Generational Violence
You should have never have come to this country. It has been one hardship after another with you. You have the audacity to try to come back after all these years and “be a family.” You went and had another family and left me behind.
I cried
and cried
and cried
until there were no tears left.
I thought and wondered and pondered and begged and wished and worried and dug myself into a hole when things would get better. Your wife insults me. I tell her “Mom” because she tries. I look at your new house and recognize you did better for yourself. You and your family deserve better.
I don’t want to be part of your family.
I have gotten too old and waited too long.
I regret. I regret that I will lose my siblings. There is no such thing as “half”, there is only family. Something, you have forgotten. I know you better than most. They don’t know anything about when you beat me. They don’t about what it took to get to America — I do. I went as far as to leave. I ran away to another country and hit rock bottom. At first, I wanted to be just like you. Now, I don’t want anything to do with you.
You have new children to emulate and adore you. They are innocent and deserve all of your love and attention.
If you dig too deeply, you may not like what you see. The abuse, the lies the second wives. It was even worse the generation before. Those things that get left unspoken and yet need to be said.
What I don’t understand is you say how cruel your parents were, but now that they are old, they seem like decent people. I’m sure in time, my children will say the same about me. It is a cycle. Something, that we cannot explain in the moment. It is a point on the journey.
There are things that we censor. They are too painful to bring up to the surface. It has made it hard to find true friendship. Too many people smile and wave. Could they truly understand? My guess is that they are all hiding something. We all do what we must to keep moving on.
I sip and put them on the page. I draft and then — . It seeps out. The shadows the tears that build up. They ask me, “are you ok?”. You just smile and say “of course”. Everything you do has a consequence. It ripples out in space and time. Where you are here or not. This is not a cry for help. It is an epitaph left for those to come.
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Be better.
I can’t imagine how much harder it must have been. There is an understanding — to forgive. We never forget. Those scars are etched to deep into the marrow. Just leave me and I’ll find my way. What will I say? What stories will I tell to my children — that don’t exist. I can’t think of a better weapon and perhaps our “end”, to never have children. Let’s end the cycle here.
I have committed no crime.
Have I been robbed of my own humanity? The glamor of youth fades and in it comes the certainty of maturity. Old wounds, never healed. They ooze and weep. Easy to hide behind formality of the day to day. There is something scratching, gnawing for peace.
What will it take to become whole?
Complete silence,
the permanent cut,
Everything you do has a consequence.
It may take a day, week, year, lifetime. The sad part is that you only need to apologize once. You only need to show kindness, true and genuine in the moment. What you have instead is the bastardization of a life you wanted to create, but I know the truth.
You don’t know all the thing I endured to take care of “my family”. The one you left behind. I became the man you never could be. I hope I never make the same mistakes. I am sure I will make others and become the “villain”. The best option is just to never have a family of my own. The loneliness starts to eat at me.
We are all just intelligent animals. We need company for the ride. When you boil it down to its primal state, you can only marvel and pity our state. There is something raw about the real deal. It must be why we numb ourselves with everything. Even with all of modernity, life is a harsh place. I wonder if we might be able to be free of ourselves?
If we lose sensation, what does that make us?
You will not rob me of my right to live. I will move on. I have moved on. I will make my own family. The door will always be open. If you lie, you are not welcome. That is my only rule. I have had to lie my entire life to make myself fit in the narrative, like a puzzle piece from a different set.
My whole life has been spent compromising. If you don’t play along you can go back in the hole. I don’t want to go back in the hole. It is dark and scary. This whole experience though, has been good for my soul. You can’t really offer advice, if you have never lived life.
I feel better getting this on the page. I can’t help but feel that I have reached a better place. There is a place in my heart to make sure you get there too.
I am already offended that Google Gemini will not give me the accurate picture to match the request. That is beside the point, but my short critique to the AI overlords to fix their machine. Hopefully this will help heal one person, or at least provide a space for honest conversation.
