The Black Sheep…

When I was growing up, I had an auntie. Her nickname was Bubsy.

I have vague memories of her, not many, but enough to know she existed, enough to know she was once part of the fabric of our family. And then at some point, probably before I was even ten, she was no longer really there. Not gone, exactly. Just sort of moved into the background.

Every now and then there would be a Christmas card, or a birthday card, but she felt like a ghost relative. Someone you hear about, but don’t really know. Someone the adults mention with a certain tone.

When I was in my early twenties, I remember feeling excited because she had said she was going to come to my wedding. I didn’t even realise we had a way to contact her. I didn’t realise anyone in the family actually knew where she was. But apparently they did. She didn’t arrive, I was told she’d missed her plane.

At the time I didn’t think much of it. I just accepted it as one of those strange ‘Bubsy things’, the way people said her name like it came with a story already attached. Like she was unreliable, odd , a bit of an embarrassment.

There were stories about her. They’d say she was strange. That she was sick, she was in a wheelchair. But beyond that, I didn’t really know anything. And being the self absorbed teenager I was, I didn’t ask. I didn’t think deeply. I didn’t have the maturity to wonder what it meant to be a person slowly erased from their own family.

Then in my thirties I was told she had died. She took her own life. I can’t remember exactly how I felt at the time, but I know how I feel now. I wish I had been in contact with her. I wish I had reached out. I wish I had known her properly. I wish I could have let her know that at least one person in the family cared, that at least one person would have made room for her.

I’ve since heard background gossip that she may have had a child she put up for adoption, which means I might have a cousin somewhere in the world. And I think about that too. About all the stories that never got told. All the connections that were cut off before they even had a chance.

But I also know the truth. Had I been close to her, had I stepped outside the approved family narrative, it probably would have caused drama. Because families like that don’t want you asking questions. They don’t want you loving the wrong person. You’re expected to stay inside the lines, and if you don’t, you become an outcast too.

The irony. Because now I am the black sheep.

I have health issues that were never really understood or supported. I have lived a life that didn’t fit neatly into what was expected. And I’ve learned what it feels like to be talked about instead of spoken to. To be judged instead of nurtured.

And the older I get, the more I realise, I think I understand Bubsy now. And I think in some strange way, I’ve taken her place, and I feel shame that it took me this long to see it.

And sometimes I wonder… maybe one day, years from now, my niece and nephew will be older. Old enough to understand family dynamics, old enough to see what wasn’t said out loud.

Maybe they’ll look back and realise I disappeared too. Not because I didn’t love them, but because that’s what happens in families like this. People don’t just get cut off… they get quietly written out. Erased. Turned into a story.

And maybe one day they’ll feel what I feel now.

That strange grief of realising someone was right there, and no one protected the connection.

We all know a black sheep. But how often are they really the problem… and how often are they just the one who didn’t fit the family narrative.