I’d like to acknowledge my happiness real quick.
Today I’m going to the library to print out my car insurance stuff and then I’m going to get a smog check so in the next few days I’ll be able to 1. register my car, 2. apply for a new license, 3. change my address, and 4. register to vote. I’m becoming a Californian. I’m going to live where people who are brutally driven survive and people who aren’t don’t. I’m going to be part of the former. I’m probably the healthiest and happiest and most motivated I’ve been in my whole life. I’m serious when I say luck has gotten me this far. Luck and a nice brain, but luck can only get me so far and it’s time for me to put in work. If I can move across the country and get a job and room, all while fighting with the friend who convinced me to come out, then I can do anything!
I still think a lot about my grandma. I think about how bad things got between us. I think about how bad things got between me and my family. I think about why I hated everyone so much and being away from all those negative feelings is just so fucking liberating. It was a hard enough thing watching my grandma die without having to deal with my family’s bullshit. I couldn’t accept the way they behaved outside of the pictures they took for their stupid Facebooks. I couldn’t accept them. So I told them I would be moving and then I did, to their surprise. I’m here, living on my own, paying for a place, making money, and there’s nothing they can say about any of it.
That’s a big “fuck you” to everyone who thought I had gone insane. A big “fuck you” to everyone who thought I had forsaken my grandmother, when I was just struggling with depression and none of them gave a fuck or bothered to help or acknowledge it. A big “fuck you” to my oldest aunt for doing me dirty the entire time and a big “fuck you” to her husband who molested me when I was a kid and a big “fuck you” to their son who was held on a higher pedestal and yet will never amount to anything because he’s fucking lazy.
If I could turn back time, I would be there for myself. I would tell myself that things get better. I would tell myself I’m doing the best I can. I would tell myself that grandma is dying and there’s no getting better, no matter how much you’re both hoping that’s the case – you, deep down, and her, every time she says, “If only I could walk again, I wouldn’t need you!” – so just let the frustration go.
I would tell myself that family members expecting her to die years before it’s her time is truly, intentionally, disgusting. I would tell myself to ignore them and pour all the love I have into grandma, unabashedly. Tell her how much she means to me. Tell her how much I love her. Tell her how much it hurts to see her sick, but I’ll be with her and protect her until the end because I know her as well as I know myself. This woman made me.
And, yeah, I had gotten to the point where I was becoming my own person and, regardless of her health, our relationship would’ve changed. But it wouldn’t have gotten that bad and at the end of it, I can only hope she knew how much I loved her.
I will never have a person like her again in my life. The person who raised me and loved me unconditionally. The person always on my side. I wish I would’ve appreciated it more while I could, even if the decline was hard. It’s all that was left. But since I had no one to tell me those things, it got bad. And grandma couldn’t tell me because we were watching her die, together. And it was scary for her too. So much scarier. And I let both of us down because it was hard.
But I’m coming out of this tunnel now. I’m coming like a bullet train, so everybody just get the fuck out the way.
A STOR¥ BY ? 