Tragedy

It's always a tragedy when someone dies. It's a tragedy when you cannot find anything nice to say about the dead. It's an even greater tragedy to watch a young girl cry because her own siblings don't know who she is. To watch my own sibling pretend I do not exist or another's sibling do the same. Nephews and children are denied what good exists in their family because the bright spots are too dangerous to know because they might invite more of what you've fought to protect yourselves from.To be in a moment when a family should come together to mourn a loss and all they do is exploit the moment to cut each other more. To squabble over meager possessions. To watch a grandmother justify every reason my son is not more of her life, nor the rest of the family. To watch an entire family choose ignorance or destruction over helping each other when they need it most. And then to know that this dead man began all this. That the man who you are supposed to be sad about died started all this bitter shit that led to your fucked up childhood, your brother, your nephews, and alot of your family. And know that his legacy is this shitshow vaudeville act. And then, you have to accept that all the sadness over that young woman crying, your sister's ignorance, your cousins, all of this; they're justified. And then you have to accept that you cannot even post this publicly, You can't tell any, but the few who have hurt you just as deep. That you are reaffirmed in the idea that family means people who hurt you. And that all these fuckers who treat everyone else like shit: they get to have families, they get to have people who care about them. They get to come home in all their pain and anger and indignation, and they do not have to be alone.