My First Crush….

Write about your first crush.

Who knew that visiting my aunt that holiday would bring me face to face with what I imagined to have been the love of my life. Hahaha what a stroke of pure serendipity.

I didn’t really have a type yet, well because I had never been with anyone else. Being the girl that was kept under strict lock and key and only coming out for air at school and when visiting relatives. Lucky for me God had a plan and sent my favorite aunt to rent a couple of rooms at my future in-laws abode! Love was signed, sealed and delivered to my doorstep, well his doorstep to be more precise.

I was on my way to shower and there he was with the most sincere eyes I had ever seen, eyes like the gorgeous Michael Ealy, walking out of the bathroom freshly showered, fresh and oooh so dreamy. I had never shared a bathroom with strangers before but I thanked God for it that morning. I got in there struggling with the idea that the toilet was the bathroom, (what in the animal kingdom was this?) but oh so happy that I was in the same room he had been in, intimately, just moments before. I quickly showered and went to enquire from the inside man (my aunt) who the beautiful dreamy-eyed boy was and she explained to me that he was the landlords kid….. What to do? What to do? I had so many plans for our future, our kids, where we would live, so many ideas. Hahaha, the blissful ignorance of youth. Never mind that he didn’t even know my name, then again do men ever really know what they want? I was going to have to convince him that I was what he wanted, I was to be his intended. Oh young love. hahaha!

As the days went by, I decided to make myself visible to him which meant going to shower only after he was up, so that he could see me stroll to the shower and back. I had to start taking walks at sunset (in what I thought was not a safe environment) just so that he could make conversation with me. The things I have done in this life for love! Hahaha! In my defense I was young and was convinced that he was not only going to be my first boyfriend but my happily ever after. Eventually he took notice of me and we started to hang out and eventually he asked to date me and I said I would think about it for a few days until I put myself out of my misery and agreed to date him.

Schools reopened and I was shipped back to boarding school leaving the love of my life behind. Leaving him exposed to the vultures to snatch him away from me, after I had only ever just hugged him. Was our love affair going to end before I ever got kissed? My ancestors were going to fight hard and strong to keep my dreamy eyed lover in my life. Weeks past until he finally wrote to me, on beautiful paper that smelled like lavender. I had to channel my inner Jane Austen when writing to him because the boy had a way to express what I thought to be the most romantic words I had ever heard. I know, I know that I had no one to compare him to but come on, I had read novels and watched movies and loved music that spoke of love. I would look forward to his letters every week and would count down to when I would see him again.

The school term came to an end and I was not going spend another waking minute in my fathers house. So I was off to visit my “aunt” again. This time it was different, there was so much pressure from the letters, the description of the kisses I was going to give him were straight out of a Mills and Boon novel. Meanwhile I was not ready to kiss anyone yet, like I’d be damned if I was to wake up pregnant before I finished school. Hahaha, for a person that was acing science I had a very warped idea about what kisses led to. Maybe it was because of the fear of my highly religious parents and a general fear of God seeing everything I am doing as I do it. LOL. We took one of our early evening walks in the “hood” and the walk ended up taking forever, this walk was heavy with anticipation. Oh my word, why did no one ever tell me that kisses were so much pressure. We finally made it back to the house and before we walked into the gate, he hugged me and kissed me gently on the lips. OH Jane Austen’s knickers!!!! I swear I died in that moment. Was this it? Did I need protection? Oh my God there was no protection, was I knocked up? LOL, I was a whole cocktail of feelgood hormones. He wished me good night and I walked in and he followed minutes later, we had to keep it on the DL, we were not savages!

My ancestors had one job! ONE JOB! To safeguard my relationship and what did they do that night? While they were up all night swooning over the kiss my future husband was seen by his mother walking in moments after me and had put two and two together. Did she not accost me as I was getting out of the shower? Bucket and soap in hand, she led me into her house to tell me that I had to leave her son alone. Accused me of teaching her beloved last born son the art of snobbery. Hahaha never have I ever! Way to go ancestors! Lucky for me, he came to my rescue and led me out of the room, I was bewildered but was like “that was hot”.

I left my aunts house that day, I was not about to be sticking around for another run in with the MIL. I was smitten but I loved being alive more….

It’s time….

I woke up with this song in my heart and in my mind, and to be honest with you I woke up with hope. Ed Sheeran made a beautiful album 7 years ago and within this album a song that resonated and still resonates with me today, the song is called “SAVE MYSELF”. So it is time, time to save myself.

The thought that no one is coming to save you is rather daunting, triggering within us what we identified recently as the most primal emotion that leads us to that fight or flight moment. As lonely as it seems to have no one else to save us but ourselves it is the bravest thing you will ever do and guess what? You will have to do it time and time again.

I am a repeat saver of myself, and until today it never occurred to me that I have to keep saving myself. Most of the day today, I took time to remember the good that I have done and the feeling it gave me, then I thought about why I do good things to and for other people. The answer that kept coming to mind was that it’s who I am and it feels great. I have been so upset about when I will finally catch a break and wondering why I am not catching a break yet I do all these “good” things for others. Then I asked myself if thinking like that isn’t just undoing the reasons why I did/do what I have done and do?

Recently was a prompt with the question of what my legacy will be and I immediately jumped to think of the material things I would have loved to leave behind. But come on… Anyone can leave stuff right? I was today old when I realised that my legacy is rooted in how I made people feel, I want to have people thinking of me like “if she was here right now, we would be laughing”, “if she was here right now, things would run smoothly”, “if Vovo was here right now…..” I would like to believe that in the midst of all my shortcomings I have made a positive impact on many and today I appreciate that of myself.

Dealing with depression while being broke and overweight and overwhelmed is hard but I have been here before and survived. I cannot be waking up with a hangover from pain meds daily, cannot be having an emotional breakdown whenever I am asked if I am okay because saying that I am okay when I am not feels like a betrayal to myself. Side note – who knew that I had the wildest ability to cry multiple times a day and not run out of body fluid😂

So here I am, attempting yet again to get into the ring for the fight of my life. Getting into the ring with the full knowledge that I am probably going to get my behind handed to me but guess what? I have hope again. When I left the office this evening I met a man who told me something that seemed prophetic. He told me of something that I had been secretly praying for, for days and ended the conversation by reminding me that my prayers are not falling on deaf ears. I was still reeling from his knowledge of my private prayer, like wow okay… But in that moment my hope came alive. I don’t know how, I don’t know when but the little girl in the picture lived with hope and bravery…

I will save myself

A new day?… A chance…

For months For years, on and off. Lets start again, and start by saying…

For a while now, years, I have been in what seems to be a perpetual cycle of depression and most recently for months now I have been in what has felt like the fight of my life and I seem to be losing both the battle and the war. Something happened at my place of work that set me off in what has become recurrent arguments with myself of self worth and purpose. Self-worth is deemed “the internal sense of being good enough and worthy of love and belonging from others” while Purpose is regarded by the Oxford dictionary as the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists; as well a person’s sense of resolve or determination. I have felt a lack and total inexistence of both self-worth and purpose and have never felt more lost than I do now.

What is my purpose in this world? A world where achievement is now measured on a material scale? Is this it? Is my life down to dollars and cents? Property accrued? Am I good enough to be in this world? If what happened to me at my workplace is anything to go by, I wonder if I am good enough to be called someone.

I would like to think that for a while now I have been functionally depressed until now, I find myself having multiple breakdowns during the day and failing to sleep at night and when I do sleep, in my dreams where I used to conquer my fears and trials, I am losing there too. To talk about mental health issues is difficult because we were socialized not to recognize the need to be mentally sound. To talk about it is difficult because we have been socialized to think that when a person is opening up about struggles it means they want you to help and yet all we really want is someone to listen and not look at us funny after. To speak of injustices against us is difficult because we have grown in a society when people do not listen to us out of the goodness of their hearts but because its a good story to talk about with someone else later. I have spoken of how I used to use food as a crutch but food doesn’t bring me peace anymore. So I had to, have to find a way to recover all on my own, even if I never make it to 100% of my usual functional depressed state, win in my dreams again. When you pray you retreat to silence, to listening for spiritual enlightenment and while I used to feel a sense of comfort, a presence, now I sense and feel numb. Its just me on my knees alone praying and crying for reassurance that I will be okay, maybe not now but eventually.

A guy I went to high school with just dropped dead the other day, like just like that… Dead. He used to bully me in school and a lot of why I put a mental block on high school was because of him and his friends, but after growing older I chose to let it go, mental block in place but forgiveness in tow. I’m sidetracking from the point. Yes, he dropped dead unceremoniously and since hearing of his untimely departure, I have been wondering to myself if it was me. Exiting without so much as a goodbye. I cried, cried for the life that had been lost but mostly cried for myself, I am a dead man walking. Most importantly I cried at the thought, the question of what my purpose was when I lived.

After a month off social media what I can say is that it was lonely and sad but surprisingly refreshing to not wonder if I was trying hard enough to be enough in this world. I hardly left my office when I was at work, limiting my movements between the kitchen, bathroom, the IT office and the electrical branch downstairs just to put in a few steps to my daily total number of steps moved. Isolation is hard when you are at work I kid you not. I cried a lot and still do even now but I think it I managed myself fairly decently. I don’t know how many more days I am going to have meltdowns, how many more days I am going to fail to cope, how many more days I am going to lay on this floor but I figure I am worth something to me right? Before being someone to someone else I may as well try to be someone to myself. Hahaha! I love how theorizing my life always seems so easy for me and then enter the juggernaut that is doubt and discouragement telling me that thinking it is one thing and being it is another. I really just want to be happy and not this fake happy that I parade all day. The work that comes into acting OK is no joke, I would be out there with the world heavies if it had a title.

So how about we try again, feel the sun on my face, give myself another chance? A chance to love myself a little, believe in myself a little. On the 30th of June 2010 I wrote a letter to myself where I likened my life to that of Job from the bible (Yea, I was in the middle of a “phase”). In conclusion to my four paged letter of attempted self-encouragement I ended with these words that I will end with today and hopefully trigger something within me to hit reset and start breathing again and mean it. Remember the experiences that made me believe that I am someone..

YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOUR BELIEF SYSTEMS: BECAUSE WHAT YOU DO IS BASED ON WHAT YOU BELIEVE AND WHAT YOU BELIEVE IS BASED ON EXPERIENCE.

Music

What fears have you overcome and how?

Fear is one of the most primal emotions, so extremely vexatious but key to our survival as humans; triggering our fight or flight response. Fight mostly for me but… Yup, FEAR.

The scariest thing I have ever done was give birth, scared me straight. I did it thrice. First time I was scared out of my skin, well naturally. I had never done it before, was it going to be like in the movies? The screaming and the dramatics? Well one thing for sure is that I was not going to be that girl that nurses have stories to talk about when I am gone.

Second time was a train smash!! Like what in the contractions was that? Nothing I experienced that day was in the pamphlet. Like what the hell guys? I walked in there like the birthing pro I thought I was and was met with the world heavy weight of nonsense. That Oxytocin drip they used to induce labor had me wondering if death wasn’t a better idea. Did I even need this baby? Was it worth it? Hello? zero to hundred, JUST LIKE THAT, and well just like that the little old lady popped out.

The third and FINAL time was the declaration of my madness. Firstly I was in that delivery room alone with the nurse and the World Heavy weight champ yet again. The fact that I was doing it after escaping the Grim reaper a few days before, side note, having a baby in the middle of a pandemic was not my best life decision, but here we were just having tested negative the day before(finally after two “weaks”) having a baby. Hehe it was about to get wild. Oxytocin came in and knocked me out and my only option was to hang in there for the little old lady. The fact that she ripped my lady bits to shreds is something I am still coming to terms with but I hung in there and evicted the little madam.

In all three incidents the one thing that kept me sane was music. I had a playlist for all three times. Music calms me, fills me with hope even when there is no hope left for me. I can be in the pits of depression listening to the most heartbreaking songs and feel understood. Music doesn’t judge me or tell me I can’t do it, I remember giving birth to my first listening to Israel Houghton and New Breed -IDENTITY and in that moment reminded myself that I know who I am and I can do all things and I was going to do this thing. Music allows an escape from the noise of reality and sets me in a place of safety.

I am grateful to all those people making music out there, if it were not for them, I would be lost…

Oh.. My… Knickers!!!!

I thought I was low key overweight until today. Today I saw my knickers in their full glory on the clothes line and all I can say is OMG!! This is not to say I have never seen them before but today, today I saw them, like really saw them. I could make a skirt for my youngest with all that fabric. I really could. 😭😂😭😭😭😂

So anyway, here we are hours later and I am sitting in bed with a beer and a sandwich asking myself what it’s going to take to get me out of this funk. I have the theory down to the letter but the practical is killing me man. In the words and tone of R.Kelly on Surviving RKelly “I’m fighting for my life man”.

“You are a product of your beliefs, so change your beliefs, but remember that your beliefs are products of your experience”

I know it sounds a bit much but in that moment on 31st June 2010, when I wrote those words, I had been through some massively depressing nonsense that had led me to the ER where my heart stopped for a few seconds from an angina attack. Oh lord, I have just realised in this moment that the doldrums seem to be my default.

Anyway, we are backtracking…

I need to experience peace and joy, real peace, real joy, not alcohol induced euphoria, to be able to change my beliefs. How I am going to do that living in the most miserable country in the world remains a mystery to me but today I think I want to try. Before there is nothing left of me to recognise.

My knickers are still super large by the way. I don’t know how I migrated from the knickers to the angina to telling myself that I need to figure myself out before I am lost forever. Oh well, OH… MY…. WORD!! 🤣😁🤣

Rock bottom

I used to think I was a regular in this place people often referred to as “Rock bottom”,until now.

There was a time when my world was falling apart for me financially and I could barely afford to put food on the table, I was miserable and was plagued with the idea that I had failed in life, and failed mostly as a parent to my children. I was broken but even then I now believe without a doubt that being broke has never been rock bottom for me because even though it was gut wrenching, food gave me comfort and I still had the energy to dress my face and exit the house. What I thought of as Rock bottom was probably just the mezzanine floor of the building and I was still well on my way to this mythical floor called Rock Bottom.

Then came a time when I assumed heartbreak was it. One of my greatest character flaws is that I organically love hard and with all my heart. So when that love is messed with, I die a little inside. But even in the 4 times that I believe my heart shattered I still found solace in deep-fried chicken, found it at the bottom of a bottle, found it in a sandwich. So clearly, while I may have been going through devastating times, my emotional turmoil has never been rock bottom, it’s probably just been the level one basement because I seem to get up every time and repeat the same mistake, love hard and fervently, be it family and friends.

After meticulous verification I believe this is it. I am numb now, unable to put these feelings in words, feelings of utter worthlessness, feelings of deepest despair, feelings that no food has been able to remedy, sadness that no alcohol has been able to drown. Who knew that the Rock bottom floor would be the penthouse floor? That floor that you know if you jump out the window, you will crash, breaking every bone in your body, blood splattering everywhere, but most of all you would be dead before you hit the ground. I have been here seeming to the world like I am right as rain but struggling to get up in the morning, getting up yes, as it is a mandatory requirement for people to not ask me “are you okay?”. How do I respond to that? “Oh I am dead inside, I have no idea how to turn on the defibrillator so that I can try and revive myself”.

When you get so used to pretending to be okay, you get to a point of total confusion and this is where I am now. Wondering to myself if we could fast forward to the end to see if it was all worth it. Oh and living in a country that was listed as one of the world’s most miserable countries to live, does not make it any better. You can be trying to make a life for yourself but find out that you will keep going round in circles, circles in the mud. Only in my home country do you walk into a place and have someone tell you “oh my word, you have gained so much weight” “are you expecting?”. Thank you very much, it’s not like I am not struggling with the fact that I am a wobbling 210lb piece of flesh. I want to quit my job but I can’t afford to, want to un-alive myself but I was not born to be a quitter and cannot afford to do that to my kids.

This is it. This is rock bottom. I cannot explain what brought me here, I feel it all at once. I feel like I am fading, but while I still have it in me to write I will, maybe one day I will make it out of this place and who knows, I might write a book “Surviving Rock Bottom”, but now, while I am here, I will get up and fake it one more time and another, and another until I figure out how to get out of here.

I don’t

How do you balance work and home life?

I drink to stand work. Then I work to afford to drink

What next?

For a while now, a very long while, I have been waking up and telling myself “Today is a new day, today we start again and make it count”. This ritual tends to happen Mondays, like today, I woke up and convinced myself that today was going to be a new day, today I was going to do better; but here I am at 0750 and wondering if it is even worth it. Oh boy!!Before I had my third baby, I had achieved somewhat of what I assumed was my weight and fitness goals, then BOOM! Baby and covid, double wammy! Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t regret having my baby when I did, she was a very planned part of the life journey, what was not in the pamphlet though, was the fact that weight loss after a 3rd baby is not as easy as weight loss at 1st and 2nd baby. They never told me that if you didn’t work out during pregnancy, bouncing back would be HAAARD!! Yea, thats what I said, its hard. Here’s the thing with being a mum to two daughters and a son, you model the lessons you want your children to learn, and right now I am struggling to teach my children self confidence and self appreciation. When I was younger I used to always dream about being a “BIG” girl, now that I am, I am not sure, most days, if that is what I wanted. I am confused on most days as to the reason behind my weight goals. Remove the fact that I am prediabetic and struggle with a host of other nonsensical ailments, do I want to lose weight for me or its just peer pressure from social media, telling me that being smaller is the “it thing”?

I have a very intense affection for food, most importantly meat, even more precisely beef. Most of my social media algorithms have food popping up every 3rd post, yea, I am into food like that. What makes me sad is that when I am struggling mentally and emotionally I tend to eat my feelings. How do you lose weight when your life reflects that of a person with an eating disorder? Last night I decided that I would have an apple and water for dinner and then there I am walking to the kitchen to make myself sandwiches, worst of all, one had stewed potatoes in the middle of the bread and the other had peanut butter and mayonnaise. Why? Why would I do that to myself? It was tasty though, but why? Why am I this person? You might be wondering what brought it on and I will share it with you when I am strong enough to vocalize the pain in my heart. I struggle to compartmentalize my emotions, everything is linked to everything and is happening simultaneously in my head, I am not coping. So what do I do to bring myself to some sort of mental equilibrium in the meantime?

First step: Removed myself from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and WhatsApp to silence the noise in my head. I get so much pressure from seeing these pictures of the perfect bodies and the supposedly thriving individuals out there, and oh escape the constant food suggestions

Second step: Write down my goals. Explain to myself why it is a goal and why its important to achieve it. I have to see it, believe it before I can go after it.

Third Step: (This should really just be the first) Be kind to myself, everyone is work in progress.

After all is said and done, life is fragile and I have just one (that I know of in this avatar). I fear for the lessons I will teach my kids but in all honesty they are like sponges and they feed off the energy I give out, if you have ever been here and feel lost and afraid, please share how you found your way because right now I am falling and I am stumbling to get back up.

Here we are….

So when I started this journey I wanted to talk about the journey of my life, navigating through marriage and what I have learned and hope to teach others walking the same path of marriage. I always find myself asking myself about what business I have being a feminist and being married, then I remind myself that being a feminist is not about hating the male gender at all, I don’t need much convincing on that, I love men, the gender anyway. Okay…. moving on swiftly.

I rebranded my page to Memoirs of my life from “Memoirs of this African Bride”, and made all my previous posts private. My spouse was not too keen on having “our life” being public knowledge, so here I am back with my pen and paper and keen to express myself in word because if I don’t, I might just lose it. Hehe, if you have met me you would wonder if I hadn’t lost it already, here is me finding it for a little while to make sense of the labyrinth of my thoughts.

Sometime in 2009-2010 I suffered from depression, it was a pretty dark time for me. Like Usher and Chris Brown sang “We all fall down sometime, so why can’t I”. I had met someone who had made me feel so insecure about who I am, for years I couldn’t find the courage to get over the feelings of inadequacy until not too long ago when I realized that what everyone else thinks of me is nothing when faced with what I think of myself. Recently the monster that haunts the dark corners of my mind came creeping back in. I have found myself asking myself if this is my life, like is there anything more, can we fast forward to the end to see if it was all worth it. I am here unearthing fears that I thought would never get me, discovering that after all is said and done, for a person that has actively tried to “unalive” herself before, I realize that I am walking too close to the edge. I have never found myself as afraid as I do, even alcohol is failing to numb the aching beat of my heart.

I am a mom to three amazing little people and to be honest, I want them to learn more from me than just being strong, but I also do not want them to be so weak that they cannot handle life without me when I am gone (in the actual time meant for my departure, relax I am kinda here for a while). I am just out here crying in the bathroom and cannot find the words to respond when someone asks me why I am so down and out because I have no idea where I am and if this is me, hell, I haven’t worn make up in days (side note, make up is a good cover for the gloomies). The question that plagues my mind is “WHO AM I AND WHAT IS MY PURPOSE?” I hope to figure it out sooner than later…..

Unpacking “the” daddy issues (Part Three)

One thing I will tell you. Wait…. That doesn’t sound right. “One of many things” I will tell you about my father is that he was the one who taught me about who I was, my heritage. My totem is Nhari unendoro, Nyamasvisva, the women whom which are referred to as Chihoro. It is said that our totem animal is an Elephant, but there are other multiple versions of what the totem animal is but one thing is for sure Nhari is Nhari regardless. In numerous researches I have done, the greater number points to how it is an elephant and even the praise song describes an elephant so I guess if it looks like an elephant, walks and talks like an elephant then…. its probably an elephant.

“Vane Mhepo inoriga zvuuru ichisiya hunde dzemiti” (With wind that cant bring down anthills and leave only tree stumps) Hee! My translation is so direct, hahaha, basically scorched earth. Anyway I refer to this bit of our totem because my father and I have/ had this in common. Growing up my father may have been a great giver and all that jazz but he lived by the principle that we live by today “FAFO” -eff around and find out, and I am like that in many ways today. I cringe at the thought of how I am similar to him in many ways, I became what I hated. Oh Lord! Even in the after life the Boy messes with me, because a certain as night is night and day is day, if you mess around with me you will find out.

My father used believe in beating you into submission and when he could not beat you, he would threaten you with a loaded gun, and if you were beyond threats he would cut you off. Just like that you were dead to him. I became dead to him once, (multiple times) but this one time I felt it. It was not like in the past when he would refer to us as dogs and not his children, this time he went full on funeral for me. In some years before the “death”, my aunt passed away and on the funeral, there was my father telling people nonsense about my sister and I. He had sent us out of his house because we had chosen to start going to Hear The Word Church (now Celebration Int), he blew a fuse because we didn’t want to do the whole white garment apostle jazz, instead of seeking to understand us and appreciating our different choice to his, he gave us our beds and blankets and exiled us. Luckily one of my sisters was offered a flat by the company she worked for and our housing issues were sorted. He came to see us in our new abode bringing us food and just to see if we were still among the living.

Now fast forward >> to my aunts funeral, there he was in a caucus meeting with extended family alleging that we had run away from home and were of the streets. Now imagine my horror when I was called to answer to these allegations. I am the younger one of my sister and I, so I did not understand why I was being said to be the mastermind in the running away from home, then to top it all off, there was my grandmother instructing me to just admit so the issues and have it done with. Did I mention that one of the traits of the Nhari Unendoro people is that we are strong willed and stubborn when we have set our minds on something. I was not about to admit to nonsense I had not done, he wanted to shame me in front of people and I wasn’t about to let him have his way. Yea Boy, I was about to make a fool out of him right back. I stood my ground until I was told to exit the room. The rest of the funeral we had people looking at us funny, the girls that had run away from home, the girls that belonged to the streets. I was so upset, I felt so betrayed, he was my father, wasn’t he supposed to protect me? There he was hanging me, no guillotining me and putting me on a stake on the wall for passers by to see.

Fast >> Fast >> Forward to when I became dead to him. Years later, my father and I were having a conversation(Him going on about how he wanted the lobola money my husband owed so that he could spend it while he still had breath in his lungs. Now because of the loads of unresolved issues, in the midst of all his hoo-haa he said something that triggered me and the whole conversation went sideways. Remember when I said scorched earth? Vane mhepo inoriga zvuuru ichisiya hunde dzemiti. He fumbled straight into it, my word! I lost it, citing how he was a terrible person exposing me to his family the way he did on my aunts funeral, there I was even telling him how a real father behaves. Did I mention that he was not feeling too good on the day? In actual fact the conversation was mostly hi trying to play the pity card on me because he had cancer, but the moment he started to gaslight me with nonsense of how I was a bad daughter, I had to release the kraken. After the phone cut, I sent him messages, I wasn’t going to let the fact that I had run out of airtime stand in the way of me serving him his just desserts. One thing was for certain that day… The truth was going to set us both free. After going on and on about the injustices he had committed, he thanked me, told me that I was no daughter of his and blocked me. Hehehe! I am pretty sure I was the first person he learned to block, I didn’t even care neither because I didn’t want to speak to him either.

I decided to adjust some of the wording in this series of “venting” from MY to THE daddy issues. I think if I start to dissociate myself from them, there are greater chances of me recovering from the said issues. When I cannot process things I have found that I tend to wild out and when I do its me dragging everything back to the table, I don’t see things for what they are as an isolated event, but will assume that you planned it all out prior to the event occurrence. My father chucked us out of his just so that he can tell his relations that we ran away and make us look like idiots, at least so I thought all these years. It was only recently after an incident with someone I work with that I realized that my co-worker was thinking like I did of my father. I never assumed the things he did were isolated events now here I am years later still unable to compartmentalize issues (a thing I am working on currently 🙂 ) I would like to blame my dad for a lot of nonsense that I am today but I sit back and think about how maybe some of it is all just me and my choices. He may have taught me how to “dead” people to me but in all honestly, sometimes I really just think its just me. I am the one that cannot let go of issues when they happen to me, I am the one that chooses to walk away when we have failed to resolve, me. I am the one that stores stuff waiting that one day I will strike when you least expect it, like think about it? I didn’t even let a chronically ill man get away with trying to gaslight me that I took my shot and took repeated shots after. Yo!

Unpacking is heavy, but I realize more and more how sometimes parents are also learning to be parents while we are learning to be grown.

Ha! My father had plenty kids before he had me, surely he should have learned a thing or two….

But then…..

Oh well we live to “unpack” another day….