Marks 16000 KM Away

My grandnephew's performance after three months of homeschooling -- simply marvelous!  Mimi has been on his neck daily.  I hope he is now more motivated to continue.  Their household situation is chaotic and Mimi hasn't been feeling well.

The rest of our day went as usual.

I have been mulling over a little puzzle in my head and am trying to connect some dots, and the hole in my head isn't helping.  Something to do with that thing that Mimi told me a couple of weeks ago, which I'm still trying to sort out, but maybe now I have done just that.  To make it short, I have been trying to connect the 27-year abuse with some possible factors and reasons.
> They abused me because my mum was a 'fallen woman' and kids of fallen women need to pay for the sins of their parents.
> They abused me because they were irritated and frustrated with, and jealous about, the fact that their own blood child was 'defective' whereas I, an outsider, was not, and I was doing many things he would never have been able to do, and especially the realization that no amount of money they had would have been able to 'fix' him.
> They abused me... simply because they already got what they wanted and no longer had any use for me, but they were stuck with me and had to spend for me and go on with their 'show'.  In short, no real reason.

The thing is that that last reason is the most likely reason they did it.  I still don't know whether to feel insulted or 'relieved', or anything else, but it is the strangest reason that I can think of to abuse anyone.  There's no ideological basis or false sense of righteousness or normal human reaction to failure involved at all.  I had simply overstayed my welcome.  I was too old to 'send back' and there would have been a lot of questions if they had done that, anyway.  And here was I, all these years, wondering if it had anything to do with some deficiency on my part.  After all, she used to call me 'ugly, stumped, and brown'.  No effort from me was good enough, no achievement high enough.  Does this depress me now that I'm giving this some thought?  Actually, no.  My reaction has been, 'That's it?  Nothing else?  Nothing 'grand' or 'deep' or 'meaningful'?'  I haven't shed a tear, no.  Instead, I'm still scratching my head and wondering if these are all the dots there are that need to be connected. Surely, there is more to it than this.  No?  That's it?  In the meantime, though, my brain has had to rewire itself and, as I've concluded before, the old me is gone for good.  It's like having your DNA changed without your permission.  To be clear, I am okay now and it's useless to wonder if I missed anything, and what it was. Knowing what I know now doesn't change a thing, of course, except maybe that I can now hold up my head slightly higher. This will take some getting used to.

Closing with what AW told me -- 'They at least sent you to school, and they sent you to Europe and you met me.'  So glad we love each other, AW.  You are the best.