For this post, I want to tell you all a story. It starts roughly 18 years ago, just a few more days and it will be. A boy was born to a woman and man. This boy was raised well by his father, his mother not wanting much more than to have the title that having the boy afforded her. She would leave and come back to the man, and he would accept her back every time.
Her son, no matter the situation or state of his mother, loved her very deeply. He loves her so much that to this day, I am not allowed to say anything bad about her. This boy's younger brother feels the exact same way about this woman that is a mother in title only.
There then came a time when this woman found another man other than the father of her two sons to go to. She was with this man, who neither of the boys liked, no longer than a few months at most, if memory serves. Then another came to her, this one she married.
Once the boy had had enough of his step mother, he moved in with his mother and her new husband. This was admittedly a better setup than what he had with his father and step mother, but it was not to last. Recently, his mother has found her another man. Her husband kicked her out of his home and with her, the boy. The woman's new man wants nothing to do with the boy and therefore neither does she. This means he has but one place to go: his father's house. The boy is not happy in the least with this.
Is it right for this to happen? Of course not! A mother is not someone who abandons their child when a new man doesn't want them! No, a mother should shun the man who says that about their child! But not this one...
The boy's name is Zachary Long, my cousin and brother by adoption. The younger brother is Andrew Long. Even after all that their mother has done to them, they love her unconditionally and get extremely angry when anyone, even their father or me, says anything that goes against the image of her they have in their heads... It is this that makes it all the worse. As I sit here and type this, Zac is sitting next door, shut up in a hurriedly cleaned up room that used to belong to him mourning this tragedy. He knows he'll likely not get to go back to his mother for a long time, if ever, but he's trying to do what he's done so many times before...
This situation will not end well for any side. I wrote this in hopes that you, my friends, who know Zac may understand why he's so... odd, and why I am still so close to him despite that (without me, I sometimes think he'd be in a mental ward...). So there's my two cents on this subject.
