How to Take Back What You’ve Lost

Date: 02/27/16

Title: Of course this would be how I'm introduced to my last living family member: a will.

I’ll start this journal how I start all my others and preface with my intent:

My estranged Grandfather, that I had met once as a toddler before my mother died and my father disappeared, died three days ago in Memorial Hospital unbeknownst to me.

Somehow I managed to not be contacted during any of his days in hospice care. And yet earlier this morning I was contacted to attend a hearing for this man’s will and testament.

He didn’t have anything to say to me.

But like any member of my strange family, he did leave me with something impossible to achieve.

I was given 20,000 dollars, meant to be dispensed among his living lineage equally. Had the old man been around at all, he would know he was putting that money straight into the pocket of an unbelievably grateful college student.

While I could waste my time wondering whether or not he knew that I was his only grandchild, or even if he knew that his son and daughter in law had long since passed, I feel I’d be skipping the most important detail of this entire situation: the reason I’m writing in this journal at all.

I could go on my merry way with the money he left behind—grateful that he didn’t leave me with debt like my father — maybe pay off some of my student loans and call it a day. Instead, I was left with a strange request in order for me to get the rest of his inheritance.

He required that I have something published. Not anything though. Very specifically, he wanted the first draft to be written in a tiny black journal, one of the tiny journals he used to carry in his pocket every day.

Apparently he had dozens of them. When I lived with my grandmother before college, she would tell me about how he hoarded them. A color for every attire, all empty. She would talk about it with sore defeat tugging at her small lips. A drained, sad look.

They had divorced before my mother and father even thought of me.

“Useless,” She’d say, like a scratched vinyl, “man’s useless. What point is there to give a man with such little patience or motivation that amount of creativity?”

It feels weird carrying your journal like this, honestly.

I guess you never wrote in any of them huh? Instead you bought them up and carried them as if waiting for inspiration’s hot hand to pull it out of your pocket and write the idea for you.

I can’t judge though. Here I am studying English to become an editor of other people's writing. If I can’t publish my own work, I might as well help others with their's.

So yeah, I’ve never had any of my works published. I’ve never submitted either. That could possibly hinder my chances I guess.

Grandma said I got my talent from you though. Well, at least the good parts.

This entry seems to be deteriorating. I guess I'll leave it up to future me to figure out what I could possibly write in here that I could get published.

Date: 06/12/16

Title: It's been a while.

Sometimes I forget this notebook exists. It’s so small and blends into the shadows of my new apartment so easily. Besides I have so many other notebooks to write in now with this money. The thought of this one is… dreadful. It’s sad to think someone else could’ve enjoyed this journal much more than I am currently.

Of course it carries with it the prospect of inheritance money to help free me of my constant financial barriers. But I guess it also makes me think about everything I’ve lost in a way that's just all too much... It makes me think about how many people should be here to accept this challenge, aside from just me. I shouldn't be the only one left...

Your daughter died fifteen years ago today, did you even know that? You weren’t at her funeral.

If you’ve visited her grave I wouldn’t know. The only flowers there, are the ones that I leave every year.

I can’t even fathom how someone could go about making people hate them as much as you did.

I’ve been given enough challenges in this lifetime to suffice up to sixteen times that of any person I pass by on the street. And yet here I am spending the anniversary of my mother’s death trying to figure out how to take back the money she rightfully deserved.

I know she could have done this so easily. Her stories were the fuel to my fire. She could invent worlds with the tip of her tongue. I searched for years after I lost her, to see if she had ever published anything at all. I guess you two had one thing in common; the only thing you left behind was me.

Left behind.

As if you all have escaped to some better place, leaving me in the dust. No one to ask for help, or advice. Maybe I would’ve saved some of the 20,000 I was given if grandma were here to pester me. Instead I got a new apartment, and paid off loans. It’s just about gone now.

I guess I’m writing in here today, of all days, because I can’t fathom running out of anything else. I keep my cereal stocked: every morning is the same bowl of Cheerios since I was a kid. I never run out of toothpaste, or deodorant; I buy in bulk.

Maybe it’s for stability. Maybe it’s because I’m traumatized.

But I can’t run out of this money. In some way it’s the last thing I have left to look forward to from any of you.

This entry belongs in a diary. I don’t know why I’m wasting precious pages rambling about things my illusory therapist should be the only one to hear.

Date: 06/15/16

Title: Get out of my head.

It’s been days. Every hour I’m not working, I’m thinking about this stupid journal.

I have about a thousand dollars left. I need the rest. I don’t know what you expect out of me.

This is senseless, and destroying me. None of you people ever helped me aside from Grandma, and look at what you left her with! No money to pay for her treatment! No one there for her in the end, aside from me! Now this? I’m somehow expected to do all the things none of you people could ever do in your entire lifetimes.

With no help or reassurance.

If you didn’t have what it took to do those things, how could you POSSIBLY expect me to know what to do with this nonsense?

I have things I could publish, but nothing I want to put in this stupid journal. You don’t deserve to have anything done in your honor.

Honestly I don’t want to write in this journal at all.

All of these journals should’ve been left to get dusty in that storage unit they sold off a few weeks ago. Someone else could enjoy them one day, and not be tormented like this.

I’ve searched for loopholes all night. I just want the money. I just want the money. It’s all I have left.

It’s all I have

Date: 06/16/16

Title: --

If Grandma was here I know what she’d do.

She’d sit me down in front of the fireplace in her living room and put a stack of her favorite books in my lap. She’d crumple to the floor beside me, her old bones probably begging for that rest. She’d put her fingers in my hair and her head on my shoulder. She’d probably say something goofy, and then recommend her favorite passages. Anything to inspire me.

And honestly I'd probably feel good enough to write. I’d find a place in the corner of the room. I’d kick off my shoes, rub my socks together, and close my eyes. I’d imagine I was somewhere else, while she probably closed her eyes as well and enjoyed the silence for a moment with that permanent smile engraved in her old wrinkles.

If ma were around, well, it’s hard to say. Memories betray me. I can barely even remember what I liked as a child. If I was a space kid or a dinosaur kid. I don’t remember my after school activity, if I had one at all.

There are a few things I do remember though. Like the one time my mom picked me up from fifth grade and we almost got into a car accident.

Instead of heading home though, we stopped to get her favorite ice cream.

Of course she shared.

We sat on the top floor of one of the parking garages downtown and watched the tiny people, like ants, bustle and move about. I know her arm was wrapped around me at some point. She said some things, things that made me feel safe. Things that made me feel secure and happy. Things I can’t remember. But in that memory I wasn’t swallowed by the loneliness that now comes with seeing everyone move around you. I was content with her beside me.

She always looked so stressed though, in what little memories I can retrieve of her. She definitely didn’t inherit my Grandma’s smiley features. My Grandfather was cremated, but I would assume he had the same worry lines carved markedly above his eyebrows as they were wheeling him out of that hospital four months ago.

Ma would probably be just as fed up with this silly requirement though. We would probably rant to each other every night over the phone about how we couldn’t figure out what to write.

Dad, on the other hand, wasn’t someone I wanted to remember. He left. He chose to leave me. Just like my Grandfather did. He chose to not be a part of my life, so I chose to not think about him.

That’s what they would do if they were here, I guess.

But I’m not them.

And they’re not here.

And I can’t expect anything to come from them. I guess I was just hoping for something—one more thing—from you guys. Something to last a bit longer than these memories that seem to be slipping my mind more and more every passing second. Something to hold onto. Some sort of help. If you can’t offer advice, or patience, or an ear to listen... or love… I guess I assumed money would somehow suffice…

I know it won’t.

Sometimes I think… Maybe if this journal had been filled with your words, your voices, your thoughts, your passions, rather than an empty one... Maybe I'd be more at peace.

A journal is meant to be written in, not coveted like this.

So that’s what I’ll do then. Where everyone else failed; I'll write.

So that even if I don't get published, maybe someone will have a piece of me when I’m gone; and through that a piece of my family.

So that of all the people I've loved and lost… I will not be one of them.