The Middle Child

Chapter 26

BEFORE WE BEGIN!!!

Let’s play a game.

Why don’t we call it… “Guess The Severity Level of The Drama in This Chapter”

Do you think it’s

Mild

Moderate

Or Severe?

Comment your pick and then, by all means, enjoy the show. 😉

Michelle

“I don’t want to be anything other than what I’ve been trying to be lately, all I have to do is think of me and I have peace of mind, I’m tired of looking round rooms wondering what I’ve got to do, or who I’m supposed to be, I don’t want to be anything other than me” -Gavin DeGraw

“Ok Michelle, you can do this. Yes, they will be pissed, they may even try to beat your ass, but they won’t, and they won’t kill you either, and afterwards, they’ll love you again,” I said to myself as I stood in front of the mirror doing my makeup. It was two hours before the kid’s graduation, and I was currently in my LA home, giving myself a pep talk to prepare myself for the big reunion with the Knowles-Carter-Weatherspoon clan. I know I told Sasha that I had caught a late flight and by the time I landed I would have to go straight to the school to be on time, but that may have been a little white lie. Truth is, I’ve been here for a couple of days now, I was just laying low until today. I needed a buffer; I had been hiding a big secret from everyone for the past few months, and I knew that once they found out, they were going to be a myriad of emotions I wasn’t quite ready to deal with, but due to the circumstances present, I had no choice but to be ready for it. Besides, the longer I went without telling them, the angrier they would be when they found out.

Especially Bey.

Bey was bound to be the angriest and the most hurt, mainly because even though she’s the closest person to me, she’s been the least connected with me out of everyone. I honestly didn’t plan on going off the grid and isolating myself from everyone the way I did, but if we’re being honest here, it was for the best. Not just for them, but especially for me. I needed to get away, they needed to experience life without me for a while, and I needed to experience life without them again, as wrong as that may sound. But the truth of the matter was, Sasha has never lived her life without me, but I’ve lived half my life not knowing them, and from the moment we all met those twenty years ago, Bey, Kelly, and the rest of their family became such a large part of my life. I love them with everything in me, but at this point and moment in my life I felt I needed to branch out, and become Michelle. Not Michelle of Destiny’s Child, but Michelle. Better yet, Tenitra.

So, these past few months I’ve been doing just that. I traveled a bit, went and visited my family for a while, before ultimately coming back to Atlanta. So much has happened since I’ve been in Georgia, and even though I missed the absolute heck out of my sisters, my baby girl, and my nieces and nephews, I’ve been quite happy with the life I’ve created out there. Which is why I’m hoping and praying Kelly and Bey won’t be too mad at me once they see me, and understanding once I tell them.

“Hey Baby, have you seen my other shoe? I can’t find it,” I heard my husband Cole call out from the bedroom as I heard him walk in.

I smiled to myself to keep from laughing. He is always misplacing something, mainly because he’ll sit it or place it somewhere without a second thought, and by the time he needed it again he would have completely forgotten where he put it. Although in this case, there’s a valid reason as to why he couldn’t find it, because they were in the way of what we did after he took his shoes- and the rest of his clothes- off.