Page 18 of You Deserve Good Things

I didn’t care if she was in class. I didn’t care if she cursed me out or gave me the same silence she left with. I didn’t give a fuck if she was mad. I was pulling up on her outta nowhere. I just needed to see her. Face to face. No more guessing. No more dreaming. No more trying to replace her with women who didn’t even own a fraction of her essence.

It was time. I wasn’t letting her go again. Not now. Not ever. Let her scream. Let her cry. Let her throw every wall up she could think of. I’d climb every single one. Because even after four years? Shaniya Stiles was still mine. She just didn’t know it yet. I needed her to know that no matter how much time passed, no matter how far she ran—I was always gon’ come for her.

Finding Her Strength

Houston,Texas, Age 20

Four years. Four long-ass, soul-stretching, bone-deep years of learning how to breathe again. Four years of unlearning survival just to make room for healing. Four years of trying to figure out who the hell I was without Silas’s laugh echoing through the house, without the humid, soulful buzz of New Orleans wrapping me up like a second skin, and without the pieces of the girl I used to be. And I wasn’t gon’ lie—it damn near broke me.

The silence after losing him wasn’t quiet. It was loud. Screaming. Haunting. It crawled under my skin and made ahome there, sitting on my chest so heavy some nights I swore I was being buried alive.

But I survived. Somehow, with cracked ribs and shattered dreams, I found myself again.

At first, IhatedHouston. The way the air felt different—too clean, too unfamiliar. The way the roads were wide and rude and didn’t smell like seafood boils or corner store incense. People here smiled too damn easy. What the hell were they so damn happy about out here? They talked too slow. Nobody yelled from the porch or blasted bounce music at random hours of the day. I felt like I was dropped into somebody else’s story and told to make it mine.

But grief had hands. And it would either choke the life outta you or teach you how to bob and weave.

Eventually, I learned how to fight back. I learned how to tread the water I was drowning in.

I fought therapy hard in the beginning. Like,Mayweather and Mike Tyson tag teamkind of fight. I wasn’t about to sit in a stiff-ass chair across from some Bette Midler knockoff scribbling notes and blinking all soft at me like I was a wounded puppy. No ma’am.

But then came Mrs. Scott.

A beautiful, no-nonsense Black woman with thick locs, gold bangles, and a voice that could calm a riot. She had this look—one that sliced right through your bullshit and made you sit up straight without saying a word. That woman didn’t need a clipboard to read me. She haddivine discernment. I swear she was sent straight from the Lord and the ancestors with a mission to snatch me outta my darkness.

“You gon’ let this pain define you, baby?” she asked one session, her tone calm but firm. “Or you gon’ take it, break it, and turn it into power?”

At the time, I didn’t have the words. Selective mutism is what the doctors stated I had developed from such a traumatic experience. But her question lived in my head rent-free. And eventually, I answered it.

I graduated high school with my high school diploma and associate’s degree in sociology since I was in the dual credit program. I drowned myself in my studies. Once I got to college I changed my major to psychology and graduated early. I was interested in becoming a licensed professional counselor. Not because I was trying to be anybody’s savior, but because I knew what it felt like to be voiceless. I understood firsthand how it felt to sit in silence so long you started to forget your own name. How grief or trauma so deep could make you question your own existence and if you wanted to live or die yourself. If I could be the person to pull someone out of that place, to show them they still mattered, then maybe—just maybe—my pain served a purpose.

But listen, if we were being honest? If it wasn’t for Daniale, I wouldn’t have made it past semester one.

That girl? She was a whole damn experience. She walked into my life loud, unbothered, and covered in confidence. Her nails are always sharp, and edges always laid. Her mouth was reckless as hell, and she loved me like she’d known me since the womb.

“Girl, you really tryna be Mother Teresa out here?” she teased one night, sprawled on my couch with her bonnet halfway off, eatingmyfries with her crusty lil’ toes tucked in my throw blanket like she paid bills.

I rolled my eyes. “It ain’t like that, Dani.”

She scoffed. “It’sexactlylike that. You out here fixing everybody’s childhood trauma but still jump every time you see a man with waves and tattoos.”

“I’m working on myself.”

She crossed her arms and stared at me like a disappointed auntie. “Sis . . . the last time you had a man touch you, we still had to wear masks and wipe down our groceries. I know your coochie got abandonment issues.”

“Dani!” I screamed, choking on my water.

She fell out laughing, her cackles shaking the couch. “I’m just sayin’! That cat needs some TLC, and you out here actin’ like celibacy was part of your scholarship.”

I threw a pillow at her head, but she caught it like a wide receiver and kept talking.

“I’m just concerned. You got degrees, glowing skin, good credit, and hair that moves when the wind blows. But you still scared of love.”

I paused. That part hit.

Daniale must’ve seen it too, because her tone shifted. She sat up, face serious now. “Do you ever think about him?”

My throat tightened. “Who?”

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