My mind runs wild through the jungle of memories and new stories I build about the past. It overtakes me.
I feel lost from my ancestors, an afterthought to the world. Alone now looking back over the years and seeing how disconnected I was from the group. My parents knew. Perhaps my existence was more about being a way for my mother to hold on. A curse, not a blessing; rather an inconvenience. With it a call to duty to continue moving along the same worn path: to raise and pay for a child to adulthood.
Yet they were weathered and tired from their own life traverse. They were likely different people crumbling into new form as one does when they reach middle age. Looking toward the future, toward the second part of their life, releasing the expectations of the first half trying to earn their way to some promised utopia. Resolved; continuing to put one step in front of the other wearily.