16. Gemini Black #4
“Your paper is just as full as mine. I understand if there are some things that we want to keep just between ourselves, and God. I won’t ask you to read everything that you wrote down.
Just list three things that you mainly want to get rid of, and we’ll raise our papers at the same time, and we’ll toss it in together. Okay?” she asked me.
“Aight. Ladies first,” I said, and with a smile on her face, she nodded.
“I’m surrendering the heartbreak that I’ve been carrying from Jacob.
I don’t want to give that broken part of me to you.
It isn’t fair. I’m surrendering the embarrassment that I’ve been feeling because my life didn’t go the way that I expected it to go.
I’m surrendering the fears that I have when it comes to men.
Those are my three,” Amina went on to say.
I smiled, nodded, and then cleared my throat, so that I could go.
“I’m surrendering anger that I have in my heart for my biological father.
He left a mark on me by giving up on me, but I want to leave the anger and the hate that I have for him here.
I’m surrendering the idea that I was put on this earth to carry everything on my own.
I don’t have to always be strong. I can step back from time to time and allow someone the chance to be strong for me.
I’m surrendering the punishment that I’ve put on myself for years for the sadness that I brought upon my mom when I got in trouble with the law,” I finished.
The last part hit deep for me because a lot of people didn’t know that I was still punishing myself for how I hurt my mom.
Even though we’ve long gone moved past that stage in my life, I still think about it from time to time, and I hate that I even put her in a position to hurt like that.
Knowing the sacrifices that she’s always made for me, and how she did everything in her power to keep me out of the streets, but I still went on, doing my own thing, hurt me that I did her like that.
“Okay. Let’s raise our papers in the air, and we’re going to surrender it,” Amina said.
I did like she said, raising the papers, and we counted down from three together.
“3…2…1,” we both said, and we dropped the sheets of paper into the fire. It landed in the center of the fire.
I paid attention to the corners of the papers, watching as the corners were the first things to turn black.
The ink began to disappear line by line.
While this was happening, Amina and I didn’t say anything.
We watched everything that we just finished surrendering became ash.
All I saw was heartbreak, trauma, anger, regret, and shame be put into the fire, and it was buried.
I never realized the importance of letting go past trauma before stepping into a new relationship.
It made all the sense in the world that Amina had suggested we do this.
Once there wasn’t anything left of the paper, I reached for Amina, pulling her to me. I had her stand in front of me, and I wrapped my arms around her waist. I leaned my head into the crook of her neck, taking this moment in.
“I just want to be able to give you the best version of myself,” Amina blurted to me.
“You will. I want to give you the best version of myself as well. We going to be straight, baby,” I let her know, right before kissing her a couple of times on her cheek.
After that, I had her turn around, so that she could face me.
“I know I already told you that we’re a couple, but after this, I feel like I have to formally ask.
I feel like I gotta do it the right way.
I wish I had had some flowers, a band, and all the other extra shit, but I’ll keep it simple.
You wanna be my girlfriend?” I felt corny as hell asking her this, but I had to.
I know that women loved corny shit like this. I was right because when I asked, Amina was smiling from ear to ear, showing all of her pretty white teeth.
“Yes. I want to be your girlfriend, Gemini,” she told me, and I lit up the same way that she did.
I pulled her to me, cuffed her by her chin, and we started kissing.
I felt good in this moment. I haven’t had a girlfriend since my college days.
I promise that I wasn’t going to fuck this up.
So much good was going to come out of what Amina and I were doing.
We’re going to get to a point where she never brings up Jacob’s name again.
That’s just how happy I planned to make her.
We’ve been on this truck now for a little over a month.
Together, we went through the first phase together which was survival.
Then, we went through surrendering. Surrender was deep because we went through different stages of surrendering.
We’ve long gone surrendered ourselves to each other, once we learned how to cope, and get along on the truck together.
Now, we just had to get through this last phase.
To me, this phase was the most important.
We’ll be able to see during this phase if the relationship will even stand a chance.
Together, we were getting ready to go through commitment. That’s the part that I was ready for.