A God Who Eats Sausages

"Welcome to Heartbreak" by Kanye West

...and my keeps spinnin' / can't stop havin' these visions / gotta get with it...

This wonderful week was spent with my wonderful family. My two cousins, Mankappr and Shahedah came to visit Richmond for this last leg of the summer before we all return to school and work. Mankappr came down from Delaware and Shahedah came up from North Carolina.

Our family is very, very dramatic. The pair of parents in the network are demanding, unforgiving, emotionally unavailable, but expect a genuine, strong relationship.

Little do they know, all the kids they have raised feel no real connection to them. They are ready to pack and leave as soon as they have the financial means to do so.

I have written a journal entry about this and expressed that I think it is so sad. We actually have such a wonderful culture that teaches us to be selfless, self-motivated, self-reliant, responsible, considerate, and encourages unending generosity and helpfulness to one another. We have such funny and fun times together and it is amazing to see us in action when there is a crisis to handle.

However, the judgmental, gossipy, irrational characteristic is overbearing. It negates an emotional relationship between parent and child. The child resents the parents' harshness, a harshness that is a little out of place in this American bubble they are raising the culturally hybridized child. It sucks.

So, Mankappr, Shahedah, and I have been bouncing from aunt's house to aunt's house, visiting and having a good time. One of our aunt's made a stink about me sleeping at her house. I told you my mom talks shit about me to anyone that is familiar with me and will listen.

For that reason, my aunt just doesn't want me to spend the night with her children, although while she was in school and her kids could not drive, I would keep them on weekends and chauffer them around anywhere they needed to go. I catered to them like they were my own children because I have paid attention to our culture and that is what is accepted as appropriate.

You think it would end there right? My aunt is being a little annoying. I won't go over there anymore. Situation over. Nope.

She calls and complains to Shahedah's mom (yikes, that is a mean, scary lady) that we have all left and gone to our Auntie Oumie's house. Now they are all wound up. Auntie Aminata (the disgruntled aunt who said I shouldn't sleep at her house) talks more shit about me that is not true, but what can I do?

It becomes such a situation that Shahedah is screamed on during a phone call from her mother and told to come home the next day.

Then God explained to me that they are all like this. The whole family is suffering from the same disease of ridiculousness, konzosah (gossip), and dramatics. They don't mean to. They are trying to protect us. But there is no need to suffer under such hurt feelings at the hands of parents with good intentions and bad decisions.

But I have left them all behind. I have found a place, a purpose, a use in this world that is all my own, not contingent upon the approval of the family that is most inconsistent.

Now I am just waiting on the love of my life, with the wonder of lavender, to be all mine and make a family of my own.