The Secret Thoughts of an Introvert

Forgive The Dead

January 10, 2023

On the night of the full moon, I made a prayer, that God, my spirit guides, and ancestors, would finally remove the last blocks of financial abundance from me. That I am tired of going through this cycle of useless spending, saving saving saving, then losing self control and spending it all. Its horrible. I don't care whether the root is poverty, trauma, or poor money management, or anxiety. whatever the hell the root is, I was ready to be done with it. So that was my prayer. Open the road to to wealth and prosperity, and destroy whatever is in my way keeping me from obtaining it. I wanna be rich dammit!

That night, I dreamed I was standing before a coffin. It was a deep shade of brown, with a glass top instead of wooden. As I stared at it, and those around me cried and wailed, the glass cover began self etching an image into itself. I recognized it half way through. It was a photo of my uncle. When I was younger, around 10/11, I trusted him with my whole heart, and he stole from me.

I was frugal. Even at that age. I saved every dollar I earned or was given. Earning any money was hard as hell because there wasn't a single thing my mother would pay me to do. Every chore, every request, was a requirement. There was no allowance. I was ALLOWED to live and that was apparently her being quite generous lol. So the little money I did earn in odd ways, or was given for birthdays, I saved. I counted my money every single night without fail. I still remember the most I had saved. $546. back then, that was a lot for a 10 year old to save with damn near no means of making said money. After a while, I noticed my count was off.

First I blamed faulty memory. Perhaps it wasn't 546, but 526, and I just remembered the numbers wrong. Nope. I wrote down every day for a week in my journal how much, and each day the number got lower, and lower. I told my mom, she called a family meeting. I thought it was my older sister. She hated me. For reasons not belonging to me, she hated me. Took any chance she had to say it, and every opportunity to show it. My uncle, who I had witness go into a fit of rage one day years before when some of my grandmothers money went missing (just for it to turn out she took her own money he just didn't know it), was completely innocent. As my moms younger sibling, who I adored greatly, I couldn't even suspect him. Then again, I was naïve to all around me. I didn't know he had started doing drugs. I didn't know he had started selling either. I didn't know anything beyond he lived with us. I couldn't even tell you why. Any problems, worries, were discussed in the hushed hours behind locked doors with fans blowing on the inside. My uncle vowed to get to the bottom of who was robbing me. So as I said, I knew it was my main hater, my biggest opp at the time, my older sister.

That is, until, one morning. I heard my mom yell from down the hall for someone to wake me up to get ready for school. My uncle hollered back that he would do it. I was fake sleeping, as I usually did, so that I could come and be awoken like the princess I am. Normally my mom would come and speak gently and rub my face or something of the sort (if she wasn't stressed. If she was stressed or late I would get wet towels or waterlogged. A major gamble but I was always willing to take it.) As one of my uncles youngest charges, I expected the firm and kind waking I was used to when he woke me up. This morning was different though. I thought I heard him come in my room. I was so sure I heard the door creak ever so slightly, as it does once it reached 3/4 open. I lie still, waiting for the firm shake of my shoulder, or taps to my forehead. I waited for his voice to sound of "snaggletooth" or one of his many other nicknames. Nothing. Silence. I could sense a presence in my room, but with no other markers, couldn't be sure if it was my ever- overactive 6th sense, or if he had indeed, entered.

My questioning ended as I suddenly heard a distinct sound. The sound I made every night as I tried to quietly pull my little Brinks safe out from under my bed to count my money. Why am I hearing that? It must be a tree scraping the window. Denial denial denial. My usual approach to discomfort and betrayal. I heard the scraping of my lock, as though it was being turned, and shot straight up in bed, the adrenaline in my veins demanding an end to my act. My eyes locked onto the tall figure standing at my desk, with my Brinks safe, and a butter knife wedged into the key slot. He hadn't heard me sit up. That confident in his actions, he didn't even bother to check that I was still asleep. In the early fucking morning with the whole house awake but me. Shower sounds loud music pots and pans, all this shit that could wake me up, he didn't even care the risk. I sat there, staring at the uncle I loved, that I trusted more than anyone, held blameless, seen as my protector, watching him break into my safe with a fucking butter knife.

The confidence with which he used the knife to twist it open, shattered my world. That small tool told me this wasn't the first time. This wasn't by chance. He had been routinely robbing me. That knife, showed trial and error. It showed previous efforts had been made, and that this tool was the easiest way to steal from me. I huffed on purpose, to alert him of me as he pulled the bills out. He turned around rapidly, staring back into my broken eyes, and broken heart, and ran out my room. He didn't drop the money in his hand. I stopped counting my money.

I started spending. Quickly. The remaining money was gone in a week in a fear- induced anxious frenzy. If I don't spend my money, someone else will. Saving is not safe. Get what you want or risk never being able to get it at all. He died in a freak accident about a year later. I've lived the consequences of that day for almost 2 decades since.

So here I stood. In this dream, staring at a glass topped casket that has etched into it last photo anyone has of him. It was funny but not funny ha-ha. funny, "I already fucking knew this was the root but what am I supposed to do." The wailing of those around me seemed to done on endlessly as I stared at the casket before it hit me what I was expected to do. forgive him. Him, who got off scott free. Him who never had to face me again after that. Him who decided that something was so special, that the price of my trust in him, was absolutely worth it. Him who hasn't lived nearly 20 years since that trying to undo that moment. forgive him. forgive the dead. Let Go. I know that moment in time seems so trivial when you think about it. But it literally upended my ability to openly and blindly trust anyone. I trusted 2 people above all else in my life. My mom, and My uncle. Every single other person was under suspicion and deemed a possible danger. He pulled the wool over my eyes. And when I tried myself to remove it, he held it in place. Trust hasn't come easy ever since. Maybe I should be grateful for that. This isn't the first time my uncle has come to me in a dream. I have literally seen him engage in spiritual warfare on my behalf. But I never speak to him. never acknowledge. nothing. but in this moment. I let go. I said, and genuinely meant, "I forgive you". And I cried.

I did not speak to him for over a year after catching him steal from me. not a word. My mother force me speak to him about a week before my birthday. I said maybe 7 words total. He tried to get me to speak. Never apologized. Took the "time heals all wounds and pretend it never happened" approach. I gave him nothing in our conversation. He died a week later on my birthday in a construction accident. We buried him 11 days later, on my sisters. I remember staring at him in the coffin. And looking around and seeing the weeping. The wailing. The falling outs of women. The broken frame of my 6ft 3 240lb grandfather. I remember watching my grandfather try to take him out the casket. I remember him clinging to that box that held his 19 year old son. I remember looking at his resting face, and feeling like I didn't recognize him. I remember the odd looks as I sat in the family section as the only one not crying. I remember that being the first time in my life that I had to force tears. I was constantly called a crybaby growing up. and here I was forcing tears. My cousins, my aunts and uncles, all baffled and disgusted that one of his "favorites" didn't even cry at his death. I cant say I was numb. I wasn't. But what I felt, I couldn't reach.

But in this dream, after I forgave him, after 20 long years, I could reach it. I couldn't stop yelling and crying. Years and years of untouched grief. Unleashed in less than a moment. I joined the crying and wailing around me. My voice drowning into theirs. I cried for the time that was taken from us. That year before he passed, the conversations that could've been had. I cried for the love that I lost. The trust that went with it. I cried mostly, for the opportunity to grieve, that the incident had robbed me of. I loved my uncle. The way Coco's dad loved his daughter in the movie? That's how much I had loved my uncle. And it was devastating not being able to grieve him at that time because I couldn't reach the feelings that lie behind betrayal. So much anger, so much loss, and I couldn't touch it. I had a right to that grief. I had a right to slobber and wail and rock back and for at the loss of one of the largest pillars in my life. And I couldn't. For 20 years I couldn't grieve him. I couldn't say hi in a dream. I couldn't thank him for the protection. I was helpless in the most horrible of ways because I was trapped behind my own unforgiveness. Not to say it wasn't well deserved. But simply to highlight how much more I lost than I thought. Crying, over his death, for the first time, and realizing that I've been NEEDING to cry over it for a long time. I don't have the words. Even when I woke up to a soaked pillow and a headache, I didn't have the words. I didn't know I could forgive him. I swore I was taking that betrayal to heaven with me to lay at his feet and demand atonement for. Or if he was in hell, to make a pitstop down there to throw it at his face. I didn't think I'd ever be able to forgive him for what I now can see/say is trivial in the grand scheme of life. But I did forgive him.

I said it. and I did it. And the glass shattered.