Home in meh...

The latest uprising in the city took place in the neighborhood where I grew up. I looked on the news and saw a place up in flames that looked very much like my childhood home up in flames. It turns out it wasn’t, but it sparked a bit of conversation among some of my family members about trying to save the house. In it’s present state, it’s crumbling. It possibly still has things from when we lived there. Every generation has left something there. Family members have moved out and left stuff because they didn’t want it or just felt like someone would be around always and they could come back to it. Spoiler alert, they never did. They hadn’t planned on it. This was what I was dealing with before I moved out.

My grandparents bought this house and my mom and her siblings grew up here. My grandparents had borders for a while (it’s what we call a 2 family flat/unit/duplex to some) and then the family got older, grew and expanded over the entire place. Then we came along. My uncles moved out first. The girls stayed. By the time we came along, It was we 5 (my brother and I, my cousins-2 brothers and one sister) my grandparents were on the first floor, the second floor was occupied by my aunt and her husband and the cousins, attic was my mom, my brother and me. From time to time we fluctuated between the attic and the first floor.

The house, as a kid, was the biggest thing ever. The porch was huge. The neighborhood was beautiful. When I didn’t want to go to church I’d hide in the closet behind the door between the floors, but I was too impatient to keep hiding and eventually came out just in time to go to church. lol

My life started getting difficult. Well, my life had been difficult. I’ve dealt with molestation, constantly getting in trouble because of lies told on me, being a cry baby made me a target, things I’ve said were taken out of context. Or things we all joked about, only stuff I said would be repeated and I’d be in trouble. Fights, between us. My brother and I had legendary issues. He would smack the shit out of after he would piss ME off. I remember I threw a dish towel at him and he smacked me on the back. I screamed and cried but I got in trouble for the screaming and crying. My cousin, would pick at me until I yelled at him and started crying. “You betta cut out all that noise!” But he keeps bothering me! “So what! It’s not hurting you.” But it was and it did. Fast forward, I was accused of sleeping with my aunt’s husband. More than once. It was a horrible untruth that caused me deep scars, among other things that helped with those scars.

Fast foward some more. It was me, my mom, my grandmother and my kids. There were many turbulent years during that fast forward. Another drama in itself.
My oldest cousin and his ex couldn’t control or handle their two oldest. So, they were practically dropped off at the house like puppies in the street. They smoked weed, sold drugs while my grandmother and mother were there. They ate every stitch of food that didn’t belong to them. They paid no bills. They were fucking bums. No one would step in and do anything. Not my grandmother’s children, not their parents. And with all the shit that was ever talked about me in the past, they wouldn’t pay me no mind either. Then my grandmother went to a nursing home. My mother followed suit shortly there after. Then my grandmother died. They were still there. I started telling them they needed to kick in money to be here. The first one left after a week. He made the phone bill high and I told him to put $20 on it for all the calls he made and next thing you know he was gone. The other one, ::smh:: brought in his girlfriend and her little daughter. All of them were bums. He got the front door kicked in and then we were hit with a statement that said we had 30 days to move. I didn’t have any money to move. I didn’t have any money period. My uncle and I kind of got that situation under control, but I decided that I needed to move. I couldn’t take care of this house. I didn’t even make enough money to pay the damn mortgage payment.

So then I was treated funny because I made the decision to move. I didn’t understand why. I still don’t. I tried to get the family together to clean up the backyard and the house in general to get it back to the brilliance it once was, no one bit. As I was moving, I spoke to my brother about getting the family together to get stuff out of the house. A few showed up. My brother and his best friend came. I moved most of the rest of my stuff with the help of my friend. I kept an eye on the place, but after a while there was no need to. It was going to get swallowed up by the hood eventually. It was crumbling even while we were there.