I like to fancy myself as a deep care giver. A woman who would give her all to someone that she loves with her everything. Not because she wants it to come back to her, but because that is just who she is. But what hurts the most, is when that someone does not see who you are or what you do, they only see the bad in you. They love to continuously acknowledge your flaws and highlight your mistakes. And when you remind them of the light inside you, they find a way to continuously dim it. There has to come a time in my life when I realize that I'm empty. I too deserve to be poured back into, not to be told that my desires of that is selfish. Or receive accusations that "you don't ever believe you do anything wrong...you think you're little Ms. Perfect". When is there a time when I am poured into as well? It makes me think, "how did this start?"
I go back down memory lane and I remember being raised by my parents together until I was 6. He then left her to get clean, making her a single mom until he gained custody of my brother and I when I was 11 years old. A time when a girl needs her mother the most to help her understand why her chest is sore and her belly hurts as she begins puberty. I was a free thinking girl who felt like the world was in her hands and life would be so grand. I was oblivious that I was the child of a recovering addict for a father and an alcoholic for a mother. That is just the was things were. I grew up on the east side of Baltimore City, Maryland. A long walking distance from the famous Patterson Park. The street was narrow and most of the houses on the block were vacant. The occupied houses either had addicts, or large families that can hardly afford the standard 3 bedrooms that it came with for their 4 or more children practically sleeping on top of one another. Some were grandparents that were now the neighborhood baby sitters that enjoyed sitting on their freshly cleaned bleach scrubbed steps, gossiping while sipping their 22.oz canned beers, or smoking their J's rolled from their nickle bags. I was one of the many kids enjoying the fresh summer heat playing hopscotch or jumping rope carelessly in the one way street; solely relying on the screams of the elders yelling "GET OUT THE STREET!" when a car would turn down and pass through. Some would stop, get out, get 'served' in the alley at the forbidden top of the block before returning to their cars and finish the roadway down and out of the block.
It was the street I got my first bee sting directly in the center of my cheek as I was on my way to walk to elementary school one warm fall morning. I remember feeling great for a few years, then sorrow as I watched my mom struggle with making ends meet for my brother and I, when she suddenly became a single mom. The midday 3.pm-11.pm shift kept her away from home most of the day and I would only see her in the morning. I'd kick away the empty beer bottles from around her bed while shaking her awake to feed us breakfast. "Make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for your and your brother, I'll get up in a few." I hated that of her. How could you be so neglectful? I swore on that day that I would never ever make my kids make their own breakfast at 8 years and younger. Sometimes we wouldn't eat until we went to school, or in the summer time; once we got to the sitter's house.
My baby sitter was a strict lady who had no shyness about yelling at us to get her point across. She put fear in us but never actually laid a hand on us. I thing this was a small spark to what made me a people pleaser. If I could make her happy, I can make anyone happy. She was never happy. But it was my mission every day to try. I was as angel. "Yes Ma'am, No Ma'am. I can do that if you want; Let me help please? Thank you" whatever she wanted from me, she got it. I felt like I was the favorite child. She rarely told me no, and I was her 'go to girl' for all her errands. I took pride in that. Some would call it a pet, I called it the long haul. It was the start of something beautiful, yet destructive AF! Because it was a tale to never end.
