Unfiltered Story #250183

When I was a kid, I was visiting my aunt, uncle and cousin in another state with my grandparents. My cousin was less than half my age but I adored her.

I’m an insanely picky eater and I’ve gotten crap for it from family as long as I can remember. Meals were often rough, but I could usually find a small something to eat and if I couldn’t, I just didn’t eat. I wasn’t dramatic about going hungry, in fact I just wanted to disappear because I was embarrassed I couldn’t bring myself to eat very typical foods. I also never asked for anything to be made special for me, ever.

My aunt was a major witch (and still is; I could submit so many stories) and had problems with me. Years later I’ve realized she has serious narcissistic tendencies and everything suddenly made sense, but at this point she was my aunt and while it wasn’t like I thought she could do no wrong, I didn’t think the faults of adults were my business. Anyway, she had problems with me, including my diet. I’d had family who were extremely judgemental about my upbringing, but this aunt just seemed furious that I dared to defy her by not loving her food. She made a point of not letting me have snacks or even toast between meals and watched me like a hawk. Some days she actually seemed even angrier when I DID eat, as if she got off on starving me.

It got to the point where my grandmother began sneaking small treats to me in the bathroom. Mostly granola bars and such. One day, she brought me pop tarts and I was stupid enough to leave the wrapper in the bathroom trash. My very young cousin happened to notice it and loudly asked everyone in a confused tone, “Who was eating pop tarts in the bathroom?”

Busted.

I don’t remember much of what happened afterwards. I’m not sure if my grandparents shielded me from most of it or if I’ve actually blocked it out. But I’m pretty sure our vacation was cut short. A few years later that aunt showed her true colors and has been trying to ruin my uncle’s life for the last decade and has taken pretty much every penny my grandparents had to pay his legal fees and child support. He previously had a job with a great salary but lost it and never got the child support payments adjusted, so my grandparents kept swooping in to make the payments he could not afford to keep him out of jail. Last I heard, he recently explained to his teenage daughter some of the stuff her mother had done over the years and when she confronted her, my aunt disowned her.