So yes, you tell us that you're gonna shake the table with your problematic family members when you know very well that you're just gonna wallow in the resentment that's slowly eating away at you with no reward because the horrible people in your family took your voice and you let them.

You're gonna say it's not that deep but just last year, we were seeing your drunk relatives all over the internet with that "After all, computers crash" sound and you're telling me those are folks you feel nothing but love for? Through humiliation? You're resentful but can't stand up for yourself

I've had people tell me that when they go home, they don't call to notify anyone because ubuthakathi could lead to them dying on the way there. Like where are you going?

For a lot of us, these chats never make it past our own mouths before we're silenced in the name of "respect your elders" and do you know what that builds? Resentment. I mean that for all of us, even people who still go see their families. There are people who go home, hating the whole thing

My mother abused me almost all my life but the chat of me confronting her about what she had done didn't happen until I saw her try the same thing to my sister and also try to justify her actions to her mother when she started living with us. Only then did it become a chat. An unsuccessful one.

Most of the things I've despised my family for are things they've never said out loud but just lived in a world where the discourse didn't even need to happen.

If you don't look at me like I'm fresh blood and you're a recently turned vampire, keep it. Ngigrand.

Like if me and person don't look at each other and feel like we could run through a wall, Juggernaut style, just to be together, I don't want it. I'm 35 years old. I don't have time to be taken for a ride and/or to do the same to someone else.

This is not just a testament to the people who salmost successfully suppressed who I am due to their own projected insecurities, it also applies to people who clearly are always happy to see and hear from me. The people who never even need to say they love me because I just know they do.