Chapter 8
8
Esani
Y ou go out and fuck different people.
To cope and ignore all precautions.
You drink and you drink and get faded.
It happened. Everything my mother had instilled in me all flushed down the drain the moment Kwame Kason Wiles entered my life. As much as I fought against it, as much as I tried to just ‘give off the illusion’, I had already felt myself falling after only a few weeks of dating. Kwame was damn near perfect, and because of Shania Simms and her toxic teachings, I messed over a good man.
I said I wouldn’t be one of those girls who listened to sad love songs and cried all day and night, but here I was, tuned in like a motherfucka. It had been three days since Kwame walked out on me, and I’d been lying on my couch for that long drinking my life away. My mom was blowing my phone up as well as my employees, but I just didn’t have the strength to pull it together. I lost a good man, and now, I was wondering if I’d ever fall in love again.
“Girl, what the hell is going on with you?”
I looked up to see my mother standing in front of me with an angry but concerned look on her face. She walked over to my radio and stopped the music. I turned away from her as a tear slipped from my eye.
“Esani Deanna! Did you hear me?” she yelled.
“You, Mom! You’re what’s going on with me! All the years you planted the seed in my head that if I ever fell in love, these men were going to break my heart. But what you failed to mention was breaking my own damn heart!” I yelled, scrambling to get up off the couch. I was still feeling the effects from the Patrón I had been guzzling down.
“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
“I don’t see nobody else in here!” I said, looking around then planting my eyes back on her.
“I knew you were falling for that man. This ain’t nobody’s fault but yours, so don’t blame me for trying to protect you from exactly what’s happening right now!”
“Protect me? How the hell were you protecting me by telling me to treat men exactly how we don’t want to be treated! Dad broke your heart, and you’ve just turned bitter and projected that bitter shit on to me!”
The slap to my face caused me to react in a way that I would have never done. I slapped her ass back. We tussled for a minute before I held her down to stop her from swinging on me. After sitting like this for a few seconds, she pushed me off of her, and we sat there in silence.
“All these years…you made me believe that men would hurt me to the point of death. Now, look at me—alone because you never told me that it would hurt me to hurt someone who was actually the most genuine person I knew. He loved me, Mom. I kept trying to find his flaws, stalking him and trying to see if he’d step out on me, and after all this time…I found none. The only flaw was that he’d forget to put the damn toilet seat down after using it. I deprived myself from fully connecting to him because of your misguidance. What did my dad do that was so bad that you decided to never love again and make me believe love doesn’t exist?”
My mother got up from the floor and looked down at me. I could see the sadness in her eyes as she looked away from me.
“Nothing. He did absolutely nothing to me. It was me who sabotaged our relationship because I’ve been hurt too many times before to see that he was the only one for me. I cheated on him. Did everything I could to destroy what we had, and I succeeded. When he left, that’s when I realized I was pregnant. Me being the stubborn, selfish, bitter bitch that I am didn’t even contact him to let him know that he had a daughter. I just knew I didn’t ever want you to feel that pain of men breaking your heart. I’m sorry,” she said as tears rolled down her cheeks.
I sat with my knees up and ran my hands through my hair. This was stressful. Never had I ever thought that I’d feel like this because of something I’d done. Or rather what my mother had done to me.
“I know I blew it with Kwame, but from this day forward, I’m erasing everything that you’ve ever taught me about men, and I’m going to love who I want to love. If I happen to get my heart broken then fine, that’ll be my fault and well deserved. But from this day forward, I’m giving it all I got to the man that deserves it,” I told her.
I stood and went upstairs to shower and change, leaving her standing in the middle of my living room. I had to do some self-reflecting and change the lessons that had been taught to me. If I didn’t do anything else, I had to make things right with myself and the one I lost.