I don't know who I'm saying this to. The system? The universe? Myself? There's no address for this letter. No office that accepts this complaint. That's part of it—the not knowing who to be mad at, who to appeal to, who could actually change it. So I'm saying it here, to whoever is listening. For the record.

Every broken promise chips at my integrity. The kids will have disappointments in life regardless. But their trust in me, and the consequences of them needing to betray their own trust in order to maintain my integrity—that's a penalty that creates monsters for poor Black children.

Money means a covered trip with her team. Money means his haircut, not done by me, a person with absolutely no cosmetology expertise. It means not walking two miles every day for school. It means having a dishwasher. It means me in a sunnier disposition. It means taking them to an amusement park—a proper family vacation. It means healthy food as a regular day and not the true convenience of a corner store snack or a happy meal. It means catching a health issue before it's too late.

I applied for the job I was qualified for. I prepared. I waited. And the door went quiet the way doors do when they were never really open.

People talk about mothers like we're superhuman. Like the adrenaline that lets a mother lift a car to save her child is a renewable resource. But what happens to her body after? The torn muscles. The joints that never work right again. Adrenaline is a loan, not a gift.

I have been lifting the car.

I'm holding the line out of pure motherhood instinct, running on emergency fuel that was only meant to last minutes. It's been years. And no one is coming to check if my arms are giving out.

There's a name for this: allostatic load—the cumulative wear on the body from chronic stress. The research shows that people living in poverty carry biological risks equivalent to someone twenty years older. Black Americans carry nearly twice the allostatic load of white Americans. This isn't metaphor. It's physiology. The car-lifting has a cost, and the bill comes due in your body.

The genius I'm trying to protect in them is being spent in me.

I don't have a declaration. I don't have a triumph. I just have this morning, and the truth of what it costs to be me today. And the question I still can't answer: who was I supposed to send this to?