Undulating

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.

Home Alone, Part Who Freakin' Knows

"Nikki" by The Dream

...now your heart is broken / go on 'head and pick it up...

So Will texted me. I was nice and patient even though I just wanted to say all kinds of nasty insults that I rehearsed when the ship sunk but never got a chance to say. We stopped talking (I'm still not totally sure how he has my new number because I didn't give it to him!). But he decides to randomly contact me. It was obvious that he was intoxicated or altered in some fashion, otherwise he wouldn't have had the nerve, as he admitted himself. So I couldn't be that mad. He wasn't totally in control of himself.

However, I cannot understand why he would think I want to have contact with him. He said that when he checked on me on my birthday this year, I said I forgave him. I was probably altered. I was in Miami and you know what happened in Miami! I want to forgive him and in those moments in which the details of my life and pain are fuzzy, I can forgive anyone, at least for a while.

And honestly, I know that as a child of God I should have forgiven him by now. There are a litany of people who I should have forgiven by now but I find it wholly impossible. I'm weak for pain. I feel it so deeply, it's so paralyzing, I cannot figure out how to let it go. And it is not as though I haven't done wrong to others.

But I still hate him. I still do. I have stopped wishing for bad things for him. I only did that for a very short while. But given the continued decrepit condition of my life, as much as I want to "let go of the past", I don't know how.

And I don't know that I want to. These experiences are the kinds of things that teach me how to be less naive and less trusting, which is what gets me in so much trouble. I should know better but when I love someone, I trust them. I didn't think it would be a problem if he knew my master password. Stupid.

I just believe people will be just as good to me as I am to them or try to be to them. In the end, it wasn't even what he had done but more what he said. I know he was angry. But as time has passed, I wonder why that is the emotion he had. You don't know what I'm talking about but if I had a friend in the shape that I was in, anger would have been my least likely expressed emotion.

When I was "loco", Gwenny and Christina were willing to put our friendship on the line to ensure my health and safety. They knew it was possible that I would not want to be their friend anymore after they brought my situation to light, but it was worth it to save my life.

For that reason, I have always been confused by his reaction. I have remained furious about it. When all was said and done, the ego I fear in every man spoke up for him instead of the caring, loving person I knew, a person who seemed to really love me unconditionally.

The situation between Will and I has dulled the light I used to see in people. I am afraid now, most of the time, around new people. And I don't want to introduce new people into my life. It seems more trouble than it is worth.

There is a solid circle of people who have never swayed, never left, never really disappointed. I have resolved that they are all I need.

I still love people. I am still outgoing. But I am guarded. Sometimes I am sad because I wonder about the interesting and good people I am missing out on. Will was interesting and good to me, at least for a while. I miss (sometimes) the thrill of new personalities but it spares me of much pain. The trade-off is fair.

Diaper:repaiD

"First Love" by Adele

...forgive me first love / I am too tired...

I am really tired. I am not sleepy. My mind is tired of thinking. My eyes are tired of reading. My right hand is tired of writing. My left is tired of holding my papers as I write, motionless and unattended to.

My wrists are tired of typing. My legs and hips are tired of walking. My back is tired of toting around the textbook makings of a bachelors degree. My mind is tired of thinking.

And I am tired of myself. I am working really hard, diligently, around the clock. I am reading, comprehending, deducing connecting, from no light in the morning to no light at night.

I look tired too. And I'm getting sad because I'm lost; like I'm not here.

When I went home to the parentals this weekend, everything seemed so real, so normal. We laugh like nothing ever happened but returning to my not home is evidence that a lot happened. But I go, happily, eat heartily, study, and play with Lima only to return to this hell as if there is no heaven to validate its existence. And the keep sending me back. They keep dropping me off.

I don't expect to go home. I don't think I could live there anymore. There are no pictures of me where there used to be, which I think means that there isn't hope that I'll return so they'd just as soon take down the pictures so as not to be reminded of who is absent.

It hurts only because when I'm in the library for hours, alone, reading and taking notes, I have time to pause time and wonder why I am doing this. I don't know what I am doing or why I am doing it, sometimes.

This would be a good time to tell a Mom or a Dad that I feel a little overwhelmed. But I don't think I can ever trust them with my head or my heart again. Even with this light load (just a little academic melancholy), I fear that if I asked them to hold it, they would just drop me off somewhere again. Because Africans believe that there is no child that you can just throw away, except for one: me.

Special shoutout to Starbucks and 5 Hour Energy Drink for slyly stealing $30 of my money every week.

When We

"Easy Conversation" by Jill Scott

...I like that you don't look at me that confused kind of way when / the thoughts are running through my mind / and I can't find the right thing to say...

I wrote a very good paper for my English class earlier this month about what literature is. The question was posed to our class and we were asked to define it and argue whether or not the definition, as collectively accepted, should be expanded to include the likes of rappers and singers, who are recent additions to the ancient life that is artistic expression.

I might post that bad boy up here although it is lengthy. It is good though. My Daddy said it was wonderful and you know I think he is a genius, therefore, the essay is that fire.

I emailed it to him yesterday following a discussion of the aforementioned topic. He said he wanted to read it. I rarely allow my Daddy opportunities to read my writing because his command of language and artistic writing ability dwarf a person's entire existence with its grandiosity. But he thought it was splendid and even read it to the graduate literature class he teaches to introduce the topic. Not excited about that though.

And then Daddy called me again this morning to tell me about the conversation in his class that was sparked by my paper. Daddy has been calling me a lot. It is exciting because I love my Daddy. I think he is the coolest, funniest, kindest person alive, despite concurrent feelings of resentment and frustration.

It just seems odd though. For months, I tried to talk to my Daddy and Mommy and for months, they weren't checking for me. The hot anger of the past and the cold indifference of the future have met to make a lukewarm existence of now. I don't worry about how the relationship turns out anymore.

I guess because I am older, I'm not crazy anymore, and education continues to sophisticate me, I realize that the whole family debacle isn't really that big of a deal. I am learning that time really will heal the wounds because time allows us all to grow. That growth is what heals the old wounds and makes us stronger to sustain future damage with less energy used to heal. I just wish I hadn't been such a dumb ass the past 3 or 4 years. I wish I hadn't been so sensitive, so demanding, so dramatic, so impatient, and so angry. There is plenty I wish of my parents' attitude and behaviors, but I had and have no control over them.

The thing is, love is bold. You scream and fight and reconcile and hate and blame and recuperate because you love one another. The love is permanently bonding so the recklessness is performed under the security of forever, no matter how unsatisfying the love may be. I know I am bold as love and because of love.

Work It Out

"Declaration (This is It)" by Kirk Franklin

...it's a new day / I'm not afraid anymore...

I woke up for Yoga this morning at 8am. Showered. Made a small breakfast. I abhor waking up early in the morning but I suppose I am a "morning person" for my energy level rises to normal level rather quickly.

I have made a pact to exercise more will power and discipline this year. I have extended this to mean I must wake up early in the morning and be productive each day as early as I can.

I have not been waking up for Yoga because I stay up late to study. Not following the healthy schedule.

So I was able to do it today and Yoga was at 8am not at 9. I am not sure if it is because it is raining and ugly, because I am still living under my chronic melancholy, or what but I was VERY upset about it.

I feel as though I have lost control of my life. I therefore try to maintain it in even the smallest areas that I can. I clearly schedule every hour of my day because my time is all that I own and control.

As I walked home, I cried about a lot of things. This is the prayer I sent to God, not as humbly as I should have, but as honest as I am infamous for:

Sometimes I feel like You push me too hard

Sometimes I don't understand why You made me this way

Soemtimes I feel like I can't wait for the morning to come

And for Your blessing to wake me

Sometimes I feel as though You are not listening

Sometimes I feel like my tears are meaningless

As the cheeks they run down

Sometimes I feel like I'm too dramatic

But that just reminds me that I don't understand

Why You made me this way

Most of the time, I don't doubt You because my belief,

My faith is all that I have.

I am still alive and that is all the proof I have that You are alive

Waking up, sometimes, is all the testimony I have

Most of the time I cling to You like nothing else

Because I learned that you don't know that all you need is God

Until all You have is God.

And all I have is God.

I don't have a thing in the world to give anyone

I don't have a maternal hand to stroke my head when I feel the most defeated

And I don't have a tissue absorbant enough to catch all my tears

Which is why I don't release every tear my heart feels it needs to shed

And I don't have a paternal hand of encouragement to rub my back

When the weight of my sadness is too heavy.

But he is a father to the fatherless and a mother to motherless

So let the Devil know that your encouraged.

I hope God isn't mad. And I don't think He is. We all doubt Him and from what I understand, He expects us to. Smart people, critical thinkers, intellectuals write theses to discredit Him, but I don't think He gets offended. He gave us the talent to do so.

People have told me, "Zainab, I don't understand why you believe in God. You're so smart." As if to say only stupid people believe in God. And I do doubt things in the Bible. I don't believe in the story of Adam and Eve. But I know what I have seen and endured. I should not be alive to type this blog but I am and ain't enough luck in the world to have kept me alive.

Besides the doctrines and hard-to-believe-stories, anti-Semitism, persecution of homosexuals, church denominations, hypocrisy, hateful evangelists, my pending degree in science, my inclination to turn to science, and other controversial subject about Christianity, I have just been through some things I should not have survived, so God is as real to me as the keys I am typing on.

Come to My Window

"Sweet Mother" by Tilda

Sweet mother, I nor go foget you, fo di suffa wey you suffa for mi, ye

When I dey cry, mi mama go carry mi,

She go say, "Mi pikin, watin you dey cry?"

Stop stop...stop stop...stop stop

Mek you nor cry again, no...

My mother woke me this morning, on this last day of the year. She called me at about 9am. She has not called me in over 3 and half months and as you know, I have been pining for that woman's attention the whole time. There are several blog entries that are testaments to such.

My BF even commented recently that my blogs don't seem so crestfallen. I'm slowly moving on from my upset with my domestic situation.

This phone call along with my Auntie Yabom cooking my favorite soup, Krain Krain, seem to be signs to me. I feel as though it means there is hope for me and my family yet.

Eating my plate of rice and Krain Krain always makes me feel at home. It is so familiar and so comforting. I haven't eaten krain krain in several months because I have been away from my family.

God wants me to be at home, perhaps not physically, but He wants me to have a relationship with my family. And I want it too. Not eating Krain Krain for six months is ridiculous. Mothers pay so much attention to what their children eat and for several months, I haven't eaten my mother's food, the food from home. I feel as though I have been starving until today.

So I am interpreting this as a sign, that at the end of the day, or the end of the year, I still have a family, even if the relationship is not what I want it to be. I am trying to remember that because at first, after we talked, I tried to go back to sleep but lay down crying instead. I have missed her so much and she waited until the last day of year to call, talk to me, ask me questions, and let me know she cares.

Just when I was starting to come to terms with the idea that I will just have to do without a relationship; that I will have to bear with the distance; that I have to give her time...she calls and renews my hopes, without my knowledge even. I think I am a little optimistic that this new year season may give my Mommy the reconciliation fever. Maybe. Maybe not.

Nonetheless, I am going to continue with my plan. I will return to school next semester and finish up my degree. The other details of my life are auxiliary mechanisms to me graduating. I just want her (and my Daddy) to see that. I can manage without a real relationship with either of them. That will come with time.

However, I am still hurt about some of the things she has done or not done, as I am sure she is by me. I cried out of frustration. Any conversation we have is predicated upon me "taking responsibility". While I am totally willing to do that, I must say, I am not willing to be labelled as the sole culprit of this domestic mess.

I am no longer a child. Our relationship and my parents' role in my life has changed. Therefore, both sides are responsible and have made bad contributions. My parents, in old African style, don't believe that. It (whatever it is) is all my fault. So while I have missteps for which I have indicted them in my mind, they deny them all together and simply make me feel childish, paranoid, and overly sensitive.

But in this new year, I will try my hardest to be grateful. I will not say happy, because she is highly elusive. But I will be grateful. I am alive. I am well. I therefore still have opportunity and potential. This is especially poignant for me to remember now as two 'cousins' of mine have died in the last month, both of whom were my age. Marie of ovarian cancer at 22 and Khadija of a horrible car accident back home in Sierra Leone at 23.

Happy New Year Mommy. Forgive me for 2008. But please give me space, less criticism, and more support if you can in 2009.

Tap Water

"You Made a Fool of Me" by Me'Shell Ndegeocello

...I've allowed you to make me feel...I feel so dumb / What kind of fool am I? / You so easily set me aside...

I've come to realize that being one of the King's Kids comes with special privileges and protections. God is not one to allow his chosen people to be messed with, hurt, humiliated, trampled upon, beaten, harrassed, and/or disrespected without consequence.

--Suga (Naked and Natural)

___

Other people are important. I read an entry on the blog of a blogger who I follow about forgiveness and God. It was hard to read and it even made me cry. I want to be angry. Honestly, anger is fulfilling and comforting in a way that just makes me want to keep eating anger. But anger is fattening and I cannot live on it.

__________

I once read that anger is one of the most dangerous of our emotional indulgences. It is usually borne of our desire for some reward. When one becomes angry, he or she wants some kind of acknowledgment, which is the reward. We want someone to apologize, admit a wrong was done, have something corrected in order for our anger to subside.

__________

But I have come to understand that such a thing is not always possible. I cannot wait for the person I am angry with to correct the situation. I have to let it go. And as Suga said in the quote above, as I a child of God, I will be avenged.

_______

And I should be so cocky, shouldn't I? To forget about God's power and think that I could avenge the breaking of my own heart better than God.

__________

I should already know this. I am not stupid and I should know better than to hang on to such a thing but everytime something happens to me, I must be reminded about God's grandiosity. I always want to hang onto the pain and the frustration and no one is making me. I don't see him anymore. I don't talk to him anymore. I just hang onto the situation in my head such that the pain is as fresh as the day it all happened.

__________

So I am going to pray that I can forgive. I will move on and let God pay him back, with interest, for the grief that he caused me.

Girl You Are Rich, Even with Nothing

"Player" by 112

...I'm a player / girl I thought you knew / when you started messin' around with me/ you knew I wouldn't commit to you / cuz I'm a player...

Thanksgiving Day has passed. I spent it here in Houston, Texas with people I barely know.

I sense that my Mom thinks I skip out on the family because I don't like them. At least, that is what is communicated to me by my aunts and uncles that talk to me about the way my mother perceives me.

I love them. There is no place in the world I would rather be than home, even in these times of awkward tension.

I did not call them on Thanksgiving Day. I felt bad for not being at home. Simultaneously, holidays don't hold any significance for me because I feel like a nomad. A nomad with no family.

I feel as though lonely nomads of thousands of years ago probably died earlier than their accompanied peers.

I am going to my parents' house in a week. My Daddy is traveling home so I will be hanging out with darling Lima. I can't imagine how my Mom and I are going to get along. I know we won't fight or anything because I don't do that with her anymore. I wonder if she will talk to me at all. I wonder if I will be able to resist staying out of her way.

Something tells me that she doesn't really want me there but she has no choice. I'm the best person imagineable who could tend to Lima so meticulously. I must stay out of her way. I don't want to anger her or annoy her.

I also can't hope for a miracle while I am at home. The heart in my mind wants me to hope that having to see me everyday for two weeks will weaken her resolve to be mad at me or forget me (or whatever she is doing). But the mind in my heart is trying to let me know that I am being ridiculous and I am underestimating the strength of my Mom's will and the depth of her frustration.

I hope I can resist the temptation to make a scene while at home. It's just that I want her to know that I grew up, I understand, I miss her, I love her, and I want her to forgive me.

I don't need to move back in. I wouldn't mind but I don't have to.

When I was younger and people would tell me that they could make themselves cry, I didn't understand. I was under the impression that one could only cry when in pain. And I was one of the happiest children so I could never "cry on demand".

I can do that very well now. And it isn't just "crying on demand". I actually have things to cry about that I conceal until the appropriate time.

It's usually about my Mama. I can be sitting in the happiest of moments but if I think about my Mama, I can easily, easily cry. That is what I want for her to know. That I'm not a selfish child, I just had to grow up. The more heartbreaking thing about growing up and changing is realizing how horrible you used to be. The most heartbreaking thing is not being able to show the person who matters the most how much better you are. Sorry Mom.

Little Darlin'

"Stir It Up" by Bob Marley

...it's not really about the words this time...but at minute 3:25 starts this melody that stops the earthquake, pushes your life off the edge of death, and gives the solutions an outline at least, which is better than the nothing you had before...

Yesterday I travelled to my third world democracy: the parentals. My Dad has been asking for me to come over and discuss some suggestions he had about my life.

It's funny: suggestions about my life. As if my life is some piece of unfinished art, some uneditted book. But I guess it is. That is exactly what my life is.

He and Mom think it is a good idea that I go home, but home as in Sierra Leone. I think it is a good idea. They think that I should get away from this "toxic America", and I think I agree. I am immeasurably unahppy. I am constantly lonely. My vices are my friends now because my friends are simply inadequate. My friends lack nothing as human beings or as caring friends. I simply do not care about my life enough. However important they say I am in their lives does not translate into a reason to live.

But I know that I should be alive, so I am quite conflicted. I cannot lose anything by going back home for a while. Maybe being away from my vices will help me make more and better friends.

The thing that I worry about though is my Mommy. I do not feel like there is anything to be done to get her back. My pictures are missing from the living room. I know that was her idea. My father would never be that angry. And it is painful. It is that kind of painful that chokes you and makes you cry even when you do not want to. You are simply forced to cry at even the most inopportune of moments.

Funnily, I did not notice my pictures were gone until I was about to leave. It rocked me so hard that I could not even wait for my brother to finish talking to my Dad. I had to go to the car and cry like I had died. My pictures were gone...as if I had died.

I wrote her a letter. I said I missed her. I said I loved her. I apologized. I said I missed her. I cry all the time because I just want to talk to her. And she has removed my pictures.

I cannot just walk away. I cannot just let it go and move on. She is not a mean boyfriend. She is my mother. And my Lima Bean. I have to be in his life so I have to be in her life. The guilt I would feel if I left Lima would kill me so I'll endure the torture that is seeing my mother who does not say a word to me. He is worth it and if I think of this problem in terms of Lima and not Mommy, maybe I will not cry so much.

Because at minute 3:25 of "Stir it Up" until the song goes off, I have the outline of a solution at least, which is better than the nothing I had before...