"I
think my father's rage at the trenches took me over, when I was very young, and
has never left me. Do children feel their parents' emotions? Yes, we do, and it
is a legacy I could have done without. What is the use of it? It is as if that
old war is in my own memory, my own consciousness." Doris Lessing
I was
conceived 43 years ago, by two broken people.
They were the cutest little couple though. The sad thing is, regardless
of how cute they were or how loving they tried to be, they were broken. They were looking for love and satisfaction,
just like many of us today. My mother
came from the south, and my father, from the north. My mom or dad had no real concept of
love. If either had known, they would
have never attracted the other. None the
less, our lives became the result of their unrecognizable ignorance. In spite of their ignorance, God cradled us
in His loving arms constantly. I guess
the old saying, “God takes care of fools and babies”, is true.
My
father was a habitual drug user even before I came into the world and many
years after. My parents' many physical
fights were the result of my father not being able to capture the feeling of
the love he longed for. He would
eventually find that feeling again and again, outside of us, via a
"syringe". This friend would
temporarily mask my father's need for love, guilt, pain, unresolved manhood
issues and confusion. In spite of his
behavior though, I refuse to judge the man who contributed to the instability
of my first relationship with a man. I
refuse to judge the man that caused me to cry myself to sleep at night when he
did not come back to us whole, did not come back to me for weeks, months and
then years. I refuse to judge the man
that would kiss me and then leave us without a quarter to our name or any food
to put in our stomachs. I will not judge
him. If he had known it would mark me
for the rest of my life, he probably would have chosen a different course. If
he had known I loved him more than any artificial thing could ever love him, he
probably would have chosen my love over heroin.
If he had known the men I let in my life would not or could not
understand my need for my father's love, he would have tried harder to gain
clarity of the source of his pain. He
never knew his sins would fall so heavily on the seeds he planted on
earth. If he had, I am sure he would
have done things differently. Therefore,
I refuse to judge him even now in his death.
Had I not found something worthwhile to lean on, I might have taken on
the same behavior.
My mother, bless her heart, ran from
pillar to post trying to find whatever “love, peace and/or happiness” she
could. She did not know her worth. My mother grew up abandoned by her mother and
practically alienated from her father, although he lived in the same
house. My grandfather allegedly abused
my grandmother on a regular basis.
Grandmother left him, abandoned her three little girls, and boarded a
bus to Pennsylvania to return only once.
When she returned she was met by a sheriff who told her that she was
unfit and to never ever come back for her children. My mother and her two
sisters were given to my grandfather’s mother.
Although my mother was only six months
at the time, the pain of losing her mother and not really having a father,
prepared her for a life where she searched for both in many ways than one. My mother’s pain was so great; she could not
or chose not to remember she was indeed battle scarred free. Through her turmoil, she did eventually
remember the God her Grandmother called on in times of need though. With that remembrance, she rediscovered
God's gracious love for herself many years later. Thank God for my mother. Had she not explored her “inner self”, I
would not be half the woman I am today. I realize my parents were both
searching for God in tangible things.
They both wanted to be loved, which seemed often times at any cost. They
wanted to be free. They too, wanted the
American Dream. They just did not know
quite how to gain any of it at the time.
Much of my childhood was spent
wondering when I’d be old enough to go on my own. It wouldn’t be such a great leap because most
of the time I felt on my own. My dad was
never around, or maybe he was but I blocked that out as well. Maybe because it is too painful to
remember. The shouting…the screaming…the
cursing, would sometimes last forever. I
remember one particular instance when my dad had gotten a beer out of the
refrigerator. He sat down across the
room from where my mom and I sat. She
was combing my hair and mumbling something.
Before I knew it, he threw the unopened beer can across the room at my
mom and hit her directly in the mouth.
She had learned long ago not to cry.
So all I remember her saying was, “You didn’t have to do that.” That’s all I remember about that day. Trust me, there were many more things he did
that I didn’t see but heard about. As I
put two and two together, many fragments of my imagination are whole now. What I couldn’t make since of back then, I’ve
been given the missing pieces to truly understand what had been happening while
my brother and I slept.
I don’t know who my father would have
been to us if he had not been a drug user.
I convinced myself that we would have had a wonderful life because he
was one of the smartest, most beautiful men I have ever met. Unfortunately, he died way too soon to learn
his true greatness.
Time passed as it always does. My mom grew younger, as she always said (or
says), and definitely a whole lot wiser.
She realized in order to survive mentally, emotionally, spiritually and
physically, she had to hold on to the sanity that was left, grab us (my brother
and I) and run from my father and his world fast. With that said, we left my father in Connecticut
and quickly headed for Alabama. My mom
saved our lives.
Read More Here: https://www.amazon.com/Phenomenal-Woman-Stories-Empowering-Snippets-ebook/dp/B01LXRN3YH/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482780202&sr=1-10&keywords=a+Phenomenal+Woman
No comments:
Post a Comment