When the Dream Fades and the Red Flags Wave

 “Do I need to come back home?” I asked my mom, trying to grasp the weight hanging in the silence between us.

“No, just wanted to let you know Poppop is in the hospital. We don’t know what’s going on yet. You don’t have to come home now,” she said, her voice wearing a calm it hadn’t earned — too controlled, too steady. I could hear the ache clinging to the edges of her words, like a storm she was trying to keep at bay.

“Okay.” That’s all I could say, standing in the middle of my apartment unsure if I should start throwing clothes into a duffel or trust her version of “not yet.”

It had been eight months since I left home. Eight months of trying to figure out how to be grown. I’d landed in Baltimore fresh out of college, degree in hand, ambition packed tight. I accepted a job as the Public Relations Manager at a Black-owned dental practice. Not quite the Hollywood red carpet I’d imagined — I was supposed to be penning someone’s Oscar-winning script, not writing press releases about plaque buildup and gum disease — but I was determined to make it work.

I lived in a high-rise apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows that showed me the skyline I’d claimed as my own. I felt independent. In control. I had a job. A title. A place to call mine. Even if it wasn’t the dream, it was a dream — one stitched together with Cosi bagels, fancy cream cheese spreads, and bottomless coffee runs I bought out of pocket to charm potential partners for the office. I was planting seeds. Shaking hands. Building something real.

The country was crumbling under a recession, but I was still waking up with purpose. I liked my co-workers — they became friends. The patients had stories and smiles and occasionally bad breath, but they reminded me why I was there. Every day, I walked through those glass doors like I belonged.

Until the day I didn’t.

That morning felt like any other. I had just settled into my desk when my supervisor — who thought of himself as God’s gift to women (he was more like a slightly bruised fruit at the back of the bin, but that’s another story) — called me into his office. He closed the door with his head drooped and sat down like someone had pressed the weight of the world into his shoulders. And then he let me go.

Just like that.

He said the business was bleeding money and I was one of the cuts they had to make. He looked almost sorry. But sorry didn’t pay rent. Sorry didn’t hold the weight of student loans or wipe away the sting of feeling discarded. I had just begun. And now it felt like I had failed before I even got a chance to fight.

What do you do when the dream you settled for also slips through your fingers?

I felt gutted. I hadn’t even been there a year. People back home had thrown me send-off parties, sent me off with cards and cash and “you got this!” speeches. I had framed that moment like a milestone. But just a few months later, I was back at square one, with no blueprint, no salary, and a shrinking sense of self-worth.

But I refused to be another casualty of the recession.

I kept moving—even when it felt like the ground disappeared. I spent hours — eight, sometimes ten — searching, applying, begging the internet for another shot. I volunteered at local orgs hoping someone would see my grind and offer a lifeline. I re-enrolled in school — grad school, just to say I was doing something. I changed my mind about my major more times than I can count. I was flailing, but school felt safe. Familiar. Like a soft place to land while the world outside kept spinning wild.

Still, nothing came.
Not a single job offer with a livable wage. Just silence, disappointment, and an inbox full of generic rejection letters.

And then came the final call.

“Hello?” I answered, my voice already bracing for news.

“Poppop passed away.”

My heart split.

“I thought I didn’t have to come home!” I sobbed into the phone.

“I know,” my mom whispered. “We didn’t know it would happen.”

“I’m coming home.”

I said it without hesitation, but the truth is, I had no idea what I was walking into. All I knew was that I needed to be there, with family, in the wake of loss. I thought I was coming home to grieve, to find some semblance of comfort, to breathe again in familiar spaces.

But as I packed my things, I could feel the shift — subtle but undeniable. Little did I know, those three words would not only bring me back to the place I once knew so well but would also mark the quiet end of one season... and open the door to a new chapter that was anything but predictable.

Home felt like comfort at first. Familiar faces. The sound of my mom moving around in the house like she never missed a beat. My younger brother — still in high school and walking around like he was God’s gift to women, bless his little overconfident heart — drifting in and out of the house between school, hanging with his boys, and whatever else kept him from sitting still too long. Everything looked the same… except now my brother had my old, spacious room, and I was squeezed into his former one — a glorified walk-in closet with a bed in it.

Oh, the jokes that life plays. Life has a way of slipping in the unexpected when you least expect it.

Shortly after settling back home, I met him.

And whew… I missed every red flag.
Every. Single. One.

He talked right, moved right, and looked right.

But baybee… I was bamboozled.
By him, yes — but mostly by me.
Because the truth is, I never planned to stay. Never thought he'd be the one I’d build anything with. I only saw what I wanted to see…

Chiiiile, I'll tell you more next week. Just come back same time — it only gets deeper from here.