Dear Mommy
Tomorrow is your birthday and your family, well lets just say we are still bumping heads and trying to figure out how to be there for one another long after you departed from us. It has been eight years since you’ve left this world and not once have I felt a consistent moment of peace, except I live with genuine regret of how I was not there for you. You see, I’m writing this letter to you, but I write this letter for every young woman in this world feeling as though certain things in life are so much more important than the family members that love them and would take the clothes from their backs to clothe them.
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That saying they say, “Give your people flowers when they can smell them”, I wish I knew how deep those roots would grow and how much pain my ignorance and own insecurities would leave me feeling emotionally wounded for what seems like the rest of my being. I realized how I didn’t take the time I needed to be by your side. I was so worried about the next person and being liked by all the people around me that I didn’t take your condition seriously and I was selfish to believe that you would be by my side for the rest of my life. Now days they call this FOMO and it has become a real thing amongst our youth and our adults that we lean on and utilize so many external things and people that we cascade our energy, our love and like all into; but then we forget the people that love us, that have our best interest and who have gone before us. The lack of balance, the inconsistency in our decisions, these things all lead us to make decisions and choices that leave us filled with more and more regret that we could prevent had we just listen.
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You see, what we don’t realize is that we are targets starting from day one. Let me define we, children growing up in institutionalized housing, on government assistance, and who are already deemed by society to be just another negative statistic. If they can keep us ignorant then they are satisfied with putting systems in place that look as if they’re there to help us and that they want to make a way for minorities to get ahead, but the accessibility to the resources that we need are just another system in obstacle course form for us to get to the very things we need. So rather than fight the system we maintain in the traps of the system and choose to let the system work us.
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So you’re asking me to make it make sense, why wasn’t I there for you when you needed me the most when you wanted me to cook, to clean, to sit there with you and just talk to you, or when your body grew weak to just be there and support you? It’s because the person inside of me was hungry, I was looking for a way out, a chance at victory, a taste of freedom. Not realizing every mistake that I made that I thought would help me get out was just another mistake costing me my time. My time with you. You see, you don’t realize the truth behind the saying that you can’t get time back or time is the only resource that can not be regenerated, that is until you lose the time with the very person that you never thought you would lose. When I lost you, I lost it, but not in a way that was unrecognizable, in ways that I had already used to cope.
The desires just grew stronger, the need for others being around, and the drunk feeling that made me feel like every care I ever had didn’t matter at that time were all things I used to help me get through my situation. Yet, still to this day I live with regret. Those coping mechanisms didn’t equal freedom at all. In fact it equaled more pain and more wasted time. Fast forward my time and my life now and how I am growing in my decisions. I realize that if I feel really strongly about something and it’s causing an imbalance in my want to be with my family then I am able to rationalize if it is worth my time. If it makes my spirit uneasy or I am living with regret while doing it then I remove myself. Of course this is all a work in progress, but it’s a better skill than the ones used in my past.
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Mommy, my advice to young women like me is that the taste of freedom society tries to portray for us isn’t the freedom that our ancestors worked hard for. It’s the freedom that the society around us has pushed so that we can stay ignorant. If their parents aren’t pushing them to leave their home, they shouldn’t rush it because they want to be “grown and have their own”. I’ve been there before. Society pushes you to believe that if you aren’t independent then you don’t have it together. So we are left chasing independence and all it entails. When really we should be taking advantage of the time that we are given with loved ones, listening to the wisdom they try to instill in us to help us refrain from making decisions that lead us to mistakes. Don’t let “freedom” leave you filled with regret and battling what if’s. If you have the chance to make things right do just that. It takes a woman to make woman decisions. Peace. Love. Blessings
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