Josh and Grandma

I blink and I'm 29 1/2, almost 30, how did that happen, right?

Just today, I went back and read some notes from Josh when he checked in on me four years ago. This was after he put me through a copious amount of pain when I was 16. It reminded me that after years had passed, he was sorry. It reminded me that there was an imprint that he couldn't recognize in his teens and early 20s. Not so much when I had hoped for the imprint to take place. It didn't ease the trauma but it eventually came about.

It was a weird way of the world protecting me from my teenage self.

I think about my mom's mother now in the same way. I was the world to her yet to me, she was a world away. She was memories and I was privilege and we didn't connect, even though, I was the first grandchild that she knew and so potential in. I should have taken more phone calls in my awkward teenage stage. As a woman, I now think about her strength, which flows through my mother, and through my very own DNA.

Those boys.
They weren't bad boys, just boys who were missing a lot and hurting a lot, and seek to make themselves full by taking pieces from girls. And it's only years after that they come to their Jay-Z, reconciliation, moment.

The rejection of those traditions.
Because we want to be our own selves and we want to forge forward, even when we might not know what that is.

I hope that Josh is well and I hope that my grandmother is resting in peace.

I should write more. Happy New Year.