Mother/Daughter relationship

It's that time. Time for my mom to give birth to me. A six-pound, twelve-ounce baby girl born to happy parents. My mom told me she had a hard time coming up with a name for a girl, so she named me after her uncle’s wife, Shermayne. As I look back on my baby photos, it was clear that I spent a lot of time with my grandmother growing up, whom I absolutely love and adore. She has her flaws, but that’s another story for another day. My parents ended up splitting when I was very young, around the ages of two to three, leaving my mom to become a single mom by age 23.

Growing up in the nineties and early two thousands was a dream! In my opinion, us nineties babies were the last of what it was like to be a kid. We didn't have social media, so we played outside, rode bikes, climbed trees, and picked and ate honey suckles that grew outside. In the neighborhood I grew up in, we were all pretty similar, meaning we children were all used to being raised by our mothers. It was the norm back then, and we didn't think anything of it. We loved our moms, and she was all that most of us had. My mom didn't like to bring men around my brother and me unless she was serious about him. When I was five, she was in a relationship with a man named Tony. Tony was a tall, slender, dark-skinned man who I remember seeing around a lot. My mom was in love with him for all the wrong reasons. Tony was a bad boy who lived an interesting lifestyle. As a five-year-old kid, I didn't care what my mom had going on, nor did I understand it, but I knew what a gun was. Now this part of the story is where I should put in a trigger warning. I loved to skate as a child. My mom bought me these terrible training skates where you would keep your sneakers, place your foot in each skate, and there was a fold-over strap to act as shoelaces. My brother was more of a badass and liked to rollerblade. We thought it was a good idea to skate around our townhouse one evening. I don't recall where my mom was, but when he and I were left alone, there's no telling what we would get into. I'm the big sister and naturally curious, so we had this couch that was in true nineties fashion—AWFUL! I mean, this was a velvet floral couch we had, but it was sturdy and comfortable for us. I lifted the couch cushion for whatever and found a gun. 

"How's super cool is this?" I thought to myself

Then I did the unimaginable and held the gun to my brother while still skating around the house. Of course I didn't want to shoot him, but I was reacting to what I had seen in videos, not knowing that I could have been the one to change everyone's life forever. Call it divine timing; my mother had walked in the house, so I hurried and stuffed the gun back in the couch to not get in trouble. A disadvantage of growing up with a single mom is limited resources. I knew guns were bad, but it was from what I was taught on television. Before my mom was dating that guy, there was never a gun in the home, so this wasn't normal. I look back and reflect on how incredibly irresponsible she was allowing that man around us and herself. Tony, mister tall, dark, and handsome, ended up arrested and sentenced to 15 years in jail for robbery. The idiot robbed the gas station outside of our neighborhood and drove to our townhouse as if he were making a smooth getaway. The cops had our place surrounded, and he was being booked. My mom was back to being alone with two kids.

My mom wanted to be closer to her job, so she moved us into the county. The county was a complete shell shock for me because I'm seeing more white kids, which wasn't a big deal, but they were not like the kids I knew from growing up in the city. At this time, my mom is back dating, and I am about eight years old at this time. Life was his name, and he was again tall and dark-skinned, so clearly my mom has a type. Life was great around my brother and me, and we even inherited new family members that still to this day I call family. My mom had to work one day, and Life was in charge of babysitting. He took me with him for a ride on this day, and we arrive at home. I'm shown to a room, and there are other children in there, so I was cool when I saw kids. A nice man came in and gave me a sweater and some boots, which I thought was really kind. Now this is where chaos ensues. I remember being at this house so long that I went to sleep there. I can't say what was going on, but the cops had to get involved, and I was taken to my family, and everyone was so happy to see me. My aunt was crying, and it was ruckus all around me. 

"Why is everyone so upset? I'm fine and was given new clothes." Were my internal thoughts not knowing that I had just spent the last 24 hours in a trap house with crackheads? My mom's boyfriend was exposed for having a drug problem. Now my mother didn't leave him immediately, but things came to an end when he started to steal from her more. 

Being that my mom's boyfriend was doing everything on her own, my brother and I did lack what other kids had. If we got shoes, we would have to wear that one pair for the year, and we did not have many outfits. My mom didn't have much, but she did her best to provide for us. We had dinner on the table every night, and we were taught routines of cleanliness and hygiene. Life was very difficult being raised by a single mom, but she did what she could. 

In my teenage years, my mom met the man of her dreams, Melvin, and she's absolutely smitten with him. Melvin was a fast-paced New Yorker and professional loudmouth. Now how I met Melvin was odd. I didn't even know she was in a relationship until she popped up pregnant. At this time I'm living with my great grandmother because it was voted on that I should live with her, which really upset me because that meant being split from my mom. From here on out, I will face challenges with my mother. 

Mommy gets to get away with everything for her simply being mommy. We are not allowed to point out the flaws of our mothers and are told to never disrespect your mother. But what happens when the woman that you looked at as a super hero feels bad for her unfortunate ends to her relationships, and more importantly, love, becomes a person that you don't recognize?

There was a line in the sand drawn one day while visiting my mother. Her man and I got into a huge argument, which ended in him spitting in my face. I picked up a child's car seat to toss at him, and my mom takes his side. She stood in front of him to defend him and called my partner a racial slur. Can you imagine how completely shattered I was? My mom has never reacted that way, nor has she ever raised her voice aside from telling us to "go to bed" or "be quiet." So this was a new side to her. 

I had to do some reflecting because, as the years went on, our relationship became more and more dismantled behind this man. Their relationship was completely unhealthy and chaotic. My mom doesn't like me. This is a fact that I've grown to discover, and it was heartbreaking reaching that reality. I never knew the real reason my parents broke up, and I had to find out in the worst way possible. I'm having another argument with Melvin, and he throws it in my face that my dad had a drug addiction, and my mother followed up with her own insults about my father. The way I can describe the feeling is having the air taken out of me. I had to call my dad and could barely get the words out, but I pushed through, and my father was upset, of course. I feel like my world is being slowly crushed with these images of my mom that's being shown to me. 

The tension is through the roof, and I'm still trying not to notice that there is a weird energy between my mother and me. That betrayal really does hit differently when the imagine you had of someone so delicate as your mother was a fairytale. I questioned myself, wondering how long she has not liked me, and all it took was me discovering a YouTuber, and everything made sense. I was my mother's competition once I entered my teens years. They told me I had to move with my great-grandmother to keep her company, when in reality my mom was moving in with her new boyfriend and was pregnant. My brother was able to live with her, but I had to go. I started my own family with my high school sweetheart and used to take it as an insult when she said to me, "If you didn't have him, you wouldn't have anything." Those words used to hurt me until I realized that I'm living a life that doesn't follow hers, her sisters, or their mother. The discrepancy between my mother and me dates back to her childhood. My grandmother had three girls who fought for attention from men, so the competition was always there silently. 

So many thoughts running through my head. Being vulnerable, uncomfortable, and not confident was enough for me to cry many days because my world had come to an end. I had to accept the new reality and move on, which only took me twenty-seven years. With my world turned upside down, I began to comb through small aspects of my life, and it hurt to think that she was so disconnected from me that she didn't put thought into naming me. I forgave my mom, but I still question what took me so long to believe that I was being betrayed by my mom. 

#reedsyencounters