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📓 Monday, October 6, 2025 – 2:51 p.m.
Last night, a bit past ten o’clock, my younger brother Victor asked me to drive.
He wanted to see Hollywood at night.
Hollywood streets were half closed under construction — flashing cones, neon bleeding against cracked sidewalks.
I drove while he sat in the passenger seat, watching the city like a dream he’d finally walked into.
He asked me, “Why do you think you exist?”
I laughed at first, thinking he was joking, but he stayed serious.
He smiled and said again, “Seriously — why do you think you exist?”
Then he told me he thinks he exists to help people — to give, to listen, to use whatever he has for something good.
He said he doesn’t care much about money — just what it can do.
I told him that’s rare, especially at his age — twenty-two, going on twenty-three.
Then he told me he’s been writing — using that notebook I gave him.
He said it helps him control his emotions.
He writes while Dad showers, quietly, like a secret ritual.
I told him, “You’re reprogramming yourself.”
Writing’s how you travel through time — you mark a moment so that one day, when you read it again, you’ll remember who you were and what you were learning.
“That’s time travel, bro.”
He nodded, and I could see something settling in him.
He said he doesn’t want to hold resentment or hate.
He told me mornings hurt —
that when he wakes up, the first thing he remembers is her — his ex, the one who asked for space.
I told him that’s normal.
Feel it.
But also focus when you work with Dad.
Two things can be true — you can be sad and still work hard.
He helps our father sell plastic bags throughout South Central.
You’re not ignoring the pain; you’re giving it somewhere better to go.
He said he’s learning to sit with his feelings now — not just the good ones —
because he knows there’s something to learn inside every one of them.
I told him, “You feed the good with the good. Don’t feed the bad with the bad.”
That’s the difference between surviving and rebuilding.
The night felt still after that.
No music, no noise — just the hum of the engine and the glow of streetlights reflecting off the windshield.
For a moment, I realized we weren’t just two brothers driving through Hollywood.
We were two men learning how to unlearn — how to feel without falling apart.
The night wrapped at our local Winchell’s on Florence — two hot chocolates and a donut each.
I drove us back home — to a house lined among many others, fringed along the endless rows of South Central.
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