A wedding not only brings happiness, but it also bonds two people together for life. Yikes. I think you can see where my opinion lies but anyways this isn’t about me.

Jessica’s future wedding was all the family could talk about. From the moment Greg proposed, the family immediately started their planning.

And Jessica being Jessica was already uptight about it. See, I love my cousin, but she can a huge pain in the ass. Always judging others, always working herself to half to death to prove to NO ONE but herself that she was excelling at life. No one compared to her to anyone else because none of us were crazy enough to try to reach whatever status she was trying to claim.

What I mean by status is that Jessica, like the rest of us grew up in the “hood,” on the streets of south Los Angeles, back then it was just South Central. And it was her goal to get out.

It makes sense, I guess the trauma affected her differently than the rest of us.

---

We all went through many difficult times, we struggled financially, emotionally, and we could only count on each other for support.

I don’t know how our parents managed to live with such high stress and still managed to provide us with the happy memories that we have. Although, it could have been worse and for some of us it was.

My family for example were displaced from our home and only knew to count on family when things got rough. Without any hesitation my Tia Patty and her husband our Tio Roberto dropped everything to help us.

We moved into the small one-bedroom apartment, seven of us. And although, times were financially difficult, those were my favorite memories. Us cousins sleeping on the floor others on the couch in the living room just whispering jokes as our parents were desperately trying to get some sleep.

We took turns taking care of each other. Making sure we were fed and clothed while our parents worked their double shifts.

The older cousins, Jessica being the oldest, would always make sure we were getting to school on time. That our homework was turned in and that we weren’t getting into fights. And most importantly, she taught me the importance of code switching.

She was like our mother, we all resented that because she bossed us around like one. But regardless of the struggle she managed to always push herself to do more.

In High School, she would always hang out with David. He soon became our cousin too, another stray to add to the clan. David and Jessica were inseparable, they both played soccer together, both managed to get to the same college.

We thought that David and Jessica would end up being a couple but David, well…he was a ladies’ man.