(If you missed PART ONE click here for PART TWO click here)
PART III
The paths you presented us came down to either selling the house and splitting the profit, or buying the house ourselves. But there was a dilemma. We were also choosing to either cut ourselves off from the family, or be left with so little that we weren’t sure that we could survive. But there was a compromise my mom thought up that should’ve solved everything. Except, you didn’t like it. It wasn’t an unreasonable proposal; all it did was discount the price, but still kept it at a high total.
Amongst the mayhem, I thought I could muster up the courage to send you and grandma a letter. Throughout this whole thing, I drafted three letters. You probably don’t remember, which is understandable because I never sent them. I couldn’t. In my head, I thought I could help solve things by writing those letters. The first one was to you. In that letter, I tried to tell you what my mom was going through. I thought maybe if you read about how she was affected by your actions, you might reconsider some decisions you’ve made.
The second letter was to grandma. At the time, I felt the first letter I wrote to you would be ineffective, so I tried writing to grandma. I thought she would be more open minded. In that letter, I tried explaining how each choice would affect our family. If we sold the house, we wouldn’t see each other for a very long time, but if we bought the house with the current price, they proposed, we wouldn’t be left with enough money to try and get ourselves back on our feet. I also tried to convince her how my mom’s compromise would have benefited both parties would have repaired our family ties. I urged her to try and convince you to see our side of the story and how my mom didn’t have any underlying motives behind what she suggested.
The last letter was a rewritten letter to grandma in which I wrote about how I was affected in this mess. You may have been too busy arguing with my parents to notice, but the situation did take a toll on me as well. At school, I became paranoid at every single thing. I had these weird mood swings where one moment I was laughing and then I suddenly get really upset because I would start thinking about the family.
I don’t know much about panic or anxiety attacks, but there was this one day when I had one. I was with the aunts and cousins, but before I even noticed, I was distancing myself from them. I don’t think I did it on purpose, but I just couldn’t talk to them. It was like my mouth was sewed shut even as I tried hard to find my voice again to speak. After awhile, they were walking ahead and I stopped. I thought I was just being stupid because I was unable to formulate any words. I was frustrated at myself for not being able to do the simplest human function of communicating.
We were walking around this mall when my cousins noticed I wasn’t following them. They turned around and yelled my name. That snapped me out of my trance and before I knew it, I was sprinting towards them. I planned to forget everything that happened previously and “start over.” The words “I’m sorry,” began to form in my head, but something came over me. As I got closer to them, I started to panic. A wave of emotions came over me and I felt myself about to cry. I tried to stabilize myself, but somehow I landed in my cousins arms and the tears just erupted. Both my cousins didn’t realize I was crying until I started sobbing uncontrollably into his sweater. I was just as shocked as they were at how I started crying at of nowhere. I could feel they were a bit flustered because they didn’t know why I was crying.
Letters weren’t my only avenue of expression. I also planned an entire “speech” to say to you or grandma. But if I couldn’t even send the letters, how would I even have the courage to confront you both? I managed to give it a try once. I talked to grandma, but I could only get a few words out before tearing up. She kept saying things like, “everything was fine” and “it’s not like that,” but her words held no truth. I don’t know if she deliberately lied to me, but she made it sound like she believed it herself that there was nothing going on. I just wish I wasn’t so sensitive and so easily prone to shedding tears. Maybe if my mind was stronger, I’d be able to say what I wanted her to hear and convince her how this fight was childish.
