where's my happy ending?

the beginning

tuesday, august 6th 2019

I had a relatively normal childhood. I had a loving family and a best friend, everything felt like it was how it should be but looking back I notice things that I feel like weren't the most normal.

My amazing loving family wasn't perfect, my extended family was riddled with divorce and estrangement. Aunt Holli didn't like talking to Aunt Sam and Nene didn't talk to Papaw. One big instance of this unique family dynamic was with my uncle, Uncle Justin. To set the stage here's a bit about my family tree. On my dads side there's my Nene and Papaw. They had three kids, my Aunt Sam, Aunt Holli, and my Dad. But like 46% of American marriages that relationship ended in a divorce. My Papaw went on to marry another woman who I call my Mamaw and they had my Uncle Justin. He was way younger than my Dad so I assume things have always been kind of odd between them but by the time I was born the whole relationship was a mess. Uncle Justin was wrapped up in all kinds of bad stuff from gang violence to hard drug use it just wasn't a good situation. So my Dad hid it from me and my younger brother Spencer. Up until I was 14 that was what my family life was like on my dads side. We'd spend a few hours at my Papaw's on Christmas and thanksgiving but Uncle Justin was her really there. Than some things happened and stuff changed, but I'll talk about that later.

On my moms side things were more relaxed. Luckily here everyone was on speaking terms but there was still tension. My mom is the youngest of four by seven years so I'm way younger than all of my cousins. My cousins were crazy and I watched them experience the drama of high school at the young impressionable age of an elementary schooler. I say this side of the family was more relaxed but here I am realizing that I've completely forgotten about my estranged cousin Jake. My aunt un officially adopted Jake from a bad situation in some part of the family im not involved in, but since she took him in Jake was just like any of my other cousins. He grew up with me and i grew up with him, he was at every family gathering and I loved him just as much as loved all my cousins. Than around the age of 12 something happened between him in my aunt. He was no longer at family functions and I often walked in on phone calls between my mom and my aunt where I could here my aunt crying about the whole situation. One day I was at my aunts house with my younger brother and we were playing hide and seek. I hid in Jakes room and when I got there I noticed a few things. There was a whole in the wall and glass bottles were everywhere, the place was in total disarray. It wasn't until later that I found out my aunt and Jake had a fight, he'd become violent and punched a whole in the wall, and than he just left. To this day I've never heard the full story of what happened and why, honestly I don't know if I ever will. I saw Jake again for the first time when I was 15. He showed up at my grandparents store wreaking of weed, he had grown a big ratty afro and a girl with him. I shook his hand but he wasn't like I remembered, we didn't have a connection and it was like he didn't remember me.

The only other thing that sticks out in my head is dark Emma. My Nene (grandma on my dad side) said that when I was upset I would turn into dark Emma. Apparently dark Emma was the opposite of what I was usually like. She was quiet, reserved, lacked emotion, and constantly carried a scowl. My Nene started pointing out dark Emma when I was around 5 or 6 but by the time I was 12 I had realized who dark Emma was and hid her. I hid her because every time I showed any form of dismay everyone pointed her out saying I was being dramatic and whiny so I just tried not to ever feel sad or angry because when I did feel this way I was ridiculed. Sometimes when I'm upset my mom tells me to snap out of dark Emma, but I feel like I haven't been her in a long time, or maybe she's never been different from the real me and now I just focus more on the forced smiles instead of displaying my scowl. When I think about dark Emma I think about what impact she had on others. When I was her she brought the whole mood down and suddenly everyone was upset. It's not like I chose to be her it just happened. She snuck up on me and covered me in a bleak and negative shadow. So I stopped letting her sneak up on me, I hated make everyone else upset so even when I felt dark on the inside I just put in a fake smile and tried to go about the day.

Until recently I've always thought of myself as lacking any sort of trauma or negative experience in life. I though that my feelings of discontent, anxiety, and stress were despite of a perfect up raising. Yet, now I feel like sure I had privilege but life wasn't perfect and to think that it was really minimizes some of my experiences as a person.

I didn't have a relationship with my uncle and that hurt, I spent my holidays traveling from family member to family member's house because they couldn't be in a house together and that hurt, I had a cousin basically erased from my life and that hurt, I spent a lot of my childhood being told that when I conveyed my negative emotions I made life hard for everyone else and that hurt. I've been repressing all this for so long and now here I am writing it out and it feels foreign.

So much happened and yet I pretend like nothing was less than perfect, and now as more and more keeps happening and it adds on to what's already happened I don't know how much more I can handle. This has all happened to me in the span of sixteen years, what's gonna happen if I live 16 years all over again. Will that pain just double, or will I forget about these negative events that have happened so that I can be prepared for a new set of just as painful ones can happen all over again. I'm scared if the pain doubles that I won't be able to handle it. And what happens if I can't handle it?

Love you,
Emma