marriages within my family

currently two marriages within my family are completely over, and i just found out today about the finality of both. my aunt is now living with a boyfriend and has moved out of my uncles house. she finally announced this over Facebook today for everyone to see. its possible its been going on for 2 years. but no one saw it coming. then my god mother (pretty much) is looking for apartments right now to leave her husband. they've been separated for a little bit. this has been a long time coming but they’ve always said they were gonna work on it and fix their marriage. that’s all over now. 

and its just so weird because the situation with my aunt keeps bringing up shit from when my step mom left my father (almost exact situation). and not in a good way. i thought i had come to terms with it but i guess there’s still a lot of insecurity and resentment and confusion and anger still there. so that’s just great! 

and i just don’t know how or if these people will stay in my life because usually in a divorce you end up HAVING to pick a side. like i chose my siblings over everyone else in my step mom/father divorce. i just ughhh don’t know. and this all just solidifies my idea that love never works so why bother.  

my sister

she now has a boyfriend. which is great for her, however the last conversation i had with her keeps coming into my mind where she kept saying she felt like she’s the last virgin at school. she’s turning 16 in January. so now i need to have the more in depth conversation with her and buy condoms for her. i’m freaking out about that, she was just a baby not too long ago. she looked like a monkey for so long. 

and to add to it, the boy is my dad’s ex girlfriends kid. this is the ex girlfriend that has a drug problem and doesn’t actually have custody of her kids. 

my father

ugh. i’m pretty sure he’s still messing around with (wait for it) my step mom’s boyfriend’s baby momma. YEAH. confusing i know but its so ridiculous. She shouldn’t be a mother, because she sucks at it and doesn’t want much to do with the kid anyway unless it suits her. and my father is still messing around with his ex mentioned above. both these women i don’t want in my siblings lives because they aren’t positive influences. And both treat my brothers like shit. they’ll say my father and sister are family then exclude my brothers. 

and of course my father wont be any help with my sister. he’s going to create more of a problem where she’s probably going to sneak out and be rebellious, just in a different way than what i was. 

other

and there’s so much more. i have two exams this week. trying to find apartments for next year since contracts up then. and just a job more related to my field of study. and have interviews for internships this summer. its all so stressful. and finally went to counseling, they want to put me in group counseling even when i said that won’t be helpful to me because i know i will never share in group because i can barely tell my closest friends about some of the shit i think or feel so how am i supposed to tell these fucking strangers that i’ll have to see on a daily basis in classes and such. it was a stretch thinking i could tell the counselor and now i regret doing that as well. just how am i not like a priority with what i shared??? i don’t think the counseling center is very good here.  

So I’ve got a family reunion coming up, and my grandma rented out a huge house for a week so we could all stay together and catch up because our family is spread out all over the eastern seaboard. Well, I was supposed to have a M-F college class, so my fiancé and I were just going to go up for a few days because he hasn’t gotten to meet any of that side of my family yet (apart from the aforementioned grandma). Today, I found out that class was switched to online, so I got really excited that I would be able to spend the entire week with my family. I get back to my apartment and tell the fiancé about it, and his response? “I won’t be able to take an entire week off work. I live off of that money.”

I remember the day so vividly — walking outside, looking up to the sky, taking a deep breath, and preparing myself for the ride of a lifetime, wondering if you ever fully knew the gravity you held. I’m staring blankly at the trees and remembering fondly the days when you were only footsteps ahead as I look to the ground only to find the very last ones you’ll ever leave on this earth. I look out and see all of those familiar waves in the soil in front of me that, until now, always seemed so permanent. That’s when it hits me: this is the last ground you’ll ever till, the last seeds you’ll ever sow. I think to myself, “how fitting.”

I take a picture.

I feel the ache that had been washing over me since 1am Wednesday morning returning once again, in all it’s ugly glory, and stood there still and silent as I finally let it spill over.

Suddenly, I am five again. The sun is shining and the bees are buzzing and I look up and all I can see is your smiling face and silhouette and the only thing I know for sure is that you are the closest thing to Superman that there ever could be. I’m right on your heels. You’re digging up weeds, and I’m putting them back just as fast as you do, and you’re laughing at me. In that moment, happiness is no longer a work in progress, it’s just the obvious, and everything is infinite. Mortality isn’t an issue. It’s peaceful. You show me the seeds, you tell me what they’re going to become. You guide my hands as we set them in the ground, and it’s all just so exciting to imagine – how something can grow from nothing with just the help of our hands. Weeks pass and somehow my amazement never leaves. You find it amusing; it’s a story you know all too well, but me and my little wide eyes can’t help but feel like it’s magic, and I suppose, in that moment, it was. It’s like a little piece of divinity, watching something become. You get a front row seat to the miracle that is life. Constantly checking, trying to nurture it into something great, and always, always watching. Finally, after weekend after weekend of hoping, it happened! There it was! A tiny little plant! That grew because of me! How mind blowing! I was so thrilled. I loved the little plant. My own little creation. You were thrilled for me. From then on, it grew and it grew, and soon enough a little green mass appeared. It was a tiny tomato. We had done it, almost! Days passed and we waited and waited, you said it had to grow big and red! Then one day, it finally did. You got down on one knee beside me, and we picked it off. You looked at me and said, “Go show Mammaw what you grew!” I was ecstatic. Off to the house I ran. Mam put on her best show, making me believe she was more excited over a tomato than she’d ever been over anything in her life. (Serendipitous. Oh, the simplicity of childhood.) But soon, seasons began to change, and I noticed my precious plant didn’t look so well. “Grand, why does it look sick?” “Because it’s time has passed, baby. Fall is coming. Things are changing.” “What is that supposed to mean?”, I wonder. My little creation is gone? “We can grow another one next year!” I was devastated. My pretty little plant is going to die. We walk back to the house. I stopped feeling the same kind of joy going outside. It was still full of wonder, but I just felt kind of lost. “What are we supposed to do now?” “You keep going. There’s other stuff to do, other things keep growing even when something else dies. You can’t stop everything just because one thing ends. Endings are just beginnings of something else.” “I guess so, but what’s the point in beginnings if it’s always going to end?” “It’s the experience, baby.”

And now we’re here. And you are the plant and I am still the same lost little girl and this is definitely a beginning I’d rather not have to start. But you always were right.

It’s another 1am on another Wednesday in another year and it’s the beginning of another fall, and I look around my room and I still feel you. I see you in everything. In the sun. In the darkness. In the words that I speak and in the mirror looking back at me. And I hear you. And I know it’s time to turn the page. It’s time, once again, to become…. and it really doesn’t feel divine anymore. But perhaps it never did. Perhaps it’s the most mortal thing we ever do.

So I turn the page. I start to become, just like everything else. I just hope that you can see me, and that you’re watching, and that maybe you’ll think it’s as amazing as I did that little plant.