\"First and Final call\"

I don’t owe anybody an explanation of why I chose not to go to my Dad’s funeral. And yes I did decide at the very last minute not to go and I’m at super peace with that decision.

You can say what you want about me but what you cannot say is I’m dishonest. My Dad was my first abuser and a horrible man to me and my Mother. He created a household built upon fear, control, abuse and violence. I was awaken a many nights of my Mother’s screams and I would run to jump in and Protect her but I would get my ass beat too.

I don’t know the man you knew, but the man I know called me Lil Bitches, called my Mom many Bitches and mothafuckas, busted my eye, burned her arm on the stove which those marks I rubbed and kissed upon her death and so many more horrible things all before I turned 21. He was a cruel man to us.

Many of you knew of the abuse going on in our home growing up and did nothing. I can name a few in my own family and in authority at Southwood High alone. Probably many of you who knew didn’t say anything because you were abusing the women and children in your own home or you were like me…a child being abused yourselves because it ran strong on my Dad’s side of the family and I saw more than just my mom being abused by her husband. You know who you are and you’re cowards too.

I’ve spent thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars in therapy to move forward and create a life of no abuse with a loving man and with children who get to sleep peacefully at night and wake up with joy. To create such a life after coming from the complete opposite should be applauded and I’m proud of myself for doing so.

Unfortunately because of the lasting effects of abuse, lately I don’t often get to sleep as peacefully as my children do because of the nightmares. Especially the one where I didn’t get there in time enough to save my mother from my dad beating her eyes closed and putting her in the hospital for 3 days after beating her with a belt buckle. Yes, a damn belt buckle. This, unfortunately, is a true nightmare that’s been on repeat since he died. I’ve blamed myself for years for not being there for her while being cordial with my Dad.

Well look where cordial got me. He died never knowing how much he messed up my life because too many of my past Christian therapist told me to be cordial, esteem him higher, pray, forgive and move on. That was actually bullshit advice. My dad should have been confronted and told how much his abuse and “discipline” as he called it, fucked me up. That advice had me to absolve my abuser and never confront him correctly so that I could truly forgive and move forward. This is why upon his death, all of those old feelings I thought were gone have reappeared full frontal with the strength of fresh abuse.

Tho I told him I loved him and he said it in return on his deathbed which I can count on one hand how many times he told me he loved me, that does not mean his death alone warranted my true forgiveness. I’m learning that in order for that to happen, I have to do the grief work because my body has kept the score of his physical, verbal and psychological abuse and the grooming he did of me to be complicit and be silent.

As I got older, I was no longer silent of his abuse but, when I would share I was always “cordial” and painted things in a pretty little bearable picture with a bow tied with scriptures at the end to conceal the actual trauma he caused and is still causing in my life.

So maybe you didn’t know my father in that capacity and maybe you feel I should never share what I’m sharing, but on this good day in 2021, no one will ever silence me with conditions, filter my words in complicity or erase my experience just because you experienced a different man. And I mean no one!

Did none of you ever question why you didn’t see him with his own children a lot? Or his grandchildren? Did you not think that in healthy parental relationships the children love being around their parents and love to bring their grandchildren around too? Hell he barely knew my children and we lived in the same damn city up until 2019.

My parents had a horrible Marriage and abuse came from both sides of my family which means I received a double portion and have spent more than half of my life working to get over it. Their deaths uncovered family secrets many of you wish to keep hidden. Well baby, I’m the remnant and I’m gon share my story any damn way I please and when I feel it to share and NO ONE gets a say on that. They were My parents! This is My life. I’m dealing with My grief and My trauma. These are My feelings, My words and My timing. No one else’s.

To the family that came to my mothers funeral and said nothing to me but did to my sister who was sitting right next to me, I know my mother well and how powerful she was with words. You revere my sister and she should be revered. She was there for our Mom the months leading up to her death when I wasn’t and I still feel guilty about that, so I get it. But to not even wish me condolences, you should be ashamed. But you can keep your condolences because I don’t need nor want them. I don’t hate you, you just don’t get anymore unaware space and energy in my life once this is posted unless you come bearing gifts of peace.

I’m safe and I will not allow my safety to be jeopardized. The family and friends I’ve created are safe and I’m writing this from a sizable bunker of safety with a small yet powerful army of safe and healing ppl who love and got me 📷 . I sounded the alarm to them before I posted this. So don’t come for me unless you want it cuz you can get it.

So I will end with this…My Father did not die with honor. If he did, I wouldn’t be writing this. He died a coward who did not make things right with the people he abused before he left this earth and he had plenty of time to do so. The life he gave his second wife, should have been the life he gave my mother. But he chose to use the man he appeared to be after her, to love another the way he should have loved her. I’m not mad about that anymore but it was definitely a struggle to witness and admit in the first few years of his remarriage.

My Mother loved hard. That’s where I get it from. But because of the mentors I sought out early in my life, I learned to take the way I love and love those who would love me, protect me and respect me in return so that my loving hard was not in vain.

I’m not perfect but I am here. 📷

And after living through the abuse that caused me to miss many days in school to cover for my dad so he wouldn’t go to jail, the attempted suicide in college to kill the implanted seed of abuse from my dad and punish myself for not being there to protect my Mother, the brutal rape and being sodomized at gunpoint around the corner of one of my high schools by someone I knew and the many violent relationships I’ve been apart of all because I was groomed to accept and never report abuse, I still managed to create a beautiful life where my children are raised in nothing but love, peace, respect, happiness and joy…things I was not raised in.

I didn’t repeat the cycle because my abusers never reached that part of me that’s incontestable, unsinkable, relentless and unconquerable. That part of my spirit that caused me to reach out to those who could help me and teach me how to create a life that didn’t repeat the sins of my parents. The little girl in me that would pray to an unknown God “please help me” grew up to be a remarkable woman, wife, mother and friend who stopped the cycle of abuse. And I’m proud of that shit!

I realize some of you are grieving my dads death but understand you can never grieve like me. My grief hit different not only because of the abusive and controlling life my Dad chose to raise me up in, but the life my mother was complicit in as she covered for him too. I love them both. I’ve lost them both. And I’m grieving and mourning them both the way I need to in order to get back to being ok.

But you don’t get to stop my healing which a part of my healing for me is sharing my story when, where and however I feel like it.

So dear family…you can see this and screenshot it, take a picture of it, take notes or whichever you want to and share it to whoever you like. You can acknowledge it or not. Have empathy or not. This is a public post and I don’t care if most ppl hate it but this is the first and final call on me addressing this specifically.

But after that, many can go. Feel free to delete and block if you need to and I’ll be doing the same as I see fit. But you’ll never be able to delete and block this truth I just wrote. ~ OEV