Capitalism Kills Loyalty

I was raised in a world of contradictions.

On one hand, I was taught that honesty is everything.
On the other, my mother lied to me about the identity of my own father — a deception so calculated, she even scrambled his name to make sure I wouldn’t find him.

But the truth has a way of revealing itself.

I found him. Five years too late.
He had already passed. And when I confronted my mother with what I uncovered, she did what she had done for years.

She ghosted me.

She could have said, “Yes, I lied.”
She could have said, “I was wrong.”
She could have admitted, “I wanted something from him, and when it didn’t work, I buried the truth.”

But she did none of that. For nine years, she avoided me.

And when she finally called? It wasn’t to make amends — it was because she was battling cancer.
When she needed something from me, I was worth calling.
But when I needed the truth, I was nothing.

That kind of betrayal doesn’t just disappear. It shapes the way you see the world.

A Legacy of Lies and Abandonment

But here’s the thing: my mother didn’t create this cycle — she was created by it.

She was born into deception, raised in survival mode, and thrown into a world that never prioritized her well-being.

At 13 years old, she was trafficked through the Roman Catholic Church — shipped from Bioko Island to Zaragoza, Spain, with the promise of an education.

Instead, she was forced into labor.
Instead, she had to fight adult white captors just to free herself.
Instead, she became a street child, abandoned and alone.

And what did her own people do?
Nothing.

The leaders of her ethnic group ignored it.
Her own family refused to give her a voice.
Her own father left her, her sister, and my grandmother to fend for themselves — then went on to have six more sets of children with six different women, abandoning each family as he moved on.

He built families, then discarded them.
He upgraded to lighter-skinned, then fully white women as he went.
His last set of children are my age — and they are half white.

This is what abandonment looks like across generations.

This is how Black women and their children have been discarded, replaced, and erased — by their own men, by colonial institutions, by society itself.

Capitalism, Survival, and the Death of Loyalty

I look around today, and all I see is the same betrayal — just on a global scale.

• Mass layoffs, corporate greed, and a government that cuts assistance while billionaires hoard wealth.
• Families no longer function as support systems — because capitalism has made survival an individual sport.
• People don’t care about truth, loyalty, or community anymore — only self-interest and convenience.

My mother lied to me for her own convenience.
My sisters helped her ghost me because it was easier than dealing with reality.
My grandfather abandoned entire families because he could.

And this is the exact same mindset fueling today’s world.

• Employers will gut your job with no warning.
• The government will call survival assistance “waste” while funneling billions to corporations.
• People will step over you, betray you, and discard you the moment you’re no longer useful.

This is not just personal — this is systemic.

And if you don’t see how deep it runs, you’re not paying attention.

But Here’s the Truth They Can’t Erase: I’m Still Here.

I wasn’t supposed to find my father.
I wasn’t supposed to uncover my mother’s lies.
I wasn’t supposed to connect the dots between personal betrayal and systemic failure.

I was supposed to stay in the dark, accept the hand I was dealt, and keep surviving in silence.

But I don’t do silence.
I don’t do erasure.
And I damn sure don’t let people tell me who I am.

I am here. Despite them.
Despite my mother’s deception.
Despite my grandfather’s abandonment.
Despite a world that thrives on making people disposable.

They took my history.
They tried to take my identity.
They will not take my future.

What Now?

If you’ve ever been lied to, discarded, or treated as less than human because someone else’s self-interest mattered more than your truth — you know exactly what I’m talking about.

So the question is: What are you doing with your truth?

Are you letting their betrayal define you?
Or are you writing your own damn story?

Because if there’s one thing I know — it’s this:
They won’t save you. They never intended to.
So you have to save yourself.

And that starts with never letting anyone tell you who you are.