ChaoticGood

Share this post

User's avatar
ChaoticGood
Griertown

Griertown

a story about learning my own integrity

ChaoticGood's avatar
ChaoticGood
Sep 27, 2023
∙ Paid
6

Share this post

User's avatar
ChaoticGood
Griertown
1
Share

When I was a child I tried to stop a car with my bare hands.

The joke in my family was that even though I rarely spoke as a kid, I had a knack for putting myself in the middle of things that were grown folks' business. I was often trying to grab, stop, or save someone from something that my body could not hold. 

It’s important to know that I am an only child but was raised with my closest cousins in my childhood neighborhood so I was frequently in a pack of five. All of life's lessons I learned next to them and when we were all separated by the age of 14, I was/have never been able to reassemble the parts of us that existed before that rupture.

All of this to say I had a knack for being in everyone's business but my own for much of my life. 

Myself (left), Shameka (center) and my cousin Dillon (right) at our family church, Parkwood CME

I had been sweating away another summer with my cousins in the Grier Town projects of Charlotte, NC when I tried my bravest attempt “at being Superman” as my mother calls it. 

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to ChaoticGood to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Clarissa Brooks
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share