Cain Killed Abel
The holidays are here.
Families are coming together, people are looking at their significant others side-eyed, and someone, somewhere is hoping their nosy auntie doesn’t ask them about their career or that dude they were posted up with on Facebook a few months back.
It’s a lot of anxiety in the air and the need to hold up appearances is at a high.
But I have news for you.
Cain killed Abel.
Sometimes, relationship dynamics, romantic or otherwise, become less about love and more about obligation.
I owe you a seat at my table because you were here when I was building the house.
More and more I learn it doesn’t quite work like that. And if you keep operating under that assumption, people will take advantage of your misplaced “loyalty.” I say misplaced because loyalty is earned and given voluntarily. You’re not loyal to them. Some of us are just beholden to what we feel is our obligation to them.
But again, Cain killed Abel.
He killed his brother for offering a more pleasing sacrifice.
And jumped bad when God asked him about it.
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Fool really beat God to getting an attitude.
That’s it. That’s all. That’s the story.
The way that God loved Abel was enough to make Cain hate him.
It was nothing to do with Abel and everything to do with how Cain felt about himself. He killed him to serve his own interests. And that’s what people will mentally and emotionally do to you to position themselves rightly in their own minds, while you keep yourself hostage in the prison of time’s and, sometimes, blood’s making.
The challenge this holiday season is to, as King Omarion so wisely said, change the narrative.
What once was doesn’t have to be what is.
Relationships can be redefined and restructured based on the role they serve in your life. The key to happiness is to let people do what they need to do to be happy and you do what you need to do and if ever the two shall meet? Paaaaarrrtaaay! But you don’t have to bring someone along for the ride just because they gave you gas money back in the day.
Lead characters can get demoted to extras. They may even get moved to the stand-by line outside.
But, if they’re causing you more grief than joy, taking more than they’re giving, scrooging when you’re trying to parlay, worrying about your uterus more than you are, then that’s where they need to be.
You can still respect them for the role they hold and love them for the position they once played, but, in Breezy-speak, you can let them hate from outside the club. They don’t have to get in. Or go on tour.
