I started smoking cigarettes when I was 14. I took a couple of my dad's reds and put them in an Altoids container. I felt I had nothing in common with the old man, but that maybe I could carry on his legacy by smoking cigarettes. Late one night, I left the house and walked the alleys around the neighborhood. I lit a cigarette with a match, a little nervous, and walked and smoked.

Never. People blaming weed for "lack of clarity" probably didn't have much "mental clarity" to begin with. It's easier to blame weed than be personally accountable. Now they're sober, unhappy, and still stupid! 😂😭😅

It started with money. Or maybe it started with silence. Nobody could remember by the end. The family had always been close,Sunday dinners, Christmas mornings, phone calls that lasted too long. But when the old man died, something shifted. He hadn't left much,a small house, some savings, and a life insurance policy that was supposed to make things easier. Instead, it made things worse. The eldest son, the one who had stayed behind to take care of their father in his final years, felt he was owed more. He had sacrificed his career, his relationships, his own life, to be there. The others,the siblings who had moved away, built lives in other cities, started families of their own, they saw it differently. They had sent money. They had called. They had done what they could from a distance. That should count for something. It started as quiet conversations. Then came the whispered accusations. Then came the raised voices at a family gathering. Then came the silence. The mother, caught in the middle, stopped speaking to anyone. She'd sit in her room, staring at the wall, wondering how her children had become strangers to each other. The eldest stopped coming to Sunday dinners. The youngest stopped answering calls. The middle child, the one who had always tried to keep the peace, stopped trying. It wasn't about the money anymore. It was about feeling unseen. It was about who had sacrificed more, who had loved more, who had been there when it mattered. By the time the house was sold and the money divided, nobody was speaking. The lawyers handled everything. The mother moved in with a sister none of them had ever liked. The siblings scattered like seeds in the wind, each carrying their own version of the story. Five years passed. The eldest son's daughter got married. He sent invitations to all of them,a peace offering. Only one sibling came. The youngest didn't even RSVP. The middle child showed up late, left early, and hugged nobody. At the reception, they stood on opposite sides of the room, avoiding eye contact. Two people who had once shared a room, a childhood, a last name,now strangers in the same room. When the father was dying, he had asked them to take care of each other. He had made them promise. They couldn't keep that promise. And somewhere in the silence, the family that had once been unbreakable became a lesson in how easily love can become resentment, how quickly belonging can become isolation, and how some fractures never fully heal.