It’s 2025, and the ghosts are still here. Not in some supernatural sense, no rattling chains or flickering lights. Just echoes, fragments of old conversations, bitter laughter, and the weight of a past that refuses to settle. I’ve spent a lifetime untangling it, trying to make sense of the people who shaped me, the ones who sharpened their knives and called it love, the ones who smiled while they stole. I’ve cut them out, one by one, but they still linger, like cigarette smoke in the walls.
Let’s start with my aunt—because that’s where the sickness began.
A woman who built her kingdom on control, who collected people like trophies and discarded them when they stopped shining. She destroyed my mother, not with fists, but with something more insidious: manipulation wrapped in feigned concern. She orchestrated my mother’s failures with the precision of a chess master, moving the pieces so that my mother would always end up in checkmate. She watched my mother unravel and did nothing but smirk from her throne, sipping from a cup of righteousness.
And now, my mother rots away, alone. No pictures of grandkids on the walls. No holiday gatherings. No family to pretend she still belongs to. Just a life lived in regret, the echoes of bad choices bouncing off empty walls. But she didn’t build that fate alone—my aunt laid the foundation.
She took everything from our family, cloaking her greed in propriety. She made herself the gatekeeper of our legacy, decided who got what, who was worthy, who deserved a piece of history. When Uncle Brown died, she ransacked his life like a scavenger bird, picking the bones clean before anyone else had a chance to mourn. His boat, his radios, his furniture—gone, swallowed into the void of her possession.
She handed me a pair of binoculars once, a relic from my uncle’s life, a small token of his memory. Not long after, she asked for them back, claiming she’d hold onto them for safekeeping. But we both knew what that meant. She didn’t trust me. Or maybe she just wanted one final power move, a reminder that everything still passed through her hands first.
Her daughters were raised in her image. The oldest, a striking Amazonian beauty, fled the moment she could. Reinvented herself in the Idaho mountains, buried her past under a new name, a new faith. The youngest? She became a perfect replica of her mother—mastering the art of keeping up appearances while her marriage disintegrated behind closed doors. She stays because leaving would mean admitting the lie.
When my own marriage collapsed, I made the mistake of calling my aunt. What I didn’t know was that my ex-wife had been feeding her confidential pages of our divorce filings. She was practically giddy when she answered the phone, the subtle pleasure of my failure dripping from her voice. “I knew you’d screw it up,” was the undertone of every word she spoke. That was the last time I ever heard from her. It’s been over 15 years. She never called again. Neither did her daughters.
They sold their house in Norwalk, disappeared into the Colorado mountains, hiding behind the excuse of the pandemic. Now, they fade into obscurity, just two old people rattling around a house too big for them, waiting for a future that holds nothing.
And then there’s her husband.
A man who lived with perfect attendance—literally. Thirty-five years at a bottling plant, never missed a shift, never took a vacation, never got sick. It was his crowning achievement, and his silent escape. A way to disappear without ever leaving. He came home to a house where his wife had cut every remaining thread that connected him to his family, leaving him with nothing but the role of “provider.” When he finally retired, there was nothing left of him. No hobbies, no interests, no identity. Just an old man on the sidelines of his daughter’s life, reduced to a glorified babysitter, shuttling grandkids to karate practice and church, living out his twilight years in quiet submission.
One night, I sat outside my cousin’s house in La Mirada, drinking vodka with her husband. He’d been molded the same way—beaten into complacency by my aunt and her daughter, living in a marriage where he had no voice. That night, he confessed to an affair. Not because he wanted to leave, but because it was the only way he could survive. A taste of something real in a life where he had become a ghost. He stayed in that marriage for another fifteen years after that. Wasted time. But who am I to judge?
That’s the cycle. That’s the legacy.
And I wanted nothing to do with it.
I walked away, cut the ties, burned the bridges. But the scars remain. I can still see their faces, still hear their voices, the poison dripping from their words. They are lessons now, reminders of everything I refuse to become.
And where are they now?
My aunt sits alone in Colorado, surrounded by things but not people. Her daughters keep their distance, mirroring the same isolation she built for my mother decades ago. Her husband? Still there. Still orbiting her. The man who never left, never fought, never chose himself.
And I? I’ve moved on.
But the past doesn’t let go so easily.
It lingers. In the silence. In the spaces between thoughts. In the moments when I catch myself wondering if any of them ever think about me.
Probably not.
But that’s the difference between us.
I know exactly who they are.
And I refuse to be anything like them.
