"Guilty for wanting more?" she asked.
I nodded. "Yes," I said. "Because wanting more feel like admitting what I had wasn't enough." Silence filled the room again. Thick but not suffocating. I realized then that I wasn't afraid of being alone. I was afraid of finding out who I was without the weight I'd been carrying for so long. Afraid that if I set it down, even just a little, I might not pick it back up. And I didn't know yet whether that scared me Or if it was the first honest relief I'd felt in a long time. I sat there quietly, letting that thought linger, unfinished. Just like everything else in my life right now.
After leaving the therapy session, I headed to meet my girls for brunch. We hadn't brunched in a while, so when Chiana called with plans I was ready for it. I needed to decompress for sure after that therapy session. My head felt full, like I'd cracked something open and didn't quite know how to seal it backshut.What You Needby Tems played low through the speakers of the car as I headed in the direction of the restaurant. The song hit softer than it usually did. Less like background noise, more like it was sitting beside me, asking questions I wasn't ready to answer. I caught myself gripping the steering wheel too tight and loosened my hands. My shoulders dropped a little. I hadn't cried in therapy. Didn't even come close. That almost felt worse. Like all that heaviness just shifted positions instead of leaving.
I made it there first and got us a booth to sit in. The restaurant was already buzzing with voices overlapping, silverware clinking, a low hum of conversation that made it easier to blend in. I slid into the seat and rested my purse beside me, phone face down on the table like I always did. Everybody else filed in shortly after. Chiana first, sunglasses still on like she was making an entrance. Amina behind her, hair pulled back, already smiling. Ayida came last, hugging me a little longer than the others when she leaned in.
"Juste told me and Julise," Chiana said once we settled in. She slid her sunglasses up on her head and looked at me straight. "How you been?"
I rolled my eyes before I could stop myself. "To be honest, I'm sick of Julise and her daddy," I said, shaking my head. "I need a favor from y'all though."
The words surprised me as soon as they left my mouth. I wasn't used to asking for favors. I was used to being the one people leaned on. The one who handled things quietly without complaint. "Anything," Amina smiled, no hesitation.
That made my throat tighten a little. "I wanna do something," I said. "I don't know what. Chiana got her career, you got yours, and Ayida has her spiritual shit. I wanna havesomething too. Something to take my mind away from all of this shit."
Saying it out loud felt risky. Like I was admitting to wanting a break from my own life. Like I was confessing something I wasn't sure I was allowed to want. Yida tilted her head, eyes thoughtful. "What are you good at?" she asked.
I sat there for a minute thinking. And that silence told me more than the answer ever could. Because the first things that came to mind weren't about me. They were about everybody else. Cooking for the kids. Managing schedules. Keeping the house running. Reading moods. Anticipating needs before they were spoken. "Hell, being a mama," I chuckled finally. We all laughed, but it was soft. Knowing. Because it was true. And because it was also the problem. "I mean," I continued, pushing my mimosa around with my straw, "that's all I've really ever been. A mama. A wife. Somebody's backbone." Nobody interrupted me. They let me talk. “I don't even know what I like no more," I admitted. "Not what I'm good at for other people. What I actually like." That felt heavier than saying I was tired. Heavier than saying I was overwhelmed. This was something else. I'd spent so long being needed, I never stopped to ask if I was even happy.
Chiana leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. "That don't mean you don't have something. That just mean you never had time to look." I nodded slowly. Time. That was the one thing I never felt like I had enough of. Even when I was sitting still, my mind stayed busy. Always planning. Always bracing. Always thinking about what could go wrong next.
"I feel guilty even thinking like this," I said quietly. "Like wanting something just for me mean I'm neglecting everybody else."
"That's that mama guilt," Amina said. "They train that shit into us early."
"And loyalty," Ayida added softly. "You been loyal a long time, Nia. Sometimes loyalty turn into self-erasure if you don't watch it."
Her words hit me in a way I didn't expect. I thought about how often I'd swallowed my own wants because somebody else needed something more urgent. How many times I told myselflaterand never circled back. How my life had been built around endurance instead of desire. "I don't wanna wake up ten years from now and realize I don't know who I am," I said. That was as close as I came to admitting fear. Nobody laughed that time.
Chiana reached across the table and tapped my hand. "You don't gotta figure it out today. But you gotta start asking the question." I nodded again.
The waitress came back with refills and plates, breaking the moment just enough to let me breathe. We shifted into lighter conversation after that, food, jokes, side comments about somebody's outfit or somebody else's man.
Later that night I was sitting in the middle of my closet with a glass and a bottle of wine. The carpet was cool beneath me, and soft in a way that made it easy to stay right where I was. The house had finally gone quiet, everybody was asleep and nothing else could be asked of me for a few hours.
I had yearbooks and photo albums stacked up next to me as I looked through them. The smell of old paper and plasticsleeves mixed with the wine in my glass. It felt strange seeing my life laid out like this. Pages turning. Years flipping past without asking my permission. I could see a clear difference in pictures from when I lived with my parents to when I left to be with Jules. Back then I still looked like a child trying to grow into herself. Big smiles. Awkward poses. My mama's living room in the background. My daddy's truck always parked crooked in the driveway.
After Jules, everything looked sharper. My clothes got better, and my hair was always done. Nails clean. Makeup right. Like I'd stepped into the version of myself people expected me to be instead of the one I was still figuring out. I even cheered in high school. I had forgotten about that. Forgotten how loud I used to laugh. How visible I was. I picked up the pink book on top of the stack. It was my photo album that documented my pregnancy and after with Julise. We'd made one for all the kids. I paused for a second before opening it, like I already knew what was waiting for me inside. I saw how happy I was in those pictures. So in love. So young and naïve. Smiling with my whole face. Belly round and full. Jules' hand always somewhere on me whether it be my waist, my stomach, my shoulder. Proof that at one point, I believed everything was going to work out exactly how it was supposed to.
I rubbed my hand across the picture of me standing in Saint and Evie's backyard, stomach big as hell, stretching off my body. I remembered how heavy I felt that day. Full of hope. Full of belief. Full of a future I hadn't learned how to question yet. I wondered when that version of me disappeared. Or if she was still here somewhere, just quieter now. The closet door shifted open, making the light spill into the room. I didn't jump. I felt him before I saw him. I looked up and Jules was standing above me, staring down with his eyebrow raised. He looked like sleepdidn't really rest him anymore. "What?" I questioned, looking up at him.
"Where you went this morning and what you doin in here?" he asked. His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. Jules had always spoken like he expected answers.
"Trying to get some peace," I said, sipping out of my glass, still looking up at him. The wine burned a little going down. I welcomed it.
"I asked you two questions. Where you went this morning?" he questioned again, making me smack my lips and roll my eyes.
"I answered both questions." Silence fell between us, thick and familiar. The kind that used to mean comfort and now just meant distance. He didn't step into the closet. Didn't sit down. Just stood there like he didn't know whether he was allowed in this space anymore.
His eyes drifted to the albums stacked beside me. I watched him recognize pieces of a life he remembered but didn't reallyseeanymore. Pregnancy pictures. Old smiles. Evidence of time he hadn't stopped to grieve. "You going through old shit now?" he asked.
"Sometimes I need to remember who I was," I said, not looking at him this time. Somewhere. along the way I'd stopped recognizing myself. That wasn't something I planned to say out loud. It just slipped.
He shifted his weight. I could hear the floor creak beneath his feet. "You still who you been," he said.
I nodded slowly, even though part of me knew that wasn't true. Or maybe it was. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe I hadstayed the same for too long while everything else changed, and still lost myself anyway. I turned the page in the album. Another picture of Julise as a baby. Tiny fingers wrapped around mine. A love so fierce it scared me now to even look at it too long.
Jules cleared his throat. "You think we ever go back to that," he said, nodding down at the pictures. His voice wasn't soft, but it wasn't hard either. Just flat. Careful. Like he was stepping around something fragile.