Dame Wilburn

Now, I'm waiting for the speech.

You know, you're a liar, you're a cheater, you have a chronic lack of ambition.

You know, the speech I've been getting my whole life.

But she starts crying.

And she says, do you know what it's like to not know where your child is?

Do you know what it's like

to leave message after message and not get it returned.

Do you know that I contacted the Michigan State Police Department and tried to have you declared as a missing person, but they informed me that I couldn't do it because you were 24 years old and you were an adult and you didn't have to call your mom.

Now,

My mother didn't cry at her mother's funeral.

So I'm touched and moved by this.

However, the hustler in me was thinking about how the Michigan State Police Department got my back.

I am an adult.

I don't have to talk to my mama.

The po-po is on my side.

And that's what gave me the courage to tell her

Do you know what it's like to be the singular focus of a very focused mother?

Do you know what it's like to have no control over your childhood and see that it's going to spill into your adulthood?

Do you know what it's like to get a diploma you don't really want in a degree you don't really want for somebody else?

And then she asked me a question for the first time in 2018.