It Hurts But It May Be The Only Way

I think of family like my immediate. I got extendos, but we not as close as we should be. I blame the war. Our culture. The shifting currents of assimilation, cross-continental treks, fleeing with clothes on back. Extended family just doesn’t survive those things.

I think of my million cousins and how strange they feel to me. Or I feel to them. Like a lost brother from a parallel universe. They know tidbits of my family story filtered through their parents’ vision, fractured by the language gap created by American Upbringing.

I think of my cousin, diagnosed bipolar, who I haven’t seen in years. I remember trying to help him get help. Driving to the emergency room at 3am. I try not to think of these things. I want to cry as I type this. Too hard, too much pain. I hope he’s good somewhere.

I would ask his family, but I don’t get along with them too well.  A lot of disagreements about how they were/were not there for him. But who am I to judge? Our family is a mess. Every branch dipped in blood, tear-stained smiles. This is what war does to trees.

I wish life was easier sometimes. I wanted to write something happier, or less real.

This SlimK chopped & screwed version of Family Business got me in my feels. Yo this can’t be life

I don’t even know why I came to write this. I had an urge. Like there would be a rush of words from this song, these thoughts, these overwhelming emotions. All I have is an inability to tell you the story I wanted to, because the pain of family, of helplessness, is too strong to contend with.

Family means everything to me. They’ve saved me so many times. And even though I’m not as close to the extendos as I should or maybe even would like to be, they’ve saved me, too.

Like the uncle in Nairobi who let me crash at his place with nothing expected in return. On my way to Somalia for repatriation, cultural re-education, stranded en route cuz of a terrorist attack that happened to coincide with my arrival. They’re detaining young Somali men from overseas, he said, because that’s who did this. Don’t even leave this apartment until things settle down.

How funny it is that I left Africa in the same conditions that I came back to it, no matter how much I’d changed. Left as an innocent, scarred child. Came back as a grown man, less innocent, more filled with wonder, more scarred.

It’s funny how this world always changes while staying the same. The perpetual battle of good vs evil, pain vs love. I don’t know man. I wish I had more answers. I hope you alive somewhere, dawg.

And I wonder. If you know. What it means. What it means. And I wonder, to find your dreams, I’ve been waiting on this (dream) my whole life. I’ve been waiting on this (dream) my whole life. I’ve been waiting on this (dream) my whole life. These dreams be waking me up at night. These dreams be waking me up at night. These dreams be waking me up at night. And I wonder…