For my sister

2:00am

*cracks knuckles*

They always come to me at this time.

Deep words of wisdom banging on the door of my mind, begging me, pleading with me… “Set us free, set us free.”

Tonight I have you on my mind. The young woman suffering at the hands of the father of her child. The young woman I used to be and sometimes… still am. Lets talk about it.

It all starts with falling in love.

No one falls in love with someone who hurts them. Unfortunately, people don’t come with warning labels… I mean how freakin convenient would that be be right? Just imagine;

“WARNING: Once I know you’re mine I’m going to violate you in every which way I please because, hey, you won’t go anywhere. You’ll hold on to the memory of the nice guy I was for the first month of dating me & treasure it, waiting for the day that this version of me will wake up by your side again. Well don’t hold your breath sweetie cause it won’t happen. I’ve got serious mommy & daddy issues & my self esteem is so non existent that pushing you down is my ideal way of reassuring myself as a man of power and value. By the way, my deep sense of inadequacy due to years of emotional neglect as a child have pretty much caused me to be more of a man whore than you could ever dream honey! I’ve got more women willing to fuck me at my call than the letters in the alphabet. This makes me feel better. I know it hurts you, but its not about you, its about me, its ALL about me. Question or comments: Please call your friends because I’m never going to want to actually discuss these things with you, hell I’m never going to even want to admit them to myself.”

I mean seriously! How amazing would that be?! I’ll tell you one thing. I might have never, no no no, no need to sugar coat it… I would never have become a mother by the man that I did. I would have read that warning label & tossed him back on the shelf of things I’d never try right between crack & heroine. Funny thing is, before I started dating him, he had already had a bad repuation for being a player. But hey, we were young & I figured all he needed was a woman to make him a man. I believed that one thing that’s no more silly to believe in than Santa Claus..

I believed that I could change him; that through preserverance & unconditional love, this once untamed dog would turn into mother fucking Lassie. It never happened.

I’m not angry. I’ve forgiven both him & myself, but forgiving is not forgetting.

Unfortunately, it took me living a few years of dedicating most of my energy to this toxic situation & seeing how because of that, my oldest son is an anxious child who is emotionally affected, to take myself out of it. I moved out of state & its been over a year now that we are separated. There is still so much work to be done between us just to come to the point where we can simply co-exist as parents peacefully and consistently but I am glad to say that moving away was truly a right decison that I’ve made amongst a sea of wrong ones. I am still unable to define the status of our relationship because I do love him & the dream of us maintaining a functional family unit one day still creeps into my mind at night.

But maybe, thats something I just need to continue working on. I start therapy again next month so hopefully I can gain some clarity over the next few months about a final and clear direction to take regarding this man. I think about older couples that I know who have had similar pasts to the one I share with my husband and through hard work and miracles, survived. They are together and are happy and living peacefully and that gives me hope sometimes.

Then there are times where I’m just not sure. I just don’t have enough reason to believe that other than my hope. By now, I know that you can’t live off of hope, you need some type of evidence that the dream is possible. Unfortunately, other peoples lives are not evidence of something being possible for you, they are only inspiration to find out whether or not you too can tell a similar tale. So please, don’t read my story and base any decisons for your life off of it. Just know, that you are not alone. That you have nothing to be ashamed of and if there is anyone who is putting you down for the situation in which you have found yourself, they aren’t people you should have around you. Surround yourself with those who will raise you up, even if it isn’t anyone you know personally. During my extremely difficult decision to move away there was a woman who  helped me feel sure of myself more than anyone ever had.

Her name is Warsan Shire & she is a poet. Here is an excerpt from “For women who are difficult to love,” that for me was the flame inside my lantern which I clung to for dear life on my dark path to healing.

Click on the poem to enlargen in a seperate tab!

So to you, and you know who you are, my message although long as usual… is simple.

“You are terrifying and strange and beautiful, something not everyone knows how to love.”

& I am hoping & I will pray, that you find within you a love for yourself that doesn’t need the validation of a man or of anyone else for that matter, even if that man helped to bring your baby into this world.

Love yourself. Love yourself. Love yourself.

Love, Franky