clutter.

I want to quit so badly some days.

I mean, really quit. Fucking fall out of my job, fall out of school, drain my assets until I’m penniless and let someone else front my expenses. I have the option; if I lost everything tomorrow either my dad or grandma would step in and take care of me — they’d take me in and feed me and if I was so far gone, so despondent, they’d allow me to wallow and withdraw. They’d feel I was owed something, that I tried so hard to live that I was allowed this extended moment of weakness, and they’d stand by and watch me destroy myself.

And that is why I can’t quit.

I love my grandmother, and my father. And they love me, enough to forgive me for any error, any act, and that is why I can never quit. If I were to lay down on their doorsteps and request care they’d give it, and for as long as I wanted because in their eyes I have earned forgiveness for weakness because I lasted longer in the world than the rest of our family. But I don’t want to be like the rest of my family. I don’t want to be my deadbeat brother Nicky, or my drug-addict cousin Kevin, or my leech of a cousin Leah, or my overly dependent aunt Marcy. I have spent my entire life watching the strongest of my family, my father and my grandmother, nurse and nest the rest of my kin because they were all unwilling to take responsibility for their own lives, for their own decisions, and that sort of weakness is etched into the faces of my dad and grandma. They have taken the brunt of life’s force not just from their own line, but from the rest of our blood who just quit.

I don’t want to be that. I believe that every generation should be better than the previous — we should be smarter, more progressive and more understanding, and my father and grandmother have set a high standard for this. But I want to be the one who carries on that positive tradition. When they are gone I want to be what they were to my family, I want to be that rock which is a constant, a static monument for my children, grandchildren and so forth. And if I want to be that then I cannot quit.