My Mom apologized to me. She asked me to come over to their house, sat in the living room with my father and I, and apologized for being overly critical, for not loving me unconditionally, for expelling me when I got to difficult to handle, and not creating the home that every child deserves.
She said such poetic things like "No matter what happens in the world: what you go out and do or what is done to you, you should always have a place to come to, where you will be accepted."
This falls right in line with African style. There is no place to throw a child, no place to give away a child, no matter how "bad" they may be. She said she realized that she had not created a home for me just because she bought a nice house.
She said it all so poetically. She said everything I resented her for not realizing. She made congruent everything between her treatment of me and what our culture says to do that was previously congruent.
She showed me her emotions too. I always complain that she talks about me to her sisters, reveals her sadness or her frustration or her regret to them, but presents this stone cold, infallible persona to me.
And I try to explain that it would help if she showed me those emotions. It would humanize her. I always thought she was just heartless. I felt like she didn't even have feelings and that allowed me to be so hurtful to her. I wanted her to show me that she feels things. Instead, I would try to hurt her and she would hurt me worse.
And then she rebuked my Daddy, which I thought was funny because I had always suspected that I was a divisive issue in my parents' marriage but I had no proof.
Mom rebuked Dad for going behind her back and talking to me on the phone when they had decided that they, as a couple, as a unit, would not talk to me (I think it's funny that they had conversations, as parents, about not talking to one of their children...like I was too much to deal with so they were just going to stop talking to me).
Then, Daddy would fold and he would always call me. He has always been the one to break the silence that sometimes becomes our relationship.
This past summer, when there was some mix up about my tuition balance at the university, the university was sending letters to my permanent address: the parentals' house.
They flipped out and were trying to figure out what was going on and blah blah blah. Mom made a fight out of it when 1) it isn't any of her business because she doesn't subsidize my life in any capacity 2) I am perfectly capable of handling my own situations now. They cut me off financially and socially, I am sure in hopes to incapacitate me, force me to return home and do what they ask to regain their support.
I did not. I decided to do it on my own than live in this limbo of expulsion at any moment. My parents were constantly threatening me with removing their support. So I called their bluff and when they did, I didn't give up on my life. My friends wouldn't give up on my life and kept me afloat until I made it out of the flood altogether.
Then I started school this semester, meaning I obviously resolved the tuition situation (which I kept telling them not to worry about and I don't know why they were worried because they don't pay for anything for me and they didn't really offer to pay anything so why are you trippin?).
My Dad started calling me and checking on me and cracking jokes for me and laughing with me...and pretending that everything was fine.
Meanwhile, my Mom wasn't talking to me, which I still don't understand. I just told her not to worry. I just want her to be my mom. She doesn't need to worry about those things anymore.
So my mother told my father that she was upset that he would talk to me after they had decided that I was contraband. She said that it made her angry that he was somehow immune from the drama. Here he was, on the phone, laughing and bonding with me when she wanted to have a relationship with me too but was upset.
Even if she was being unreasonable, it made her look even worse. She said she wondered what I must have thought of her. If my Dad can talk to me and we can have a relationship despite our conflicts, then what is wrong with my Mom? Which is exactly what I would think!
My father never seemed any less frustrated, less disappointed, less angry with me than my Mom did but he was able to return to his role as father. He never made me "pay" for my behavior by withholding his love (even though at a point he was behaving just as unreasonably as her).
So I wondered why she was so obstinate, why she was so mad.
The things is, they are both people and the are different people. My Dad would continue communication just in case there was "a chance to save my daughter".
And it was a genius plan. If he hadn't have been talking to me, my mother wouldn't even have had the opportunity to call me and ask me to come over and talk, because I wouldn't have accepted their phone calls and I wouldn't have returned them either.
She was jealous. I thought that was so cute. But again, it was her sharing how she felt, which I have never been privy to. I literally thought that my mother just didn't like me. And relatives would say that such a thing was absurd. But even though she didn't say that she didn't like me, her anti-emotional stance, the way she would mock me when I became emotional, and the choice to punish me with silence rather than discuss issues made me think she didn't like me.
That was all I could use to explain it. I am 22 years old. The relationship I have with my parents at this age, given that I am financially independent, is completely optional. So I was always confused about the way she chose to handle her anger. She chose not to talk to me, which is painful of course, but is also stupid. Being estranged from my parents is not the devastating thing at 22 that is may be at 15 and 16.
But, we all have our burdens. Her burdens, her inadequacies, her idiosyncracies, her life experience guided her to act and treat me in a certain way, something very incongruent with what I expected and vice versa. I think we both operated under the premise that our relationship, as mother and daughter should just work. Neither of us considered (or showed the other) our humanity and the work it takes for any two human beings to have a healthy and functional interpersonal relationship.
I am going to forgive her just as I hope she will forgive me. And we will replace statements like "Ugh" with revolutionary cries.
Ball & Chain
"Since I Seen't You" by Anthony HamiltonOn the blog Shahedah and I share ownership of, I wrote an entry about a horrible dream I had of the most important and remarkable woman in the world to me. The dream felt like One Cup of Fear in an otherwise slow day.
Since that dream, I have felt a spirit that wants to at least entertain the idea of forgiveness. The dream made my anger and frustration seem so pointless. If I try to hate her, what will it turn into when she dies?
So resentment and anger loosed their grips on my heart and I wrote an email to my mother explaining that our bickering is quite stupid and it means nothing in the grand scheme. I told her I don't know why she isn't talking to me and I don't know what I did, but I don't care. I just wanted her to know that I wasn't mad. I also pointed out some faultiness in some things she thinks I am doing (like drugs). There's no way in hell I'm doing drugs. But I guess she can't see me on campus and how much I have to do and how little time I have for drugs if I were doing them. And remember my GPA last semester. Don't nobody on the pipe pull those kinds of grades.
I digress. I just wanted her to know that I wasn't mad. Sometimes, we retain and nourish our anger in defense of someone else's anger. She may think I am mad at her and think it unfair or dumb that I am mad at her so then she will be mad at me and vice versa. I know. How ridiculous.
She replied in a brief message that she just needed to think things out. I thought I wasn't going to get a response at all so I was elated to see that and gladly began to wait for her to"think things out".
And here I am, 2 and a half weeks later, still waiting for her reply. What I know is, she is not going to reply, which really irritates me. I have written letters to her before. One was incredibly poetic but very genuine and I was desperate to talk to her. She said some things happened and she forgot about it. This has happened a few other times.
She just doesn't want to talk about it. She just wants me to "get my act together" and move on. I don't think she thinks there is anything to discuss. Why do we refuse to get along? Why are we both so stubborn? Why do we have to be right? How are we hurting each other? What can we do to stop?
These are good questions. We should address them, talk about it. But we don't. For her, the problem lies with me. I am not "behaving". I'm almost 23 years old. I'm far past "misbehaving". I hate when they say that. That is what adolescents do, "misbehave". We just don't get along quite plainly and if it were up to the lovely Marie Umarr-Kamara, BSN, MSN, we would just stick in this cycle forever.
Recovering from all the mess that we have endured in the last 3 years will require some honest, serious, maybe hurtful conversation and she doesn't want to do it. The problem has nothing to do with the sometimes mean and manipulative behaviors my parents sometimes employed to "reign me in". The problem is all me. I don't listen. I do this. I do that. I don't do this. I don't do that.
Fine. I messed up. I should have listened in some instances and I'm glad I didn't in others. But the problem can't even be fixed. Me and moms are like 2 highly skilled, stubborn doctors with two very different diagnoses.
She is still ignoring me now, even though I really need her to give me that stethoscope...5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
And we are back to Square 1. Welcome back. FML.
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.