In these paved streets.

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It took time before I became angry. When I did, it fueled my escape. I planned to get out. To one day write a tell-all. To document all the mistreatment for the whole world to see. When it wasn’t for me, it was for others. I wanted to be a positive story for those who are currently growing up in an environment like mine. To show them there was more than a soul-devouring home. It worked for a while. I got through school. With time in safe walls, I came to accept the past and understand how someone could do what had been done, the culpability or lack of, and the resentment fell. Enough to go back permanently to take care of my mom as her condition worsened. Those final years. I was the only one who would. I worked my fucking ass off, got a good job, and put it aside for two years. I paused my life for two years. As much as I wanted I couldn’t fully leave. I only could when she passed. I meandered, lost. A man without meaning. Until I found my way home. Until I picked up the pieces of my life again. And I did. I set myself to pay off the debt I created—the debt that loomed. And even with the burden of care gone, even with a life of my own, I still felt all consumed. I created a space that no one could take from me. I ate better. I smiled. I had low days and sometimes weeks, but they would pass. I cried the first couple of years at family holidays. Not missing my family, but morning the one I never had. How I’d always depend on others much more because, unlike them, I had nothing else. No blood to love me. But the good years came. I found many who also couldn’t return home. And some would go with the years, but some would stay. I had people who stayed. But the hollowing feeling persisted. The good moments could only do so much, to be unaware of the crippling weight of survival. There was no stopping. I had to keep busting my ass every day. Never feeling enough. Riding on the highs of brief moments.

I don’t know how to get out of this, but fuck that hopelessness. The last time I was angry, it got me here. So this will get me out. I want true peace. True stability. A life that is actually in my own hands. And I don’t know if that can happen here.

In these paved streets.