’ve been those who’ve offered, or mentioned friends of theirs who’d be willing, to “take care” of the problem for me. I have often wished that I were cold enough and brave enough to take them up on the offer. What living in these conditions has done to all the pacifistic ideals I once held. But I can’t ask anyone or their friends to take on that karma, that responsibility, that possibility of being caught.

What I’d like is for him to do himself in, or for the law to keep him locked up for a very long time. I’ve lost any even faint faith I might once have had in the legal system taking this problem off of our shoulders, though. We have done everything that we can legally, and still have to live under siege and in fear. I still feel I have to go and pick up something to protect myself with, especially since I take night classes and could easily be jumped when I get home and everyone in the house is asleep.

I suppose I should be thankful that I had a four-month break from the constant stress and tension. But instead, I resent that I have to live in this state again, with constant knots in my back and shoulders from stress, and constant exhaustion from poor sleep. Four months without my shoulders so tense and knotted means that I’m no longer accustomed to them. I didn’t notice the pain of them anymore after living with them for so long. And now already I can feel pain starting from the tension that I can’t seem to lose with this guy on the loose.

Somehow, this needs to end. Even if my psychotic cousin doesn’t get us, the stress will eventually.

And all of this with my birthday next Friday. What a grand birthday present.

Happy fucking birthday to me.