Momma in a Box

Motherhood.

One word—a million emotions.

A million more, since the hysterectomy.

In my last post, I talked about how I never thought I’d have a baby, because I was determined to never act out the violence I knew growing up on another soul.

#realtalk: If you've been hurt the way I've been, you don't f%ck around with it. You just don’t. I don't f$ck around with hurting people I love. I’ll leave you first. I won't hurt you, because I know how damaging it is. I know how traumatic it is when someone who says she loves you puts her hands on you. I couldn't gamble with that. I couldn't chance it. I never wanted to put a child through what I experienced myself.

Why should a little one ever have to feel the wrath of her own mother?

I remember what that was like—to FEEL the anger emanating off her. When she put me out that final time (she had been putting me out forever, really … she put all her kids out. When you got to a certain age, that's just how she did it), I could literally feel the force of her anger. I could feel the heat of her angry energy, as it propelled me out the door.

She held a knife in her hand. #straightupstreet

She took my purse so I wouldn’t have any money or ID.

She threw me down the steps, out of the house.

To her credit, her Momma died when she was 17. I think she was stuck in that emotional energetic of 16, 17 … a baby raising babies.

But there I was, sitting on the stoop where she left me, when the anger became mine.

It rose up in me like heat from the asphalt, and I saw red.

I knew if I ever went back, I might put my hands on her.

So I never did.

It wasn't because I didn't love her. I didn't go back because I loved her.

I was too old by then to force the positive. I couldn't justify what she did to me anymore.

The truth is, I loved her too much to hurt her, so I left her.

I took that hit, and it has been my life ever since—it’s what I live by.

I would never hurt a baby.

Even if it meant never carrying one … holding one … loving one.

So I kept the momma in me safely secured in a box. My Pandora’s Box.

She’s been there for decades—only emerging from her hiding place when a doctor told me it was time to remove my womanhood from my body.

And now, I hardly know what to do with her …

Venus Opal