“I AM TOXIC”

How many of us grew up in a toxic environment and thought it was the norm?  How many have gone through toxic relationship after toxic relationship; Dating the same person with different faces and felt it was ok?  When you have never experienced a real, pure love, what is your point of reference?  That is all you know!  When I saw my Uncle, one that I had great respect for, slap his wife so hard that her face went looking for her glasses that flew in the den or that same Uncle punch my Mother in the face as she stood there holding my baby sister, I knew one thing for certain; I would never be with a man that would abuse me.  Now, ABUSE to me meant, physical or hitting, at the time but it is more than that.  

ABUSE = Ab-Use which is the abnormal use of a thing.  Therefore, this encompasses physical, mental, verbal, emotional, sexual, and religious.  I know religious abuse caught you off guard but abuse means the abnormal use of a thing, right?  Well, we will eventually get to it.   

Growing up, I thought I had a decent life/upbringing.  I mean, it was towards the end of the Black Panther Movement and a great deal of black people were killed for standing up and defending themselves or the communities were flooded with drugs.  This infestation of drugs in “certain” communities brought about the “War on Drugs” under President Ronald Reagan, which caused mass incarceration due to unfair mandatory minimums.  This left a large amount of black homes without Fathers and Mothers.  Many people I knew at the time, were being raised by their Grandparents, mostly Grandmothers, so I thought this was right; the way it was supposed to be.  Well, I am not saying it was right or wrong but it was just the norm.  

I was born to a single, “alone” 15 year old mother with her “alone” Mother (my Grandmother) by her side.  My Mother found out she was pregnant at 14 years old, in the 8th grade at Boude Story Middle School.  My Grandmother was a homemaker at this time because she had married a man that loved her enough to move her and her 5 children out of the projects and put them into a home.  Well, three months before I was born, the story was:  My Grandfather and Grandmother had an argument and my Grandfather was sitting on the porch, sorting out his thoughts.  He decided to take a walk to 7-Eleven, which is two very short blocks up the street and never returned.  Later, he was found shot dead, under a bridge in South Dallas.  Again, this is the story I was told by my Grandmother, later in life, when I would find her crying late nights.  Well, my Father was a 21 year old college student with one younger brother.  He had a married, working Father and Mother, in the home, in a well-to-do neighborhood.  

BUT I grew up with “neither” of my parents.  I was adopted by my maternal Grandmother, when I was 12.  My Mother was on drugs and she would leave us with my Grandmother for months, then pop back up and wanted “The Mother of the Year Award;” the respect and everything that came with it.  Finally, my Grandmother got tired of my Mother popping in and out of me and my sister’s lives and she put her foot down.  Well, my Mother, being the rebel that she is, said we were her children and she took us (my sister and I) from our foundation; our family, our friends, our schools and everything we knew, to live with her and a “friend” and her friend’s daughter.  We were only there two years but they were the longest two years ever.  I truly disliked her friend because her friend disliked us and it showed.  Well, maybe they disliked ME because I was the one getting the beatings.  We would get a chance to spend the weekend at my Grandmother’s but I would spend the weekend at my Uncle’s place because my Mother did not know where his place was.  I would confide in his wife and everything that I would tell her, she would tell my Grandmother, unbeknownst to me.  Eventually, I went to spend the weekend with my Aunt and Uncle and I had bruises that they could not ignore and my Grandmother got Child Protective Services (CPS) involved.  My Uncle tried to ask my Mother to allow them to take care of us and she refused, telling him, “Bring my kids home right now!”  As soon as I got there, I had butterflies in my stomach.  It was a very cold night.  It had snowed.  I knew something was about to happen; it was just an eerie feeling.  I was afraid.  We had to access the house through the side door because the front part of the house is where their drug activity took place and only their friends could come through that door.  Walking down the side of the house to go to the side door, fear struck me with every footprint I made in the snow.  As soon as my Mother opened the door, I saw her friend standing there with this look of total discuss.  I stepped inside the door and straight ahead was the bathroom.  There were dishes in the bathroom sink (later I found out there were dishes in the tub too because the tub was behind the bathroom door and I couldn’t see it).  There were dishes piled up in the kitchen sink and all over the kitchen table and countertops.  There was trash piled up in the corner of the kitchen, about as high as I was tall (no exaggeration).  My Uncle started fussing about the way the house looked, “Look at this nasty ass house.  Why she didn’t get her daughter to clean up?  Oh, y’all waiting for Lanora to come and be y’all maid!”  My Mother already knew he had no problem putting his hands on her so she made him leave by threatening to call the police.  He left and no sooner than she locked the door, my Mother pushed me in the room that my sister and I would sleep in and she started punching me.  I fell on the bed and started to cry.  My Uncle was outside the window and he heard my Mother and her friend verbally abusing me, he heard me crying and he called the police.  My sister was crouched down in a corner because this was nothing new.  When the police came, I was washing ALL those dishes.  The police asked me what was going on and I said nothing because my Mother and her friend was standing there.  I knew that if I told them anything, when the police left, that would be another beating for me.  The police asked me which one was my Mother.  I remember saying, “the one in the blue night gown” so he spoke to her.  After the police left, her friend grabbed my shoulder, turned me around from the kitchen sink and slapped my face.  She grabbed me by my neck with both hands and bit me on my right jaw.  The bite didn’t really hurt because she didn’t have any front teeth but her gums were pretty strong so I did feel it.  However, it did not break the skin.  

Within the next couple of weeks, things were calm.  My Mother nor her friend had jumped on me.  CPS had gone to my sister’s school to interview her and come to my school and spoke to me.  My sister didn’t have any bruises because I would protect her but when they examined me, they told me not to say anything to my Mother about their visit.  Well, I don’t know if they gave those same instructions to my sister because she went and told them.  In the early part of the second week, my Mother got upset with me and told me that I didn’t care about her because I didn’t tell her that CPS had come to my school.  She said that my sister loved her because she came straight home last week and told her when CPS talked to her.  I started to cry and I said, “she is not the one getting beat.”  She made me feel so bad.  She was saying things like, “You want your Momma to go to jail, don’t you?  You don’t love me because you want me to go to jail.”  Her friend was sitting there throwing shoes at me, while my Mother interrogate me.  They were really mean to me and I didn’t understand why until years later.  She hated my Father for leaving her and I reminder her so much of him because I looked just like him.  

Well, at least my Mother was there, abuse and all.  Where was my Father?  I remember his mother would try to maintain a relationship with me.  His mother took my sister and I to take pictures at Olan Mills one time.  After we finished taking pictures, we went to her house.  Her husband was sitting there and his mother introduced me to her husband, my “Grandfather”.  He looked at me, got up from his chair, walked in the room and shut the door.  He never said anything to me but the message of rejection was loud and clear.  Later, my Father’s mother told my Mother, “Johnnie said that wasn’t his child so my husband said she is not his and he doesn’t want her around here.”  That cut the communication with them and the abuse from my Mother was so much greater.  I didn’t actually meet my Father until I was 21 years old.  I had come home on leave from the Navy and I called him.  He finally came over the night before it was time for me to return to Hawaii.  I told him that I wanted a DNA test because I needed to know who I belonged to and who I was.  He hugged me so tight and said, “You don’t need a test, you are mine.”  I thought that would make me feel a little secure, except I only spoke to him twice after that, got a box in the mail in Hawaii with a teddy bear, a card, and pictures of his daughter and two sons.  But I lost contact with him for another nine years, until I located his mother in an assisted living facility and she gave me his CHANGED contact information.  I tried to build a relationship with him, by constantly contacting him or reaching out to him.  I was always the initiator.  Then, finally, I got married about 4 years later and I no longer needed a Father, to do the things he was supposed to do or to teach me what he was supposed to teach his daughter.  My step dad was a great fill-in.  I mean, the Bible said at this point, “to leave your mother and father and cleave to my husband,” which is what I did.  

I have always been resilient and I have always been mentally strong.  There has never been a situation that I have gone through and wasn’t able to find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  I’ve always been that positive person that illuminate a room with positive light.  And no matter how much it hurt, I would go inside myself and would find the fortitude to turn a negative into a positive.  However, things that don’t heal, manifest in ugly ways.  Things that are constantly swept under the rug, will eventually become a pile that one will trip over and injure themselves.  And believe me, I have had a lot of injuries!!!

Surgery is in progress……