27. You Deserve A Soft Life
you deserve a soft life
alyssa
I FaceTimed Jordan first because Jordan was the one I could call without all of them ending up on the phone. She picked up on the second ring.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” I dragged.
“You sound like you did something.”
“I did something.”
“Oh Lord. Hang on, let me get the others on.”
“Jordan, no—”
“We are doing this with all of us.”
She patched Jada through first. “What is happening? Why am I being added to a call, Jordan, I was eating.”
“Alyssa did something.”
“What did she do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then why am I on the call?”
“Because you were going to want to be.”
Tamika came on last, and all three of them looked at me.
“Speak,” Jada said. “What’s the latest in my new favorite show: As Alyssa’s World Turns?”
“He bought me a car.”
“Who?” Tamika said.
“Julian.”
“What kind of car?”
“A Genesis.”
“The big one or the little one?”
“Big.”
“Black?”
“Yes.”
Jordan whistled and sang my name. “Alyssaaa.”
“I know.”
“That’s a hundred-thousand-dollar car.”
“I know, Jordan.”
“I lost it on him.”
“Lost it how?” Tamika asked.
“I told him I could not accept it. I told him I had a car, and he couldn’t just make decisions like that for me without asking. We had a whole fight, and he left. And I’ve been sitting on this couch for hours feeling like a complete ass.”
I ran the whole thing down for them, the entire hour of it, play by play, and when I finished there was silence. Nobody spoke.
Then Jada. “I’m sorry. I have to make sure I understand what is happening here. The man you’re crazy about. The man who’s been turning you every which way but loose. Smacking it, flipping it, rubbing it down. The one who looks like— Jordan, what did you say he looks like?”
“Like a MAN,” Jordan answered.
“Like a MAN. That one. That man. Bought you a hundred-thousand-dollar car. And you yelled at him?”
“I can’t believe you did all that,” Jordan shook her head.
“I can believe it,” Tamika said, activating her big-sister voice. “You know where that comes from. We all do.”
I didn’t answer.
“Ma did not raise us to know how to receive. She raised us to be able to do without. And she did that on purpose. She had five kids and two and a half jobs, and she was preparing us for the world she knew. She gave us a spine, work ethic, and the conviction that we did not need to rely on a man for anything we could not get for ourselves.”
“True. She didn’t let us be soft,” Jordan nodded. “Because she couldn’t be soft. Grandma wasn’t soft. Great-grandmama wasn’t soft. ‘Carter women have not had the luxury,’ that’s what Ma would always say.”
“That’s my point,” Tamika continued. “She raised us for the world she knew. And it worked to an extent. Look at us. Four grown women. Two businesses. A master’s. A law degree. Not one of us has ever waited on a man for a damn thing.”
“Ok, but what’s your point, Tamika? That Alyssa shouldn’t accept it because Ma raised us to be independent? That’s bullshit.”
“No. I’m not saying that. Let me finish because this is the part that years of my marriage to figure out. Hell, I’m still figuring it out some days,” Tamika went on.
“I have been married to that man for sixteen years. He is the kind of man who wants to put me in the passenger seat and drive me places. Wants to carry the heavy bag. All of that. And for the first few years of our marriage I fought him on everything. ‘I got it’ should have been my middle name. It was killing the marriage. We almost didn’t make it. ”
“Tamika, I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Mhm. He almost left because he felt like he couldn’t be a man in our house. I was so busy proving I didn’t need him that I didn’t let him be needed. I had to unlearn a lot. It’s the hardest work I have done in my adult life.”
“Tamika…”
“The conditioning we were raised in is foundational. It’s load-bearing.
And it’s doing what it was built to do. It helped us survive.
But once you don’t have to be in survival mode anymore, and, for example you have a man who is not a threat, trying to give you what was supposed to be yours all along?
That conditioning becomes a thing that gets in your way.
Like walking out on a hundred-thousand-dollar gift and calling it him trying to handle you. ”
“I didn’t walk out on it,” I said. “I made a point.”
“Is there a difference?” Tamika didn’t even look up.
“He erased my car, Tamika. Traded it in without a word, like I wasn’t…” I stopped, because I could hear how it sounded out loud.
“He’s going to lose patience with you, Alyssa.” Jada blurted out.
“Jada,” Tamika shook her head.
“I’m sorry. I’m just saying. He’s been good to you in every way possible and you are doing this. Finding ways to make him sorry he’s being good to you. You are going to run him off.”
“Jada, really?”
“What? She is! You know how many women would love to have this problem? He has been the kind of patient that men only stay for so long before they decide they are tired.”
“Okay,” My heart began to race, and I tried to cover my anxiety building. “You made your point.”
“I’m not trying to be mean, I’m just saying—”
“No, you’ve said it. He’s going to get tired of me and leave me. You think I don’t already have that on a loop? You think there’s a version of this where I’m not waiting for it?”
“Jada, hold on. I want to ask you something,” Jordan interrupted.
“Ask it.”
“If Julian was being slow to let her in. If he was the one who needed time to work through his shit. What would you be saying?”
“What kind of question is that? That’s not the same thing.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s the one being given to. He is the one giving. The one being given to has to be… has to be receptive. You cannot just keep throwing the gift back at him expecting him to keep handing it to you.”
“Mm.” Tamika hummed.
“So she has to be receptive. He does not have to be?”
“He is being receptive.”
“I am not saying she shouldn’t take the car. I am saying we are looking at our sister, who has been through hell and back, telling her ‘hurry up and heal. The man is here. Be ready. Now!’”
Tamika took a breath. “It’s funny, when you say it out loud.
We are telling her she needs to be healed because a good man is waiting for her.
As if a good man is the reason a woman heals on demand and on his schedule.
As if the healing is for him. Nobody tells the man to hurry up and heal.
We say give him time. That’s how he is. Love him through it. Be his peace. He will get there.”
“You’re right,” Jada said. “I didn’t mean it like that, Lyss.
I am sorry. I just love you, and you’ve been through so much.
Now I see you with this good man, and I want it so bad for you!
So when you holding it back, I just get worried for you, that’s all.
And I shouldn’t put that on you. That’s my fear. That’s not yours.”
“It’s my fear too, Jada.” I admitted. “He hasn’t given me one reason. Not one. He’s been exactly what you’d build if you sat down and designed a safe man. And I’m still looking for the catch. That’s not him. I know that’s not him. I just can’t find the part of me that knows how to stop looking.”
Jordan picked it up. “Can I tell you something I have been telling women on my podcast for years?”
“Yes.”
“You deserve the soft life.”
I closed my eyes.
“You deserve it, Alyssa. And you don’t have to prove you earned it.
You have done enough hard things. You have survived enough hard things.
You’ve not had one stretch of your life that was not survival.
And now you found someone who is trying to give you the part where you don’t have to survive anymore.
And your nervous system goes no thank you, because it has never had a category for somebody just giving you the easy part.
The only frame you have had: Manage. Control.
Buy. Owe. Payback. Loss. Regret. Caution. Don’t get used to it.”
“I hear you. All of you. I do. But hearing it and living it are different addresses.” I dabbed at my eyes. “I’ll get there. I’m trying to get there.”
“It takes time to unlearn. Tamika has been doing this work inside a marriage. I have been doing it through my podcast, because I talk to women about these things every week and I cannot suggest they do work I’m not doing myself.
You haven’t yet, because you haven’t had a reason to.
You haven’t had the chance. You have a chance now. ”
“He’s not Malik,” Jada added.
“I know he is not Malik.”
“Then take the car. Go fix it.”
“It’s a beautiful car,” I admitted. “I’ll apologize. And accept the car.”
“Thank you, Jesus! She’s got some sense left after all!” Jordan shouted and we all laughed.