Thoughts

 It's January in 2026. 

I wake up and I think of Karen and Randall. 

Last time we hung out live and we were both trying Alex was a baby. Why did I miss it? 

Then I thought 5 years in the south, Georgia and Florida. They never called. I remember calling maybe the first year. 

Are relationships things I think one can just activate? yes. and that people would want to see each other after time has passed? yes. 

I was in Atlanta, I called them and asked if they could keep Alex. maybe that's the straw that broke the camel's back.

I went to NJ, drove with Alaka to their house to give their baby a gift. they meet me outside, there was no time unfortunately. Alaka acted nice but he complained afterwards. He doesn't want to meet my friend, that boat has sailed. when I was in my 20s I wanted a boat cruise thing and for people that met me across different areas for them to meet. my friends, different parts of me. but it never happened. I just worked away like a squirrel.

When Jane said its been 10 years you are at the same place, that hurt. When Sam said, its been a year why youy still broke? that hurt. When Marcos said when I was little, this is my house, my mom, you don't belong here. Oh God, how he was right. I was hurt. Its true. he was growing up forced to share his house and home. but I was a child, she was all I had. 

No one met me there. my needs were always too much. my siste4r would say someone hasn't explained to her. my feelings were like a bottomless pit. I felt so much. I still do, I just dnt share with them. I have learned my lesson.

One time I went to Bible study and I cried the whole time. Kaz had just died. I went to a 6pm Bible study. One of the leaders said it was too much crying, not normal. I said I just found out mu friend had died. she said I don't remember. How far I must have been from my brother or my mom or my sister. I didn't call none of them. my mom, I remember her calls the first year. it was always the same shit. are you home? are you gonna go to sleep?

it wasn't the type of conversation I like, about internal world and how are you and how do you feel. it was transactional, always, surface level. a yes or no would do. did you go to class?did you come back home? its 9pm are you home? oh my god, you study until late night? and then she would do the 'drama'. I learned over time to just lie, it was easier. I had to tell her what she wanted to hear or she would get into dramatics. it was tiring, the performance. I felt a tinge of guilt. but then, it was survival to lie. my new life required me to lie all the time. I hated it. I wish I had a mom that understood that one has to stay up and study during finals. mine couldn't fathom. she was strict and unmoving. but somehow had agreed to let me live miles away and occasionally visit. and as the years passed the calls stopped. I only remember that first year. and my life, something I always had to handle on my own and in time she would just be there to judge it. 

I didn't see this all back then. I was a kid, a smart girl, studying a lot in class. Alone, emotionally starved and after the depression episode, no one trusted me. now at 40, I have an aunt that says do you want to know what family thinks of you? I said no, they can call and tell me themselves. then she always says, that you are crazy. it spills out as she intended. that used to hurt me, it really did. because I thought there was a trace of truth in it. but being called crazy by a crazy person is like a river calling a cup water. over time I saw that my incident at 17 would be something no one would ever talk about but conveniently brought up as a way to humiliate me. it took years for me to heal. am I still in need of healing? I don't know. they say with time comes clarity but every year I look over the same things and don't see it. and then some years I see the neglect. but how do you know you are being neglected if being left alone is your normal?

My mom convinced my siblings that being real with her or saying anything is forbidden. She is like a king on a throne, never guilty of any faults. and highly dramatics would walk away if you say a truth about her. the distance and space has been a great thing. money and independence is needed to get away from that monster and I pray this time I never fall again so she doesn't have to pick me up and act like the hero that she likes to pretend she is. 

its always been my safe space, the page. life lived with the entity of God, a failsafe. God the only person you can depend on when you have no one else. and I come from such a big family and so many cousins and mini cousins and no one is in my life. no one calls, no one checks on me. this year Christmas and new years and I got one text and I have to accept that. I am not the one that makes people light up. my life and my son's life brings no one excitement. I have had friends, I have had a few and eventually after a couple of years they vanish. its a sad thing. I expected life to be full of people. to be full of kids, cousins, houses that people can come in and out of. 

but they just see me as a servant. I am an extra guest, one people didn't have the seat out for. and its okay to make your own life and stop accepting crumbs that fall on the table that you are sitting of. as long as I remember my needs were never important and always an inconvenience. everything I had done in my life, deeply scrutinized. the times my mom has called and I think its concern and love, and nope, she was just gathering information to later use against me and tell my siblings in an attempt to control me.

control and manipulation, that is her whole thing. and unfortunately, I am the only one that sees it. and in that distance, it creates space. in my mind I was mad about the $5 that my brother never sent. I picked $5 because its a small amount. the times I have given gifts and thoughtful things and always , I mean every single time, rejected. I decided to still be good to the kids. after the last draw, when he came for me as they say, I was done. no more energy to go towards that household. I wonder if they noticed. not going to my nephew's graduation that was hard. but it would break my boundary, it was at my brothe'rs house. I told them but they didn't listen. all I needed was a call, a apology. they wanted me to do the emotional labor of erasing what was said, what was done, all by myself. Like a spoiled baby, he was not required to apologize. oh, but how I was required to forgive him. he could kill someone and mom would forgive him, so why didn't I? my mom didn't even know what he did and I was crying and she was just telling me to forgive.

I see now that is just her following the scripts. the whole family worships him and his family and his money. I don't participate in that worship. so i'm the weird one. they talk about his degree and the school and I went to the same one. it was crazy there was a show where the girl was treated the same way, she was going to law school and nobody cared, it was all about her brother and whether or not he was getting married. then it turns out he was just a horrible human being and was cheating with his cousin. how crazy is that. Remy show. anyhow, seeing it on the screen allowed me to see it in myself. 

Maybe that is what writing is about, witnessing the things that no one wants to her, no one wants to validate. so this is what is left: you have God , and you have the page. 

You have the page.