Ejecting You

"Tell Him" by Lauryn Hill

...let me be patient / let me be kind / make me unselfish / without being blind / though I may suffer / I'll envy it not / and endure what comes...

I haven't had a real fight with my mother for a long time, partly because we don't talk and partly because we talk about superficial, non-controversial things.

However, under the surface, their is bubbling hot anger we both feel for what we perceive the other put us through.

Today, it kind of reared its ugly head...the anger.

She thinks I'm selfish. I think she (and a coerced husband) deserted me.

And these are the things tha pollute our lives. These different views of the same situation, varied opinions of the circumstances, personal assessments for whose fault it is are what haunt this house.

In the argument, the same frustration, the same screaming, the same non-listening business was going on that directed our arguments when I was in high school.

She said such hurtful things to me. Just plainly mean things that I hope she doesn't mean but know she said out of anger. She has such a nasty temper.

Apparently, she has been generally frustrated with me since I came home. Additionally, my mother is very defensive about her parenthood. I pointed out that I was very melancholic today and she just nagged me and didn't ask me anything. She flatly said that I am 22 years old and I can talk if I want to. She is not a psychic nor does she study me. This was just absurd. I couldn't even rebuttle.

And then she asked me to leave. She can't stand my attitude. I don't know why, but today, it was too much for me. I cried all day. I couldn't control it. Even as we argued, water washed my face uncontrollably. She even said, "Could you stop with the emotion and listen to me?", totally unmoved. Which is fine, I guess.

I think something is wrong with my mother. She has many burdens. Coming to a new country with small children, living overseas helpless as war ravages her home country, her youngest son suffering from fairly severe Autism at a time when little was known about it, losing her mother when she couldn't see her for over 15 years.

She has been through a lot and I don't think she dealt with it well, if at all. That is why I only swell marginally with anger because she is a human being too.

She is not a bad mother. She is just emotionally inept and I am far too thin skinned to be here with her.

I don't know why her opinion matters to me so much. I wish I didn't need her approval. It is kind of a stupid thing because even if she really approved of me, she isn't the kind of person to express such. She means well, I hope. But the issues have not been resolved. We are still angry and bitter and frustrated and confused. I'm going to go to therapy, that way, no matter what she says, it won't matter.

Until then, I bow out.

Hey Mama

"Hey Mama" by Kanye West

...I wanna scream so loud for you / cuz I'm so proud of you...

My Auntie Aminata had a cookout at her house today in celebration of Mother's Day and in honor of little Mohamed Fornah's 2nd birthday, one of the youngest of our clan.

Yesterday night my cousins Hawa and Fatima and I went to Shockoe Bottom for a night out. Hawa is only 20 but the lounge we had decided to go to had an African night (or something like that) and it is typically 18 and older.

Well, the African night is every other Saturday and we had showed up on the wrong Saturday. So as not to call the whole night a waste, we went to a pizza place on the corner of Main and 18th (I believe) that sells these beef patties that I am addicted to. I bought some beef patties for Fatima and I and the three of us took a seat in the first booth. We began to kongosah about the people walking in and out of the joint, about family members, about each other, and more.

A conversation erupted about female genital mutilation. Back home in Sierra Leone, there is a tradition called the Bondo Society. It is a secret society of sorts whose notoriety comes from the cutting of the clitoris. It sounds so heinous and so inhumane and so disgusting, however, it is so common, all over Africa. It is a testament to the hardship that is being a female in this world. Can you imagine if men were forced to endure a "beheading" of their penis? Yeah. Would not happen.

Both of my cousins have gone through it. As they were describing the details, I felt lightheaded and as if goosebumps were appearing underneath my skin (yeah). I was so disgusted and so angry. I remember my mother and some of her sisters having a conversation about Bondo Society a long time ago, at my kitchen table. A lot was discussed but what I distinctly remember being said by my mother was, "Me! I nor go put mi pikin inside dey. I nor go do am (Me! I would not put my child inside [that society]. I would not do it).

My mama is awesome. I have never had the courage to ask my mother if she was in the Bondo Society, but the fact that she objects to it is good enough for me. Had I grown up in Sierra Leone, while my peers may have been forced to join the Bondo Society, I wouldn't have because my mother is a genius.

Hearing my sisters talk about their experiences in the society, from being told about a "party" they would be going to, walking into a room with the floor decorated in the blood of other girls who have already been mutilitated, the pressure to keep the secret society a secret, the fear of dying from bleeding uncontrollably (there have been girls who DIED because of this tradition), to the brainwashing of women to think that this is an acceptable tradition, made me hot with anger and cold with fear for the future of African women.

The tradition is based on the ideologies of some idiot man who decided women should not enjoy sex so their clitorises must be removed. It is also to prevent promiscuity among women (while the men go out and sleep with anyone and keep the rates of HIV/AIDS high as all hell in the continent of Africa). And we African women are somehow brainwashed and continue to subject our daughters to this, kill our daughters, destroy our daughters sense of self and body, participate in our subordination to men, maintain the control about the conversation of sexuality on the side of the men, and remain at risk for everything that is a consequence of sexual behavior.

It is disgusting. And it is further evidence that it is so hard to be a women in this world culture. It is so, so hard to be able to give life but have our lives valued so little.

So, hey Mama. Thank you for teaching me about being an African woman. My Mommy and I have never had any real conversations about sex or sexuality, feminism or feminity, etc., but she has always been (in the midst of all our mother/daughter tumult) a brilliant example of a powerful African woman.

She is a wonderful wife to my father. Their marriage demonstrates a wonderful sense of balance in power, authority, respect, influence, and compromise. I know that I will be just like my mother in my marriage. For one, my personality is a carbon copy of hers. For two, she compromises her dominating, aggressive personality with respecting my father's authority and understanding that they must make a life together and has taught me that is how a marriage works. No matter how much trash I might talk about my parent's individually, together, they are the most perfect and cutest couple ever. Really.

She is a wonderful, selfless, kind, compassionate sister, aunt, daughter, and mother. She works so hard not to gather fine things for herself but to give us all better than the basics.

Lastly, despite our lack of an emotional relationship, observing her with my Daddy all of my life, learning of hardships with my younger brother's illness (Autism), recalling her hardships being the mother of me (the most extra child ever), she has shown me to integrate pride and selflessness into my identity as an African, as a Black person, and as a woman.

She was the first feminist I ever knew. She probably wouldn't classify herself as such, she didn't burn her bras in the 1960s, she is a traditional African woman in many senses, and she is too African to give a damn about 'feminism' as we understand it in a Western context, but she makes me so proud and excited to be a woman, an African woman.

My identity as a Black African and as a woman account for almost all the details of my way of thinking and my life. What I am studying in college, why I am studying it, what I want to do for a living, what causes I choose to volunteer under, the global political issues I follow, the opinions I have about issues, etc. are all influenced by my identity.

I identify first as an African, second as a woman, and third as a human being. That may sound a little harsh, but we must protect the portion of our identity most vulnerable to marginalization.

I gets that from my Mommy. And when I woke this morning, and sat across from her in her sister's living room, I really couldn't remember why I should be mad at her. I'm sure life will remind me later, as she always does, but for now, I love my Mommy.

...hey Mama, I know I act a fool but, I promise you I'm goin back to school / I appreciate what you allowed for me / I just want you to be proud of me...

I Used to Rule the World

"13th Period: On My Own Time " by Gym Class Heroes

...I wish I could unzip my skin and take it off / just to take a walk / but I can't do it...

I watched Kung Fu Panda and Game Plan with my roommates Brittany and Stevara today, even though I (all of us) definitely should have been studying for finals. But, we didn't. The movies were really good and it was a really good ambience ... couches, rainy day, pajamas, snacks, and two movies.

I don't know why I thought I was going to get work done.

Not long after, I decided to come to the library. Good movies keep coming on. When I had finally resolved to start doing work, Paid in Full came on. There is no way I can sit there and not watch that movie which means I won't do my work. The Color Purple was on too.

So I left and have arrived in the library.

It could be this suck @$$ weather, but I am type depressed. I just feel so worthless and pointless...again.

I cannot understand my importance or my utility in the world. I just feel like it's time to be out. I am studying and doing all this work for a degree that will qualify me for a master's program or whatever graduate studies which will give me higher earning potential to co-support my husband and children who I will send to school and have them do the same thing.

Pointlessness. But I used to see a point in this.

I used to tell my Mom that I didn't want my life to be like hers. I felt as though all she did was work, come home, watch tv, talk to her husband, and go to sleep. I told her I thought her life was boring. I didn't realize until I was older (like, within the last 2 years) that I was 1.) being really insulting to this very hardworking, selfless woman and 2.) missing the reality that people are different and my mother was doing what it she felt she had to do/wanted to do. So who the hell was I to tell her that her life was boring? It isn't my life. She was working 7 days a week for unmentionable hours so I would have the luxury of sitting in a very expensive house, going to a very expensive school, having very expensive things and complain about how bored I was.

Isn't childhood interesting? But now I am not bored as much as I am aimless. I almost feel robotic, manufactured, and generic. Life, even the most mundane details, were so interesting to me. Now it is all just mundane details sucking the life out of me.

Hopefully, after this last exam, I'll feel better. It's looking like a 3.8 GPA kind of semester which I'm sad about. I got a B in World Literature: Dante's Comedy. And I love literature. Damn antiquity.