Category: death

Commit

Posted on by Tikeetha T

“Today I commit my life to you. For better or worse, I vow to honor you and love you with all that I have and with all that I am.”

I sat there listening to that sentence over and over. We were more than this. I thought there was a deeper level of connection. How could I have been so wrong?

When I met Cameron 10 years ago, I had just committed to living a new life. I was in graduate school working on my MBA at Georgetown University. I had lived a life well beyond my years. I was a survivor.

Our dating life was surreal. Perfect with the right amount of friction and issues to remind us that we are only human. We dated for 3 years. Laughing, dancing and traveling allowed us to grow closer. I never shared much of my past with Cameron.

He knew that I had a traumatic life, but not to the point that I could ever talk about. He said he understood. He didn’t want to pressure me. He just wanted to love.

And he did. Everywhere. I was the envy of all my friends.

I had happiness. I had security. I had love.

What more could I ask for or ever need? Nothing. Which is why I was surprised when Cameron asked me to marry him after 3 years. I mean I said yes, but was shocked because I never imagined getting married. I was happy with the way things were, but being his wife meant that I could enjoy a legal sort of bliss.

Our wedding was perfect. The beautiful island of Capri. The sun, the sand and his family and friends made it perfect. We would honor our commitment with a beautiful destination wedding. I love Cameron.

My dress was perfect. Just enough sex appeal to keep him wanting, but beautiful and feminine to not be embarrassed when we had children. Heaven. I was in heaven.

I was also drunk from the sun and wine. I stumbled to the bathroom at the venue. The women’s had a line. I didn’t care. I pushed the door to the men’s room opened. I was horrified at what I saw.

My eyes wouldn’t register. What is this? I must be dreaming.

The sounds of guttural sex were both familiar and real. I pushed open the stall. I saw the man that I loved and just married screwing my maid of honor.

I began to scream. “Whore! Slut! Asshole!” My blood was boiling as I began swinging at both people. I was going to commit murder.

 

This post was inspired by the Daily Post. The word prompt was commit.

 

Want to keep in touch? You can find me on social media at the following links: Twitter @mskeeinmd, Facebook page A Thomas Point of View and my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/mskeeinmd/.

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The Day Loved Died

Posted on by Tikeetha T

Today I wrote the final line in my obituary. I wrote with such force and finality that it scared me. My pen flourished on the paper as I wrote that I need time and space. Time and space to just figure this thing out. To get my head back on straight. To adjust to my new reality.

So many excuses for why things can’t be, but the truth is simply that I love someone who doesn’t and won’t love me. I sift through my emotions and watch my tears drip on the paper as I journal the pain. I know that it is my own issue. I don’t know how to separate fantasy from reality. The reality that love don’t live here. It never has. But, I wanted to make believe that you and me could be a we. Why?

Because it was wonderful in my fantasy. It was safe. It was nourishing and warm. It strengthened me in ways that I didn’t imagine. This fantasy allowed me to laugh at the silly things, feel safe in your arms and strong in your encouragement. We existed in this fantasy. Our hearts beating in synchronized and harmonized rhythm until…

I realized that my heart beat was the only one that could be heard. I was imagining the strong and steady beat of my soul mate. It was comforting until I wrote that damn obituary and realized that the only thing I heard was silence.

I just stood there crying because heartbreak was nothing new to me. Pain was a constant in my life. Hell I survived childhood and motherhood. Grief was something I had experienced before, but this pain was new to me. It was a cross between an ax chopping my heart in two and someone pouring battery acid on the still beating half. You get it right? It was…

Destructive. I watched the destruction of a dream. I loved and lost within a span of months. The dream to experience love in the purest and sexiest form as an adult. But, that dream was dead before I even closed my eyes. So, I wrote out my obituary and entitled it “Death to Love”.

It said:

Suddenly on February 20, 2015, I departed this earth. I died. Not in the physical sense, but in the emotional sense. I stopped believing in love after confessing my feelings to the man I had dated for almost a year. I opened up my soul and poured out my heart and he just sat there. No words. No emotions. Just silence. After shouting out that I fearlessly and uncontrollably loved this man and needed him to be patient with me and love me beyond measure, I realized that I was alone. Alone in this boat that he told me to ride with him and just go with the damn flow. As I poured out my heart and told him that love was foreign to me and not something I share freely with men. I listened for confirmation or affirmation that it was mutual. But there was none. Only silence. No words. So, I laughed and let him go and went home and drank a glass of wine so big that Olivia Pope would have been envious. I wrote this obituary before turning into bed and realizing that sleep would be futile. That rest would not come. My heart ached something awful and I died.

Later as I lay on the cold table in the morgue and reflected on the quietness of my mind I heard the radio playing. Someone had turned on Pandora. I heard “Step Aside” by Yolanda Adams. I heard her sing, “You have to let go and let God be God”. I gasped in air as though I had never breathed before. The pain was insurmountable but a peace was settling in my spirit.

I got up off the cold table and wrapped my body in a blanket and showered. I took the hottest shower and soaped up and washed off all the troubles of this world because I knew that I would survive. Because on that love river that I traveled God had given me a life vest and my momma had taught me how to swim.

 

Note: This is about a prior break-up. Not Mr. C. LOL. We are great.

 

Want to keep in touch? You can find me on social media at the following links:  Twitter @mskeeinmd, Facebook page A Thomas Point of View and my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/mskeeinmd/.

Life of Regrets

Posted on by Tikeetha T

It is at the end of a man or woman’s life that they really begin to ponder things. Did I live a good life? Did I enjoy it? Was I good person? Did I leave the world a better place than when I found it?

Or at least I hope that is what we’ll do.

I have been thinking a lot about the life yet lived and the mistakes that we make when faced with the possibility of death. No, I’m not dying. I’ve been sick, but I’m recuperating. That’s why my posts have seemed erratic lately. Please bear with me.

But, I told ya’ll last week that my daddy had a pace maker put in and I was worried about him. His family was calling and asking me about a living will and what do I want to do with the surgery and being his decision maker. I started freaking out. What do you mean? Is he conscious? Can’t he make the decisions on his own? I don’t know about the will. He mentioned it a few times, but I’ve seen or signed nothing. Ugh!

I was overwhelmed and frustrated to say the least. I was told they would call me back and they didn’t. I just called the hospital and spoke to his nurse in ICU. He was conscious. He was able to make the decisions on his healthcare. He wanted the pacemaker.

I got answers. I was happy that the hospital was being very concerned about my dad’s health. They took down my phone number and called me. There was a wonderful nurse who told me she was trying to let the social worker know what my daddy needed when he went home. He needed a nurse. He needed help. He didn’t have a phone.

She asked me about my dad’s military service. My dad said he was a vet. He is. He is a vet. He was dishonorably discharged. The nurse said “He told me he wasn’t dishonorably discharged and he has papers to prove it.” I sighed. It was 1:30 in the morning. I responded in exasperation “My daddy is an alcoholic. He’s had a drinking problem all his life or at least for the last 35 years. Too much drinking and smoking. His brain cells are gone. He can’t produce any paperwork and I’m too tired to argue.”

She was sympathetic as I explained that I am the only one of a possible 9 children still speaking to him. One out of 9. That’s his life. So, I have no reason to lie. He’s broke and sick. He’s one of the forgotten. I just don’t know how to feel.

She understood. She listened as I explained that God had told me to forgive my daddy. That God told me that it in order for me to be blessed I had to let go of all the pain my daddy caused by not being in my life. She said “Me too. I know exactly what you mean.” She said she would help him. She would exhaust her resources.

Apply for Medicare. Do everything she can. Thank God for her.

She didn’t have to go above and beyond. It was appreciated. I wasn’t there. I knew at that moment that I needed to go home to see about him.

I talked to him the next day. He was moved to ICU to his own room. I called and heard his voice. He’s alive. He’s able to make his decisions. I told him the calls I received from his relatives. He said that he knew.

I was exhausted. Emotionally and mentally. It’s hard loving a man that you don’t really know. I’ve spent 11 years of my life with this man and 31 without him. It’s hard trusting him to not come in my life and hurt me again. I’m not his only child. I’m one of many.

My dad said that he wants me to contact his other children. To reach out to them and ask them to talk to him. I won’t. I can’t.

I feel that God gave me the message in order to move me from the pain to the promise. He may not have given my siblings that message. It’s not for me to clean up my daddy’s mess. I’ve said to him that he needs to find a way to clean up his own mess. That you can’t ask me to do what you should have done a long time ago. Be a man to your children.

I know that he’s living a life of regrets right now, but I can’t help him. We are all responsible for the choices we make. Good, bad or indifferent, you have to know that there will come a time when payment is due for your negligence. I wish that his regrets were more of the life not traveled, but I know they are more about the man he wasn’t and the forgotten children.

Divorce is Not Contagious

Posted on by Tikeetha T

My girlfriend and I were talking about this a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about how we were really going through it when we got divorced and a lot of people weren’t around. Not that we didn’t have friends, but that our friends never knew the depth of our pain and depression because they were busy living their lives.

I remember sitting in my girlfriend’s living room and telling her that it was over. That I was done. She looked at me with such sincerity and love for me that she told me that I would lose friends. I was shocked. Why would I lose friends? People would stop being my friend because I’m divorcing. She simply responded “Yes.”

She was right. I can’t point out the exact number of people that are out of my life as a result of my divorce, but it was a few. Am I mad? Nope. Was I hurt? Yes. Why was I hurt? Because no one knows what truly goes on in a marriage. People assume because you don’t walk around with a busted lip, broken nose or black eye that things were great. They don’t know.

People then decide to take sides. They aren’t very good in their side taking. What I mean is that they are not woman or man enough to say that I’m going to be loyal to him or I’m going to be loyal to her. They do it in a sneaky way.

They think it’s cute in the subtle ways that they do it. They stop speaking to you socially and then in person. You feel like a social pariah. You wondered what you did and you want to scream “Hey asshole it was me buying all those gifts for you and your family. My money.” But, you don’t.

You smile. You accept that God is removing the negative out of your life to put in the positive. You cry. You laugh and you go on. You have to raise your children. You need to focus on your mind. You need a renewing of your mind. You need to focus on keeping your job so that you can provide for yourself and your child/children.

You need to pray.

However, it is when your close friends start to disappear or not come around that you really begin to feel the distance. You get consumed with the pain. You start to wonder what you ever did to deserve the cold shoulder? No texts. No phone calls. No emails.

Some friends kept their distance out of fear that they couldn’t console you or that somehow your divorce was going to be contagious and thereby cause problems in their own relationships. I know it seems silly, but there are truly people out there that believe divorce is contagious. They think they could catch it like you catch an STD or something.

My best friend was my biggest supporter when I was going through my divorce. I’ve spoken often of how I was losing my mind when I was going through my divorce. I couldn’t eat, sleep and had suffered bouts of depression. I would literally be walking and fall to the ground crying because I was in so much mental pain. My son would hold my head and wipe my tears begging me not to cry and promising to take care of me.

I was a wreck. Emotionally and physically. My best friend would call me constantly and try to comfort me. There were many times that I didn’t think I could endure any more pain and anger that I wanted to throw in the towel and reconcile only for the sake of my sanity. But, God!

She spent so much time encouraging me and making sure that I was okay that I know that I couldn’t have gotten through this difficult time had she not been there. She was my rock. She helped me to see that I could do this. Be a single parent. Start over. Be strong.

And I did.

But, I don’t know if I would have survived if it had not been her helping me. She never left me alone. She was my friend when all hope seemed to be gone. She didn’t think divorce was contagious to her marriage.

Divorce is not contagious. You can’t catch it. If your friends are going through a divorce, it is like a death and they need your support. Even if it is a quick call, email or text to say that you love them and that you’re thinking about them. They need it. It matters.

You can’t catch divorce. It’s a choice. You wake up one day and realize that you are no longer going to pretend anymore. Not for him. Not for her. Not for anyone.

Witness

Posted on by Tikeetha T

She was 5 when she witnessed her mother sucking a man off in a dark alley to feed her drug habit.

She was 8 when her mother tried to sell her for a high the first time

At 9 she succeeded.

She was a witness to the dark sides of drugs.

She was a witness to child molestation as men raped her for money.

She was a witness to her mother’s death as she tried to steal from a drug dealer.

Witness.

She hated being a witness.

 

This post is part of the Daily Post. Today’s word was witness.

Ghost

Posted on by Tikeetha T

I had a dream last night with my ghost.

We were running in a field of wildflowers.

Big

Open

Majestic

We were laughing and playing.

Like old times.

We paused.

Laid down in the wild flowers.

He held my hand while I cried.

I told him about my dreams that were unfilled

My hopes that had died

My bones that had been broken

My tears yet to fall

He smiled

He whispered five words

in my ear.

I was comforted by his presence.

Renewed by his encouragement.

I awoke knowing that I would get through

this life.

No matter what may come I know he meant it

when he whispered

“Never Stop Believing In You”

This post is part of the Daily Prompt. The word was ghost.