I’ve spent a long time trying to understand my parents without flattening myself in the process.
That’s harder than it sounds.
Because it requires holding a truth that most family systems can’t tolerate: that people can try and still cause harm, that love can be present without being sufficient, and that clarity does not require hatred.
Some of my earliest memories come from Little Gasparilla Island, off Inglewood, Florida. My great-grandfather owned a small piece of land there—first a trailer, then later a modest house, both on the same property. The trailer came first. The house followed. Progress without erasure.
The house had a party-line telephone, a rainwater catch system, and indoor plumbing. We could shower. But my great-grandfather often preferred the Gulf. He would take a bar of soap and walk into the water, as if modernity were optional and nature was enough.
Those memories arrive with brightness.
Not artificial brightness—real light. Salt air. Simplicity. A time before the family story hardened into roles.
The Attempt Matters
My parents did some things right.
They brought me there. They exposed me to quiet, to nature, to something uncommodified and unscripted. There was an attempt to love.
They didn’t have the emotional tools. They didn’t know how to repair, attune, or protect consistently. But effort existed. Intention existed. And pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
The brightness of those memories isn’t nostalgia—it’s evidence.
The Family Before It Froze
Back then, the family still functioned as something like a whole. Not healthy, not safe, but trying. My grandmother. My aunt. My father. His younger brother Rob. People orbiting one another before gravity became punishment.
There was a feral cat named Tom. Territorial. Unpredictable. He scratched me once. My great-grandfather didn’t analyze it. He didn’t moralize it. He removed the threat—kicked the cat into the water.
At the time, it seemed abrupt. Later, it became a metaphor.
Sobriety and the Scapegoat
I am sober through Alcoholics Anonymous. I am an alcoholic. I haven’t had a drink in many years.
That matters, because sobriety didn’t fix the family story—it clarified it.
Rob, my uncle, got sober too. Stayed sober. Built a life. And still, he was excluded. His children were held from him. Distance became permanent. Sobriety did not restore belonging.
That’s when the pattern becomes undeniable.
This family requires a scapegoat in each generation.
Rob carried it. I inherited it. And now, if you look carefully, you can already see who holds it next.
This isn’t cruelty—it’s structure.
A System That Preserves Itself
Dysfunctional families don’t resolve pain; they assign it.
Someone must absorb what the system cannot metabolize—accountability, shame, truth—so everyone else can remain intact. The scapegoat becomes the container.
What’s striking isn’t the rejection. It’s how predictable it is.
I don’t believe I entered this family to be broken. I believe I entered it to interrupt the cycle.
And interruption is rarely welcomed.
Clarity Without Revenge
As time passed, the brightness didn’t disappear—but clarity arrived.
Not emotional clarity. Structural clarity.
Financial manipulation. Withheld care. Narratives that shifted to preserve authority rather than truth.
These aren’t grievances. They’re observations.
And observation is what breaks cycles—not rage, not loyalty at the cost of self, not pretending.
What I Can Acknowledge Honestly
There are good things in me that came from my family.
Discipline. Intelligence. Endurance. A belief that work matters.
I can acknowledge that without surrendering myself.
But most of what saved me came from somewhere else entirely.
It came from willingness. From surrender. From a power greater than myself. From doing the work even when it didn’t produce approval or reconciliation.
That is my real inheritance.
The Island Still Exists
The island still lives in me. The light was real. The boy was real.
But brightness does not mean safety. And nostalgia does not require return.
I don’t need to carry the family’s pain to prove my worth. I don’t need to play a role to belong. I don’t need to be the scapegoat to stay sober, grounded, or whole.
The cycle can stop here.
And for the first time, that feels less like rebellion and more like peace.