“Owning that it’s fine to disappoint people has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever really owned.” It took me every bit of eighteen years to figure out how to live in my truth while making my own mistakes. My pride was and still is my biggest challenger. I still struggle with asking for help and r=eceiving help. I’ve learned something that everyone should know, you’re never going to make everyone happy and we only have one life so do what you please. As long as you can live with your decisions, your mistakes, and your failure. Live for yourself and always support yourself because many won’t but we don’t live forever and die alone.
As a child, I never had problems in school as a straight-A student all of my childhood. My sister at the time was going through a lot and my brother hadn’t been thought of, so I was the baby of the family. I probably had only 5 whoopings in my life and in the reality of black life and black living that’s saying something. So getting it straight I was nearly the “golden child” as folks would say. Now that’s not harsh, referencing myself as a golden child and my sister as a problem child. We had come to terms with each of our situations. She was chaotic and I was at peace. As I became older and my mother’s favorite was born twelve years after me. Yea I know that nobody has a favorite yet he’s still the favorite. I no longer carry the golden child, as a child versus my sister I’m still way better than she was but in my mind, I’m far off the golden child cliff.
Everything took a turn one day. See I never had my father in my life and I can not honestly remember it meaning much. It was crazy because I talked on the phone with my father every holiday, birthday, and at random sometimes. However I can’t remember wanting my father in my life, it sounds bad but like really bad. Who does not want a dad? I had my grandfather and ALL my uncles that covered the job. I did not need a dad. And I know I’m going on a whole story about my life but it does come full circle. When I was about nine I found out that my father was in prison. That’s where he’d been this whole time, funny enough when we pulled up to the prison I believed that we were at the border. I was nine so I did not know much about prison. Personally, I believe that’s where everything changed for me. Here I am nine just now finding out my father’s been in prison and would not be out anytime soon. I was disappointed that I was lied to for years, I was truly hurt and cried many times during those dark days of my life. All of this ties into the damage to my relationship with my mother. My family trying to protect me from reality had broken this “golden child”.
Fast Forward to my years now, my freshman year I stopped being that straight-A student. I was in all advanced classes so my smarts were not the issue. I was never failing or anything like that but it still was not up to my mother’s standards. Sophomore year happened and that was the year of our girl COVID-19. Honestly, I believe no one likes being trapped in a household with their parents for twenty-four hours a day for seven days a week. It’s modern-day torture, harsh huh, so were those days. We had some good days also and as much as I will speak of my mom she’s the best mom I could ever ask for. I miss some of those younger days when I could not see the power she had over me when I was oblivious to the world and every evil. From car troubles to creeps, to broken hearts, to dried tears I have not learned it all but I’ve learned a lot. It started my senior summer leaving junior year. I had been so cooped up in the house my sophomore summer and junior year working like I had two kids and was over thirty-five. I was over that now was my chance I had a car I couldn’t be stopped. I would have so much fun before my cousin went off to college in the upcoming fall. One night I told my mother I was going over to my cousin’s house and of course, she didn’t care. But in reality, I was going to sit and look at the stars with my cousin at a park. That doesn’t sound bad so you might wonder why I lied. In my mind, at the time it was better for me to lie and do it than for her to say no which is what I thought she would say. Long story short I got caught and grounded all for lying. You’d think I’d learned my lesson but nope kept lying and getting caught. The good thing about my mom is she only grounded me for a week or so at most. Later on that summer toward the end of June I met my guy. You know that one person you meet and you’re so in love with you hate being without each other, that’s us in a nutshell. Many believe that it’s just puppy love but people tend to forget that some people, although rare, do meet the love of their lives young.
Now going into my senior year I was a hot mess! I was doing my own thing honestly, my mom was mad I didn’t take senior pictures whereas me and I just didn’t care, do you think that says something about me? I was just doing a bunch of slacking in my senior year, senioritis whooped my ass! I was grounded more than I have ever been in my life and it still wasn’t bad enough for me to stop lying and slacking in school. I was still in love and I know what you’re probably thinking “oh her boyfriend was her distraction” “focus less on boys and you could be on track” or maybe you’re not but that’s what my mom thought. Personally, I don’t believe it was that I just simply lost care in anything school related. I was ready to be done and I had some health issues that just wouldn’t allow me to focus at the time.
During my senior year, I was named “Leader of tomorrow” by the city of Collinsville. Everyone was there at my award ceremony, my grandpa, grandma, boyfriend, and mom. I was the woman that night, everybody was so proud, the first female to win the award so you know that means I was the first black female. I also was in an honors ceremony that only me and my boyfriend attended because earlier that week my mother had loosely mentioned she did not understand why they were honoring me as a “failure”. I could have laughed it off and invited her but I realized at that moment my boyfriend was the only one that never talked down on me. He was aware of what I was capable of and he saw the greatness in me that I couldn’t see in myself at the time. Then I had the whole phase where I was taking personal finance which my mom thought was an amazing idea. With the knowledge I learned, I told myself I wasn’t going to rack up a whole bunch of student loans. I would go to a community college for the first two years to save money and during those years investigate which college I’d want to go into debt for. When I told my mother she thought that it was dumb and she would not support me or help me pay. It crushed my heart because my mother is supposed to be my biggest supporter and she wasn’t. My grandpa didn’t help either. He assumed I did it for my boyfriend so he banned my boyfriend from his house. The people that meant the most to me couldn’t support me in something that I wanted to do.
Then along came the CODES scholarship and then everyone was proud of me, I had landed a full-ride scholarship into college. I rode that high for a while my mom telling everybody
“Well you know she’s going to college for free” “Yup I’m so proud” of all of the things. Again I was the woman nobody was talking about my slacking, everyone was just proud. Then along came graduation, one of the biggest days of my life and one of the proudest days. I had finally done it and completed high school. You know when you’re at graduation and they call the Cum Laude groups, sure you do it’s the time when they lay on thick the people at the TOP of your class. Anyways of course due to my slacking my name wasn’t called. I could’ve done things better but I didn’t and I had to live with that and I could. But some people just couldn’t, my grandpa for example didn’t stay after graduation to wait for me to walk out, which I didn’t pay much attention to until I called him once he gave me my graduation money. This is sort of how the call went.
“Hey Papa I was calling to tell you to thank you for the money”
“Yea you’re welcome, I was kind of disappointed to not hear your name called in the Cum Laude”
“Yea I know Papa”
“I thought that award ceremony we went to was for academics”
“No Papa”
“Oh well okay see you at the dinner”
Seeing this one conversation made me mad and started a change in how I felt. I had come to realize I would never please them no matter what I did. When I did something amazing I was the best child and grandchild but when I missed a mark I failed them. Only two people even when I was slacking, when I wanted to go to SWIC, even when I didn’t make Cum Laude showed me they were proud of me the whole way. My boyfriend was the listening ear and support. He didn’t miss an award ceremony, he’d get mad if I didn’t tell him I got senior of the month. He wanted to see me win and when I was losing he tried to help me see I could win. My fear of disappointing others is what kept me locked. It helped me break my standard, it helped me realize that so many people see greatness in me, my mother and grandfather included. I didn’t write about them to bash them. At the end of the day, they play a big part in why I am me. I just realized that I was done worrying about people that couldn’t support me when I didn’t do what they saw fit or thought was okay. Life goes on whether you fail, succeed, are still on your way, or are at a complete standstill.