No looking back.

I have to be honest with you. I don't hate much but I'm pretty sure I hate holidays.  I don't remember ever feeling connected to days like this, never had anyone to look forward to seeing, never seen issues set aside for the sake of a glowing turkey, never really felt like my family was the one for me.  This is not to say that I don't have family.  I actually have a huge one - plenty of siblings, aunts, uncles, countless cousins, one grandparent and even a little version of myself.  In the midst of that eclectic family tree, I only communicate without reservation to two people.  It's funny how it feels like I have everything I've ever wanted with the exception of a good family and the ability to make one.  


It's hard to fathom for a lot of people because if you hear someone say they can't stand a family member/the entire family, the automatic response is "Don't take them for granted."  In my head I always wonder why people think EVERY family is this grand blessing that should be valued so deeply that in the event of an unfortunate emergency, we won't feel guilty for not loving/talking to/wanting/appreciating them more.  People will tell you "Don't take them for granted" as if there will be a gaping hole in your soul when they're ripped from your life.  Not every family is that great, blessed, functioning or worth the gaping hole.  Now don't get me wrong, I've never wanted for anything (materialistically anyway), I went to good school, never went to bed cold or hungry and I even have support with my little princess.  I know how blessed I am for those things.  I wake up every day amazed that my life included those things, that God wrote out the word "fortune" somewhere on my dimmed path.  Even in all of that, there were things that were missing, crucial things that were set aside like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow for when I stopped believing in leprechauns and finally became a woman.  There were things that were done that were detrimental to my spirit, had forsaken my childhood and disrupted dreams of mine with the static of nightmares.  It is those things that I am not grateful for.  It is those things that if and when, God forbid an unfortunate emergency happens, I will not be left with a gaping hole for.  In fact, sometimes having the family I have is the hole itself.


Each child needs different things for their potential to be reached, for their virginity to be offered, for their love to be requited and so forth.  Each child needs certain things to thrive emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  I will be the first to tell you that I had more than I needed physically but everything for my spirit, for my heart to accept and return love, for a will to live righteously and virtuously with the ability to trust, I didn't receive in childhood from my family and as an adult, I haven't figured out how to trust them with that responsibility after all this time.  


I remember being twelve years old and confiding in my mother.  I told her something that was really bothering me, something that was changing my life.  It kept me up at night.  I used to wake up with blood all over my pillows from biting my lip so hard.  I started worrying about everything, crying at the drop of a dime confused by changes I felt were only happening to me, unnoticed by the entire world.  I can't tell you what I told my mother, not yet at least but I will tell you that she dismissed me.  She spoke to me as if there was nothing to be done so why was I even bothered.  She did offer me a psychiatrist though.  I remember walking into her room as a child and walking out leaving the child in me behind.   I haven't confided in my mother or family really since [with the exception of the two mentioned above].  And then life happened and I found myself with no buffer.  There was no one to take my beatings for me, no one to hold ice packs to my bruised spirit.  I was still very much a child getting battered by life without so much as a voice on my side.  I felt alone much of the time, introverted and extroverted at the same time.  Found myself keeping up appearances as to not to make any suspicion that something was going wrong.  Straight A students don't contemplate suicide.  Cheerleading captains don't dream of dying.  The girl who had the most valentines couldn't possibly be searching for love and smart girls don't get pregnant at eighteen.  


But I was all of those things simultaneously.  I was a woman and a child at the same time - the woman being the fighter, the child being the fought.  The woman in me dealt with all my consequences, suffered in silence and even convinced the child in me that we would be ok, that I would never leave her behind again.  The woman in me felt that the child deserved to be loved unconditionally, she deserved a soldier and so I didn't kill myself.  But one day, the child in me was born again and manifested herself into these big brown eyes and fuzzy hair.  I gave birth and vowed that before being a mother, a friend, a tutor, a chauffeur, a personal chef, a nurse and whatever else she requires, I would be her biggest ally.  I vowed to always stand in front of her to take her hits, to take her lashes, to bleed for her, to shed tears for her, to fight battles she would never even know happened.  I vowed to love her enough to die a thousand deaths for her. Some days I feel like I die more than that but she is the child in me and I watch her sleep.  I watch her scream out of her nightmares wondering if I passed that on to her, if fear is hereditary.  I smell her skin, rub my cheek to her warm flesh, knowing that the animal in me throbs every day, daring anyone - mother, father, brother, sister, friend to stand in the line of a fatal fire if they even dream of harming her.


My very first battle, in her sake was giving her up.  I left this fresh baby in a home I had loved more than some people.  I couldn't even say bye as I watched my grandmother's arms wrap around her under this beautiful sun and its dry air.  I had to face the world and she wasn't tough enough to witness what I would have to do, the blood I would have to shed, the hours I would have to work, the nights I would cry.  I had to use all my strength for my biggest weakness and I returned back to New York's emptiness and Philadelphia's responsibilities.  I found myself in a routine of sadness disguised with a full schedule.  I rarely had any time alone or any time to retreat into myself and search for her in the quiet of my own soul.  I learned how to function in secrecy, just like my younger self.  People surrounding me never noticing my war wounds, the marks that welcomed the story of my motherhood.  Women and men knowing my name without actually knowing who I was and I became okay with that.  I set my demons aside for a greater purpose, leaving my idle mind behind for the devil to play with.  I became too busy to think.  I slipped and made a small choice that would later turn out to be one of the biggest decisions in my life.  I let my rapist in my own home, walked him through my front door, offered him juice for his short stay as a thank you for giving me a ride home so I could get back to work sooner.  It was in that moment of being violated and wrinkled under the hot iron of a man's snatching hands, the child in me and the woman met again, not the child I gave birth to but the one I could never leave behind.  And there I was crushed underneath who I was and who I was too ashamed to be - scared and weak.  The woman couldn't even cradle the child in me, couldn't even convince the child that everything would be ok because innocence was never for sale, all purchases were final never to be returned or exchanged.  The woman and the child merged in arms, melted by the heat of their own naiveté.  It was almost like what he took from me, I never had to begin with and it was a shame to discover that in the darkness of your own apartment that there was no one outside myself.


I researched  my own rape like it was a book full of adventures because I needed to know the next step.  I had to know how I was going to feel, what I was going to do, if I was ever going to love again and I wondered if I would ever feel like my body was mine again.  There wasn't enough research.  No one could tell me how I was going to react, what my flashbacks would be like, what falling in love would do to me, nothing.  There were no answers.  There are no answers.  My flashbacks are sporadic.  The scent of a man can either make me feel safe or terrified.  And falling in love is almost impossible, not because men aren't willing to put broken women back together, but rather because men can't understand women with missing pieces.  They feel helpless, trying to figure out how to protect a woman whose biggest crime is the one she commits against herself - not feeling valuable enough to be valued.  


The truth is when I remind myself of people not to take for granted, my family doesn't necessarily come to mind, at least not the family with the same blood running through our veins.  I think of my friends, people who have been strategically placed in my life to put it back together.  This life is not to be taken for granted and family members are people too, with their own flaws, demons and even habits that only the devil could have came up with.  Even though I want everybody to appreciate what they have, that doesn't stop me from recognizing what I don't.  Maybe No Shame November couldn't have picked a better month, but in honor of it - I hate myself for hating my own family but the reasons are so valid and so succinct that only a book could hold a secret so deep.