Keke Palmer

I've got you.

After one last slap to my face, he fell asleep.

When we got home, I still had work to do, but I had one hour free.

So I lay down, closed my eyes, and before I knew it, the hour was gone.

I hadn't slept one bit.

My mind kept running.

Then my mom walks in, saying, it's time to go.

And I get angry with her.

She has no clue what's going on.

Now I'm crying, feeling this delayed sense of grief, realizing I'm acting like my son and expecting my mother to do what she never could.

Not because she didn't love me.

but because survival taught her to value propulsion.

Moving forward mattered more than being held.

My mother was terrified I wouldn't survive, so she gave me what she knew.

Survival skills.

And sure, when I was younger, she'd say, we can go back to Chicago, but going back didn't feel like rest, it felt like erasure.

Stopping was always on the table alongside going back to how we were living before.

So stopping never felt like a choice, just an ultimatum.

I wasn't trying to be exceptional.

I was trying to be reliable.