I’m okay when some people hate me.
Matter of fact, hate me if you must. Please. I highly encourage it if that’s the best use of your energy. I don’t spend a whole lot of time trying to change minds that already built a home inside their own bitterness. If someone wakes up in the morning and decides I’m the topic of discussion over coffee and cigarettes, well, that sounds exhausting for them, not me.
I sleep just fine.
Like a baby actually.
Head hits the pillow and give me about five point seven seconds before the lights go out upstairs completely. Gone. Snoring probably. Spirit clocked out for the evening.
How?
Easy.
I know I did everything I could do that day.
That’s the secret nobody wants to hear.
Peace comes from exhaustion sometimes.
Real exhaustion.
Not pretend exhaustion from sitting around complaining about life while your television asks if you’re still watching because even Netflix is concerned about your inactivity.
Idle hands make me crazy.
I have to physically negotiate with myself to sit still long enough to finish a series. You should hear the internal argument when it comes to naps.
“You’re tired.”
“I know but there’s still twelve things I could get done.”
“Please rest.”
“What if we reorganized the pantry instead?”
Resting feels illegal to me sometimes.
Lazy people drive me absolutely insane and I will stand on that sword until the day I die. Even if they find easy ways to survive. Even if they figured out shortcuts. If you’re not going through life fully—through the ugly, through the hard, through the uncomfortable parts—I lose interest fast.
I don’t trust people who only want the reward but never the weight attached to it.
And shortcuts?
No thank you.
The devil built most shortcuts.
And we already had words a long time ago.
A long time ago I bought this giant glass head from Pier One. Lord, remember Pier One? That store smelled like cinnamon sticks, debt, and decorative bowls nobody needed. I don’t even think it exists anymore. But that glass head sat at the head of my dining table like royalty.
Conversation piece of the century.
People laughed every time they saw it.
Some people loved it.
Some people thought it was creepy.
But that stupid glass head taught me something funny about human beings.
Everybody thinks they’re the head of the table.
Most people are just sitting near it pretending.
There’s a difference.
The head never has to announce itself.
The head walks into the room and the room shifts naturally.
Back straight.
Shoulders back.
Eyes wide open.
No shrinking.
No explaining.
No auditioning for acceptance.
When you know who you are, you stop negotiating your existence with people.
And if people are going to live in delusion, they should at least have the courage to look you directly in the eyes while telling their lies.
That’s the part that fascinates me.
The commitment to the lie.
Year after year.
Same script.
Same performance.
Same attempt to rewrite history so they can sleep better at night.
If you tell yourself something long enough eventually your brain decorates the cage and calls it home.
But truth?
Truth doesn’t disappear because someone got uncomfortable.
Truth waits patiently.
And somewhere out there are people still trying to convince themselves they made the right choice, trying to deceive me. Or betraying me. Or trading loyalty for easy convenience.
Imagine flushing seven years of your life down the drain for twenty percent of who somebody was.
Twenty percent.
That’s all they got.
A fragment.
A watered-down version.
The leftovers. Literally.
Imagine hearing my name around family gatherings after that.
Imagine having to walk into rooms where my shadow still lived in the corners.
That must’ve been rough.
I’ll admit it.
I wouldn’t have done it.
Because some people don’t realize what they had until all they’re holding is the echo of its absence.
That’s the funny thing about losing real people.
You don’t replace them.
You replace access.
And there’s a difference.
People think they won something because they ended up with the seat.
Baby, you didn’t get the throne.
You got the silence after the queen left the room.
You got the confusion.
The unraveling.
The broken pieces after departure.
You inherited grief dressed up as victory.
See, I was never fighting to sit at the table after I left.
I was the head of it.
North Carolina was gorgeous.
And you?
You were just the tail end of what they were left with.
Not the replacement.
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