What’s the shadiest thing your family has ever done to you?
The Weight of Expectation
My Golden Child cousin borrowed $177,000 from me to start a business but actually spent the money traveling and gambling. I took him to court over it, but my whole family sided with him. My cousin recently came to me asking me to lend him $7,000 for a business investment. He already owed me $3,000, so at first I said no.
My parents forcefully pressured me into giving in. My cousin promised to have it back to me within six months as he’d have his business up and running by then. However, the six months passed, and he had not even started his business yet. He had actually spent the $7,000 on himself.
He went traveling in Asia, bought a new gaming console, and gambled the rest away. I remember the day he came to me about it, his parents and mine with him. Apparently, he felt awful for how reckless he was with the seven grand and wants to make things right.
In order to do this, he asked for another loan of $7,000, swearing that this time he’d start a business. I straight up laughed at him but as I was in the middle of telling him no, my aunt interrupted me.
She screamed that family help each other out and started relentlessly pushing me into giving him the money.
The memories of being ganged up on like this resurfaced. As my parents, my aunt and uncle, and my brother all towered over me talking about lending him the money, I essentially let them bully me into giving my brother another seven grand.
As the months went on, my brother Darren of course never paid me back. I gave him another six months and after that I started pressing him about the now total $177,000 he owed me. Of course, my family defended him, saying I was overreacting and needed to give him time. This was unfortunately no surprise.
Growing up, the difference between Darren and me was obvious. I remember being 16 and working long hours at a diner to save for my first car. I took every extra shift I could while Darren didn’t have to work at all.
On his 16th birthday, our family threw him a big party and gave him a brand new car with a huge red bow on top. It wasn’t just the car that bothered me; it was how the family treated him. They acted like Darren deserved the world.
No one seemed to notice how hard I worked. When I finally saved enough to buy a used car, there was no celebration. It felt like my effort didn’t matter. One Thanksgiving, Darren casually mentioned crashing his car while racing with friends.
Instead of being upset, my family laughed and brushed it off. My uncle even wrote him a check to cover the repairs. If that had been me, I’d have been grounded for months. It was always like that.
When Darren struggled in school, they hired tutors and blamed the teachers. When I had trouble, I was told to figure it out on my own. Darren got everything handed to him while I had to work for everything I had. The family saw him as special.
I was just expected to manage on my own. Darren would swoop in and throw a few hundred dollars at someone now and then, but no one had ever given him anything like the $17,000 total I’d loaned him. That was a whole different story.
He was always the one offering help, not the one owing it. No one had ever asked him for anything this big, and now that I had, he couldn’t handle it. Then there was the confrontation.
