18 years.

I turned 19 on June 8th. To celebrate, I took my friends to my favorite pizza joint. I brought my Polaroid camera and took some pictures with them, and drove to a Circle K afterward to get some slushies. It’s a great day.

June 9th.

I get to work and it’s going well. I work with two of my favorite people and I’ve spent more of the shift laughing than anything else. I go to lunch.

“You aren’t in trouble or anything, but when you get home, mom and dad need to talk to you about something.”

I read it and I have to text my sister back. A million questions.

“Is it important?”

“Very.”

“Is it good important or bad important?”

“Bad. Don’t tell them I told you, you’re not supposed to know about this.”

“You’re making it sound like someone died. Did they?”

“No one died.”

“Why can’t you tell me what this is about?”

“It’s not good to read over text.”

I shrink.

My break ends and I head back out to the floor. I’m standing there and that’s all I do for a minute, and my co-workers notice and they ask how my break went and how I’m doing. I can’t lie, I can’t keep a straight face. I tell them everything. I tell them that something is wrong but that my sister won’t give me anything. I say that nothing has been wrong at home. There had been some hassle around my birthday because of issues getting me a cake and that I suspected my parents were mad at me.

“Sound like a divorce,” one of my co-workers said to me. I shook my head.

“It can’t be that,” I said. “They’ve been together through so much, you don’t understand. I haven’t noticed anything along the lines of divorce, and I feel like I definitely would if that’s what’s going on.”

“You think you’re moving again?” asked my other co-worker, and at that, I lowered my head. I’ve moved at least 7 times throughout my life. Just during Covid we spent a 5-month stint in northern Utah before coming back. The idea blinded me. I could hear their voices sigh and tell me we’re moving and that I’ll have to find a new job and say goodbye to my girlfriend and promise to come back whenever I get the chance. I reflect on the past week, I realize the reality of the situation.

“That sounds like that could be it,” I whisper out in defeat. I work in the center of the store, and right in the middle of the chaos of a Friday, I try not to cry. I try to forget the times I’ve moved, how everyone will react, how little time I’ve spent with so many people that I miss so dearly. I blame my eyes on my allergies and take a pill that I keep stowed in one of the cabinets at the booth.

“Look, man, even if you have to leave, I hope that this happens for a reason and that you prosper in your new environment.” I thank him, and I sniffle.

“Thanks, man.” I sigh. “You make a lot of sense. When bad things happen my dad will stare out the kitchen window. I’ve seen him do it before when someone close to the family died. My sister told me that no one died, but I’ve seen him do that again lately. He’s been sad looking, like yesterday. We played soccer in the house but he looked like something was bothering him, he was barely moving, but I didn’t want to say anything because I thought he was mad at me, and I didn’t want to hear about that while we were playing soccer.”

It’s a hard shift after that. I’m consumed by an outrageous plague of anxiety and both my co-workers jokingly tell me to give my sister a good beating when I get home because she’s scared me to death. It makes me laugh, they both get me to laugh in their own ways, and with their help I’m able to finish off the shift without much affliction. They stepped up to help me with any extra stress that could’ve come to accumulate, they cracked some jokes and even laughed at mine. I finally got feeling okay.

I clock out for the day at 5 since I opened, and when I get to the car, I then turn on my phone and look at my messages. My sister’s messaged me 3 times.

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s not going to happen anymore, they changed their minds and don’t want to tell you. When you get home I’ll still tell you, though.”

I’m able to breathe. I’m able to drive home and not worry that my anxiousness will get me thrown into a wreck on the commute back. In a lengthy voice-to-text note, I tell my sister that I appreciate the heads up but that it killed my mentality through the shift, and that if anything of the sort ever happens again to let me find out on my own. A couple minutes later, she texts back apologizing. I accept it.

I get home. I turn off the car and grab all my belongings, and once I put them in my room, I head over to my parents’ room. They texted as they heard me come in to head to their room.

I step inside and shut the door to keep out the cats. My parents are sat on the bed, my sister sat down on my dad’s office chair. They look like they’ve spent some time crying, even my dad. I’ve never seen my dad cry. I’m in the room, and I remember that my sister said they weren’t going to tell me what all was going on, but seeing them all in the room, I feel as though I’m about to hear it. But I don’t.

“You have a good day, love?”

“Yeah, it was okay,” I say.

“The cake’s ready at Cold Stone so we’re going to go pick it up in a minute. We had them write the thing you wanted on the top of it, crazy.” My mom said, and I chuckled, still anxious. “Just wanted to tell you that we’re getting your cake, I know you were wondering about that.”

“Oh okay, thank you,” I say. And I go to leave. But I look at my sister, and when before I had only seen her in my peripheral, this time I see her directly. She’s slumped in her chair, not crying or anything, but gloomy. I have never seen her look more depressed. It takes me a second to leave because I notice what a toll this secret has taken on her. I’ve never seen my sister look this way before, but there, in that chair, she was broken.

I leave the room and head to the bathroom. I’m sat down and I’m wondering, all over again, what it could be that I’m missing out on. What does my dad, my mom, my sister, everyone in the whole house know about that I don’t? And why does everyone look like they’re recovering from the same thing even though no one’s died and we’re apparently not moving?

A minute goes by, and my dad texts again.

“Can you come back to our room, please?” Butterflies. I can’t even laugh about it; when he said that, every emotion that I came under all day hit me back all at once. My body jittered out for a second and my head began to hurt. I knew in a few short moments what was about to happen.

I finish up. I wash my hands with soap and I step out and into my parents’ room, shutting the door behind me once again. When before they seemed lighthearted enough to be just about to step into public to pick up my cake, they now looked serious. It was time for business. I had no idea what room I had stepped myself into.

“Something has been going on for the past few weeks, you may have seen me act different or mama act different, I don’t know if you have, but we wanted to talk to you about what’s been going on.” I swallow. “Um..” My mom finishes his sentence.

“Mama almost left,” she says in a bluntness I’ve never heard before. I don‘t process what she’s said.

“To where?” I ask, and she slightly laughs. At this, I see my dad tear up, as he must have not too long ago, and he takes his glasses off.

“No, no. I..” She sighs, and something in me breaks as I stand still to listen.

“For the past few weeks I have had a lot of issues, and there’s been so much going on that I’ve had doubts with our relationship. And I’ve prayed and I’ve talked to my cousin and we’ve gotten closer.. and I was going to leave and move in with my cousin. He’s just getting out of a divorce and I got attached and that mixed with me being unhappy in the relationship, I wanted to just leave, and I was going to. Up until today..”

“We told my parents last night,” my dad cut her off. “They can’t believe me. I couldn’t believe it.” He looked over at my sister, she now having tears in her eyes. “She couldn’t believe it. None of your other siblings could believe it.”

“She woke me up yesterday crying,” my sister spoke up, talking about our youngest sister.

“Your brother was crying, and he looked up at me today and he asked me the one question we’ve all been asking this whole time, ‘Why?’ Why? How could this happen, how could she do this? And I didn’t have an answer. That’s what my parents asked me, how could this happen, and I had to tell them that I don’t know.” My mom, three feet to the side of him, was crying, and seeing my sister cry made my dad cry. I have never seen my dad cry. I cannot stand to cry in front of others, and I stand there, and nothing that anyone says processes. I’m standing there like a fucking scarecrow, only one that looks like his birthday time has been cut so incredibly short so suddenly that he’s reduced to what he’d look like without a face.

My mom talks and she apologizes, and she talks about her feelings but they don’t make sense to me and I cannot take in any of her words. She cries, my sister cries, and my dad cries. And everyone is incredibly sorry.

“We’ve been hiding this from you because we didn’t want to ruin your birthday,” she tells me, and I understand. “Today was officially going to be the day I was going to get things packed and I was going to leave. But.. I changed my mind. I want to stay with you guys. I want to be here. I can’t leave you.” Her tears come again.

“We were going to tell her parents tomorrow,” says my dad, and he shakes his head. “This..” He has tears coming again, and I have never seen my dad cry. “This is going to make us closer in our relationship,” he gets out as he’s holding everything back. And he hugs my mom, and I just watch as they hug, and I watch as my dad hugs me, and I watch as my mom hugs me. And I watch as they say I’m good to go and that they’ll leave for the cake. I head to my room and I lay myself down. The heat from the sun comes through my window, and I feel it but I don’t understand it, it seems.

I cry. I cry the whole time they’re out. I haven’t cried so much in years. Years. I used to keep track of reasons I’d cry, but this would take all the reasons for a spin. They get the cake, and of course it takes a while. But I’m still crying when they get back. I’m still hurting and wondering why like we all have. My brother in his bed just 6 feet from mine walks over and gives me a hug, and he tells me, “Mommy isn’t leaving us, Yousuf.” And he’s happy. He’s not crying. He feels safe again. But me, I’m hearing this for the first time, ans all my memories as their child and as an older brother flood back in, and all the pictures of me as a baby come to mind, and I give my brother a hug, and I cannot stop crying.

I love my parents. I love my family. I love the imperfections of life and I love who I am. But I have the hardest time processing change, and I have always been riddled with an overwhelming sense of needing protection and some sort of resemblance to what the past used to be. I have always need a friendly hand to hold, a kind person to talk to, and a healthy community where I can remain ignorant because I’m young and trying my hardest to be good. I can handle certain things and inconveniences, I can handle change sometimes and I can adapt to my surrounding, but these moments, these things that happened just weeks ago, will never fucking escape me. I have been on the edge of my seat sense, and I am in worry that at any moment, I family will cease to be what it has always been; The parents, the family, the life I love.