Forks in the Road

Being yourself isn’t an easy road…this is a tweet one of my twitter followers posted yesterday. As I thought about that line, I had to agree. People are quick to tell you not to conform and just be yourself, but in actuality that is not an easy task. Let’s be real here: how many times have you held back from doing or saying something that you felt because of how others may perceive you? Let’s be even more real: how many times have you been the person looking at someone who you thought was being themselves and judged them negatively for doing so? Don’t everyone speak at once.

I’m guilty of both…holding back and judging and in all cases it was wrong and I did it because of my own insecurities. We tend to shy away from words like insecurity because it highlights in yellow the weaknesses we all posses. Let’s face it, when it comes down to it, we don’t always choose the “be yourself” fork in the road….and we know that we don’t. We will choose the fork with the least resistance because we don’t want to be bruised in our journey down that road.

When we are alone with ourselves and all the people we call friends are not around is usually the only time we are our true selves. In your secret closet, how do you feel about yourself? What do you think about your true self? Do you love that person enough to show her/him in public? Are you afraid of what people will think, so you keep him/her on the back-burner and put your public face on?

We are human and yes it hurts to expose ourselves in ways that we can potentially be hurt or talked about, but I guess its important to learn to face our known inadequacies for the sake of our sanity; because in the end no one matters but you anyway. People WILL come and go. People WILL hurt you…and the only thing left will be how you dealt with yourself.

Forever Learning….

Journey to Me: Entry #15

Entry #15 (Click here to read Entry #14)

I did end up moving away from my aunts and moving in with my paternal grandmother who I have always adored. At this point in my life I was 19 years old with visions, goals and dreams for myself. My immediate goal at the time was to leave Houston and attend Spelman College…I even got accepted, but my father would not allow me to go that far from home. I was furious with him for this ultimatum, although I could have went anyway, but even my young ass knew that I needed financial support from my family…so I acquiesced and attended college in Houston.

My aunt died shortly after I moved away. I was a very sad occasion as deaths tend to be. From the time I left her house to the time she died, she and I sorta mended our fences and our relationship improved. I was actually glad this happened, especially since she left this world so soon. I remember her funeral being almost like my mothers, ironically, she was buried at the same cemetery that my mother was laid to rest. I watched her two sons go through the same pain that my brother and I had gone through 5 years earlier. The pain and anger in their eyes was all too familiar. I felt their pain…I knew their experience. It was as if I was reliving my life’s tragedy.

After this day, I was able to put that part of my life behind me and move forward into adulthood and find out who I was. This was the day I began my exploration of myself.

Journey to Me: Entry #14

Entry #14 (click here to read entry #13)

My aunt and I had an indifferent relationship the entire time I lived with her. She never mistreated me, but she also never treated me like a mother or a good stand in mother should. I always felt like I was the outsider in that home, so I stayed away as much as possible. I started high school a year after my mother died. Every person in my family went to one particular school, so of course that’s where I went. My 9th grade year was full of ups and downs. I became lax in school, skipping classes and messing around with boys. I was a smart ass to the teachers and basically did what the hell I wanted to do when it came to school. As my 9th grade year drew to a close (I passed with flying colors by the way…weak curriculum) Precious had a long talk with me about preparing for my future and what not. She didn’t tell me what I needed to do, but she gave me a lot to think about. Over the summer of 1988, I realized that I needed and wanted more for myself. I refused to be like those around me, so I needed to remove myself from the environment. I decided that I wanted to go to a better school…as school with an advanced curriculum. So I located a school, took the entrance exam and got in. My aunt was totally against this: “the school is too far”, how are you gonna get there? Why can’t you just stay where you are? I don’t know if this is a good idea…”did Precious tell you to do this? Just a whole host of negative shit…anything to get me to stay put. After months of talking and convincing, she finally agreed to the transfer. Thank God. Finally school was good. I was good. Grades were good. Perfect.

Then I got a job.

When I was 16 I got my first job at a local grocery store. The store was across town in an affluent neighborhood…a neighborhood that I had learned about years before through my god-mother Precious. I was excited about the job because it gave me a chance to spread my wings and learn about things I wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to. I would go to school from 8-11:30 and catch the bus to my new found job. In the evening around 5:30pm, Precious would come by and pick me up from work so that I wouldn’t have to ride the bus home in the dark. My aunt was not happy about this arrangement. She would pitch a fit about me having a job so far away from home and she knew Precious was the reason I wanted to go and work around all those “white folks”. The environment was volatile, but I refused to quit my job because she of her bullying. Eventually she just went with it because I wasn’t gonna give in to all of her foolishness.

About two years passed and my aunt was diagnosed with end stage breast cancer. I was 18 at the time and was in the process of starting college and moving out of her house and into my grandmother’s house. I saw my aunt dwindle down to about 120 pounds, lose all of her hair and virtually slump over from the tumors in her breast. I heard her scream out of pain throughout the night. It was a terrible thing to witness, but I had so much hurt in my heart for her that I could not stay there…I frankly didn’t care that she was suffering like she was and I moved anyway. Leaving her sons and my brother to care for her. A year earlier, she and her husband got divorced-so she was basically all alone. Not to mention that two of her brothers died a few years before…our family was down to only a few people at this time; everyone was dying and I was totally aloof to all of it. I really didn’t care. I wanted my life to be totally separate from the crap I had seen and experienced at this house…in that family.

So I moved, and never looked back.

My Reality

Learning to accept what and who you are can be a daunting task, especially when your idea of self doesn’t line up with the real you. In this case, I am not speaking of the physical self, but the spiritual part of man/woman. The things that we hold on the inside. The things that no one knows but us. The stuff that we keep locked away for shame and hurt. These secrets are what make up our person….our character.

Oftentimes, we paint a pretty mental picture of our person in order for us to live peacefully with our being, but in actuality we are quite dark and ugly on the inside. We have mastered the art of illusion and portray various characters for the world to see.

Amazingly we live like this and usually are never called on it…consequently, we do ourselves a major disservice because we are living a farce…more specifically we are living a lie.

Exploring the depths of our mental make-up can be hard and VERY painful, but the older I become, the more I realize that its something that I have to do in order to maintain my connection with my reality. Allowing disconnect in my life will bring me to mental demise on all levels.

I cherish the people who are a part of my life at this point and my desire is to remain a part of their lives as well as they remaining a part of mine. I enjoy my life, my freedom, my independence and the passion that I feel for life but my need for connection is paramount. Today I accepted that and embraced it.

Tomorrow my journey continues….

Journey to Me: Entry #12

Entry #12 (Click here to read entry #11)

Where do I go from here? This is what I thought about after my mother’s funeral. I am 15 years old and my brother is 8….what are they gonna do with us? These and many other questions filled my mind as I was uncertain of what would become of us. My aunt, my mother’s oldest sister stepped up and said that she was take me to live with her and my dad, said that he would take my brother to live with him and his new wife. So y’all are gonna split us up, I asked? And the answer was yes. Before that could settle in, my other aunt, who was my moms youngest sister said: No, we will not spilt these kids up; they both will come and stay with me. Now mind you, this is the Aunt with the terrible sons that I did not like. Going to stay with her was like sentencing me to prison time. Surely there would be a discussion about this. Someone, at least my father would say no to this, but no one said anything…it was settled. My brother and I were moving in with my aunt…the aunt I didn’t like.

My aunt G was a decent woman but she was harsh and cold at times. She and her husband lived in a 2 bedroom apartment along with her two sons. The day we moved in, I wondered as the only girl where I would sleep. The place wasn’t terribly small, but it wasn’t large enough for 6 people to live in. My brother was put in the bedroom with my two male cousins and I was given the pull out sofa to sleep on and the hall closet became the place for my clothes and other effects. I spent the next 3 years sleeping on that sofa and it was the most tumultuous 3 years of my life. I couldn’t go to bed when I wanted, because the living room was where the television was. I had to wait until the last person was done with TV before I could sleep. The kitchen was a few feet from my make-shift bedroom and my aunt would wait until after 10pm to wash the dishes and clean the kitchen…so this kept me up most nights. Having to rise early for school was a chore because I didn’t sleep like I should have.

It wasn’t long before my older male cousin started making his way to my bed at night attempting to touch me. There were nights that I would wake up to him sliding in the bed with me or with him fondling my breasts. He never actually penetrated me; it was always touching and rubbing. I lay there, very still and let him do what he wanted to do. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I would move abruptly and he would jump up and run back to his bedroom. I never said anything to my aunt because I didn’t think she would do anything. The sofa was less than 50 feet from her bedroom…to this day I believe that she knew what he did, but refused to do anything.

My dad came around a lot after my mother died. He would come pick my brother and I up and just spend time with us. I never told him how I felt about living with my aunt, so he was under the impression that everything was well. I had been planning in my head that as soon as I turned 18 I was going to go and live with my grandmother (dad’s mom) I was only gonna stay in this apartment for as long as I had to.

Aquarius.Soul © 2010

Update on Journey to Me

As of yesterday I have completed re-posting the first 11 entries for my Journey to Me series. If you are following these posts, make sure you read all of those before moving on to entry 12, which will be posted in a few days. Thanks to all of you who are reading this.