Where is my Cousin? A True, Scary, Mystery (and fundraiser)
My cousin Christian and I grew up very close, more so than any of my other cousins who for the most part kept to themselves our entire lives with few exceptions. I remember my cousin as a handsome young man who was very good at soccer, a loving guy, and just all around good person. I used to spend a lot of time with him before I left my hometown of New Jersey at a young age, and during the time we spent together we had gotten very close. Things changed when in 2000 my family packed up a Uhaul and moved us over to sunny West Palm Beach because that is where my family felt like they had a better opportunity compared to the life situation we had in New Jersey. Even though in some ways that was true at the time, I had to deal with the emotional stress of getting miles away from my cousin who not only understood my life struggles, but we also shared many of the same challenges growing up, and in some ways he may have had it worse depending on your perspective. To be perfectly honest, once he had grown up I worried about him less because like I said we had similar experiences and I had at least managed to remain in one piece and his mother seemed to at least like him, unlike mine.
Both my cousin, my sister, and I suffered abuse at the hands of our respective families. There was one significant difference between us however in how the way we were brought up after accounting for the move my family and I made thousands of miles away from the place where most of my family lived. My cousin never got the “privilege” of having a father at home. From what I understand, his birth father was a criminal and according to his mother was no more than scum of the earth and I never questioned my aunt about it, but it was also something I had never witnessed, and there was no point in time that I think my cousin was like how she described his birth father. He had a few men in his life growing up, none of whom treated him very well until my auntie got together with a man named Ricardo who seemed to be a good father to his new daughter that him and my aunt made. However, now that my cousin is missing, I regret not asking him about how he felt of Ricardo before his disappearance.
As the years went by, he remained in his hometown as did I which means we did not get to see each other much. We had this weird tradition of instead of our parents giving us presents for Christmas, my mother would buy presents for him and my aunt would for me (my other aunt and uncle would buy my sister presents). Is this something that anybody else’s family did or was is it just mine? I assumed this was because our families were very poor even though they always seemed to have enough to buy the things they wanted unlike me now, at about their age but with NO kids, and a college education, but yet less money somehow. I got to go back to see my cousin a few times during flights back and forth from New Jersey and I regret not seeing him more because every time I saw him he would look so different from when I saw him the last time but when I spoke with him he was always the same friendly, loving guy, even though he stopped playing soccer because of injuries he got on the field.
The last time I saw him was in my early 20s, when he came to Florida to visit, he met my best friend and liked her, and she told me that she liked him too. With almost every man that I've ever met growing up, this would be the point that they would try to make a move on someone but not my cousin, THAT is the kind of guy he was, very thoughtful and respectful to women. I know this is almost unbelievable given today’s culture of disrespectful man children, but this rarity is the person who I knew to be my cousin.
The fact that he was very thoughtful and cared about others was likely the reason he decided to get into the profession of firefighting. He was a warrior at heart and that's why I believe he chose to wake up every day ready to fight fires, save lives and property, and then do it again every day as a firefighter. There are few professions where someone spends every day choosing to be the hero, but my cousin was the one, like I said, he was a rarity, and my favorite family member (But who is keeping score, right?)
I was surprised to find out that my cousin who didn’t have a serious girlfriend to my knowledge a few years ago made an announcement to the family that he would be getting married to some girl that he met. I was surprised not because I didn’t think he would want to get married, but because it seemed like he just met this woman and now he planned to stay with her “till death has them part”. I’ll admit I should have stepped in as his big cousin to check this woman out and make sure she was safe for my cousin, but in all honesty I feel as though my entire life has been a series of unfortunate events that usually led to crisis and around the time this was going on with him, I was struggling to work on my career as a teacher, and remain as the kind of homeless which means I paid to rent a room in someone else’s house with a monthly contract and meant I moved around a lot when a roommate situation didn’t work out for one reason or another (I believe it was 4 times in one year). While I was dealing with that situation, my cousin supposedly got together with this woman and when I most recently tried contacting him, I realized my cousin is missing.
If you ask my family they will deny that there is a problem(and that my cousin is not missing). This brings me back unpleasant memories of how my family used to lie about me to my face until I confronted them about it. They always hated how I would tell the clear as day truth in front of their ugly lies. They used to call me stubborn because I hated lying to people about how they treated me behind closed doors and an 8 foot wooden fence. I am still ashamed of the time when I was much younger when my mother beat me so badly and police arrived, she had me convinced I had to lie to the officers because if I got taken away from her I would be treated even worse (which is hard to believe in hindsight).
Why then do I believe my cousin to be missing you might ask. The reason I believe he is likely dead is because I tried to contact him on his cellphone and I was so happy to get a response back because I was in a situation where I could have easily just decided to leave and rent an apartment with him and his wife somewhere (getting a duplex or a big house to live in together somewhere was one of the last things we spoke about but hadn't gotten the opportunity to do). However, the man who answered his text messages WAS NOT HIM. I was suspicious of him from the start because I knew my cousin, how he wrote, and was, but this person was NOTHING like him.
So of course I asked him to send me a picture. I keep messaging him as time goes by. Finally, he sends me this :
(my cousin and his wife I guess)
Ok cuz thats cool, but I want to see you RIGHT NOW cuz because I love you and want to see how you look when you are normal so I can see how you are! We were just back and forth messaging up until this point when I ask him for a normal pic and he seems reluctant. “Dont worry cuz, I don’t mind if you’re a mess, I’ll even send one back!” Finally, he sends me this which is NOT my cousin even though I’ll admit, he looks VERY MUCH like him.
(definitely not my cousin Christian, so who is he, is this a deepfake?)
I’ve had several experiences when I felt as though my family has tried to kill me as extreme as that sounds, is it possible that they are the reason for my cousin’s disappearance? Why is it that nobody else in the family has mentioned the problems with this random man pretending to be him? Surely I am not the only one that noticed that this IS DEFINITLY NOT HIM. I have been gaslit for YEARS by my family who have fed me manufactured truths as THE TRUTH but is it possible they have something to do with what I believe to be MURDER?
This is not a joke, this is 100% real life here and I just recently found out. I have lost all trust in my family, and I even recently moved out of my home state of 22 years because I feel as though I am truly in a life crisis right now, where the further away I am from my parents, the more chance I have to survive (they recently tried to kill me again, before I found out about my cousin). I am in a very difficult place right now guys and I don’t know how I am going to make it financially at the moment. I had to leave the beautiful garden I planted which was also planned to become my business in the near future because even though it meant a lot to me, it didn’t matter if I got murdered so I figured I might as well just leave it and take my life. If you would like to support my financially, I have a fundraiser with more information about what donations from people like you will be going towards and why.
Bitcoin or Cryptocurrency Donation
Dollar Donation
I don’t know why this has happened to my cousin, or why my family have been trying to kill me although I have my suspicions this has something to do with my parent’s recent money problems which they weirdly seemed to not be concerned about given how serious their financial situation has been. I believe them to have tried to recently have me murdered in order to collect a 50,000 life insurance policy provided to me by my work but that's a scary true story for ANOTHER day, my emotional battery is empty. Any help you can provide would help to put my mind a bit more at ease so if you cant donate please help me get this post to go viral. I NEED ANSWERS AND THE MORE PEOPLE THAT KNOW THE MORE OF A CHANCE I HAVE TO FIND OUT WITHOUT PUTTING MYSELF FURTHER INTO HARM.