perspectives: a series

Goals

Kai drove into town mind running, fueled by one statement and question, “You guys were goals! What happened?” They really were. She loved that man like her life and salvation were dependent on it. As a devout Christian, and a child of divorce she would never separate her family, and she would never make her children face the pain and instability of a broken home. The home her and Jeremy created in their twenties slowly began to crumble but from the inside. The facade remained in tack but as if termites ate away at the scaffolds of her mental health and the splinter in her eye was perceived by Jeremy as a beam. Somehow the emotional abuse she’d faced behind the closed door of their bedroom crept down the hall morphing into a monster she could not reason with.

It was by God’s grace that she had birthed two children and for Kai, they were the sun and moon. The days and nights spent alone caring for her family were illuminated by the lives of Damascus and Taliah. Yet they also slowly revealed the other side of Jeremy. And when she knew better, Kai resolved to do better. Even if it meant abandoning the god she worshipped all her life.

Sway

He was originally from New Oleanes, and not long after Katrina, Sway found his way to Carter G. Woodson High School her senior year by way of Houston. Sway was a 90s kind of fine, with Nelly’s swagger and a Houston drawl that would knock any girl’s panties straight off. They shared a love for music and Bunny felt akin to an anthropologist when he played 50 Cents Wankster screwed and chopped on a burned CD in her bedrooms boom box.

He tanned a reddish brown like her, but something about him gave Indigenous North American, maybe even Indian. Slim and a tad lanky, Sway always smelled so good and greeted her with his biggest grin. She’d asked him to prom after the guy Bunny had been talking to ghosted her. They would go as friends and would commit to at least taking pictures together. And took pictures they did, despite Bunny’s teammate high jacking the night with a promise and booked hotel room. Splitting her prom date senior year and suffering from instant diarrhea from drinking a daiquiri she’d been handed a the Prom entrance was born in her plan.

perspective: a series

One day I will have the courage to tell my tale. I won’t be afraid of those who won’t believe me or just brush it off. There will be someone on this earth whom I could always trust to try to understand. I am a vault, so much so that when I was dying inside I looked like I was winning. In spite of it all God honored my prayers and blessed me and my children. Although I played a silent role in that film, I was the director and producer.

Just watched a video of Tabitha Brown testifying about the goodness of the Lord. As she describes her lowest state, I resonated so deeply with that. To see where God has brought her in 6 short years is mind boggling. At this big age; I wonder if there is a better life out there for me. I have always had my dreams of grandeur for my life, but it just never came to be. It never was the reality I so desperately wanted at every stage and phase of my life.

I have always thought that it could be better. People could be kinder, loyal, loving and true. I always knew I deserved better, yet in the most desolate of times there was always a ram in the bush. And every time I made it out I was given even more hope in the beauty of life and humans.

And one day I decided to come out of the shadows, to speak up for myself and those I loved. That I and we would not be misused any further. That the generational pattern ended with him and me; EVEN IF that ended him and me. The cost was way too high, I could not risk the very reasons I lived and persevered.

When the jig was up, the mask fell off and I was public enemy number one, in a new city and unemployed.