I’m up early on a Saturday morning as usual! SMH. My body is programmed to be an early riser now so I just don’t even fight it most days. I just get out of my bed and begin my day. I believe that it’s a part of getting older anyway. So, I’m going through things that happened years ago. I’m beginning to have a real understanding of how alone you must’ve felt. I remember that fight that happened in Arkansas with your sister. You had to deal with the jealous one recruiting her cousins (who didn’t even know you) to mistreat you too. Either they didn’t know their own minds, or she bullied them in the same way she bullied her siblings. You had to deal with them all on your own because your sister (whom you believed should have been your ally) was not choosing your side. I think that she was trying to remain neutral but you needed her to choose you and she did not. So, there you were far away from anyone else who would have been your ally feeling like a forgotten little girl. I’m so sorry baby …I didn’t know and I couldn’t see past my own insecurities. I’m working through this and trying to figure out how I got so far away from the truth! It was there staring me down and I couldn’t see it, or I wouldn’t acknowledge it. I was so dumb! I thought he was my last chance at happiness!! What a load of crap! He was my worst mistake. I knew it when I was 16! I saw that ugly jealous spirit then and dumped him! But momma insisted that I was wrong about him for 20 years! By the time he came around again I thought I had failed at every relationship up to that point. I was so desperate and frightened that I let this pretender destroy my family. Listening to everyone else but my own child who felt abandoned. Rightly so. I abandoned us both but you should have been able to rely on your mother to protect you. I wasn’t even protecting myself! I kept on listening to others saying that it would get better but it never got better. I just lost so much of myself that I didn’t have it in me to fight anymore. I just numbed the pain with substances. One by one everyone left until it was just me and him. It was then that I discovered that it wasn’t just them that had ugly ways and caused all the drama! I saw that they came by that ugliness honestly and he not only passed it on through his DNA he was the drama coach! Hiding behind a nice persona that he showed the general public. In the moments when no one was watching he went through my phone looking for me to be like him. When I would leave home to go somewhere he followed me hoping to catch me going to meet another man. I guess he wanted to catch me being unfaithful. Looking back, a part of me wishes I had, because he didn’t deserve my devotion. I’m grateful that I can say that I didn’t cheat on him. I kept my word on everything I promised that I would do. He did not. Instead he destroyed my family’s dynamic. I let it all happen. Lesson learned. Watch what they do! Fuck what they say!