The Years the Door Closed

If I’m completely honest,

I have been skeptical since 1996

and completely closed off since 2010.

Two years—

like quiet markers

pressed into the soil of my life.

Years that shifted

the way my heart

learned to beat.

In 1996,

my father decided to walk away.

Just like that.

And ever since,

our connection has been strained.

Strained—

because he doesn’t remember.

Strange—

because I cannot forget.

Memory sits in my chest

like a witness

that refuses to leave the stand.

I carry the echoes

of conversations

we never finished,

of love that bent

but never quite

found its way back.

Then came 2010—

a year that carved

a deeper silence.

A curable cancer

took my mother.

Just like that.

And the moment

she took her last breath,

I started holding mine.

Still breathing.

Still living.

Not fully—

but functioning.

Like a woman

who learned

how to survive

on shallow air.

It’s funny

how we do that.

How we suffocate our hurt

and still keep walking.

Still clock in.

Still smile.

Still cook dinner.

Still answer the phone.

Still carry the world

like nothing inside us

ever broke.

We call it living.

But sometimes

it’s just surviving

in a beautiful disguise.

A lot of the things

I once cherished

don’t matter anymore.

And strangely,

that has become

its own kind of freedom.

Because when you see life

for what it really is—

temporary,

fragile,

moving forward

whether you are ready

or not—

you stop clinging

to the illusions.

You stop performing

for rooms

that will forget your name.

You stop begging

to be understood.

Because deep down

you know the quiet truth:

in the end,

no one cares

the way you once hoped

they would.

And life…

life keeps going.

So I keep going too.

A Black woman

with a history in her bones,

with grief

braided into her strength,

learning slowly

how to breathe again

in a world

that never stopped spinning.