I don’t recognize us anymore.
I thought we were better than this.
I really did.
I guess history doesn’t repeat itself loudly
it circles back quietly,
waiting for us to stop paying attention.
Does DNA remember?
Does it carry what we’ve done before
the harm,
the hatred,
the forgetting?
Sometimes it feels like we’re moving backward,
not because we want to,
but because it’s easier to blame sideways
than to look up.
What we were before 1965
is not who we claim to be.
Women couldn’t open bank accounts.
Couldn’t get loans.
Couldn’t exist financially
without a man’s permission.
And yet here we are again,
debating rights we already lived through.
This is racism at its finest
not always loud,
not always wearing hoods,
but pointing fingers everywhere
except at the systems
that keep the same people richer
while telling the rest of us to fight each other.
Blame the poor.
Blame immigrants.
Blame women.
Blame anyone
but the ones who never seem to struggle.
They didn’t teach us this history in school.
They taught us pride.
They taught us to work hard
and not ask too many questions.
So I did.
I worked.
For 42 years.
With blinders on.
Believing effort meant safety.
I believed loyalty would protect me.
That playing by the rules
meant the rules would play fair.
I’m turning 60 this year.
And betrayal taught me more
than success ever did.
It cracked me open.
Made me uncomfortable.
Made me honest.
Because once you see it
you can’t unsee it.
And maybe what I feel isn’t shame at all.
Maybe it’s grief
for what I thought we were.
Maybe it’s anger
finally allowed to speak.
Or maybe
this is what waking up feels like
after a lifetime of believing
the lie I worked for.