life before now...

i was talking to someone about my life -- before this poetry thang. and i think that i have one of the luckiest lives ever. really. i mean, i was kidnapped by my father as a ploy to control my mother when i was a couple of years old. we stayed in oklahama for almost 6 months. when he returned me to my mother, she was at work (some federal bank) and demanded for her to leave with us immediately. she was too slow, cause he hit her. again. that was the last memory i have of my father. the police cornering him down the stairs of some back entrance. him telling me to walk fast. my mother crying. me singing. and then -- i don't really remember to much of him after that.

i know i saw him every now and then. like when i was 12. he slapped me in the face for interrupting him while he was talking to his friend. i wasn't trying to be disrespectful -- i just wanted to show him how smart i was. i mean damn. i hadn't seen him in almost 10 years! next time i saw him it was at my high school graduation. i was 18. not really concerned if he saw how intelligent i had become. he was visibly struggling with being a free man and addicted to drugs. he would land back in prison on some type of violation within 6 months. and the last time i saw him -- my daughter was 6 months old. i asked him to hold her so i could take a picture of them together. i knew then it would probably be the last time i saw him alive. and the last time amari would be able to see her grandfather at all. that was 7 years ago.

the men i date almost NEVER resemble him. my father. i know that people have that complex. women date men like their fathers or maybe alot of men because they didn't have their father. but me -- i date men who are NOTHING LIKE HIM. if they even chew like him or walk like him -- it's a wrap! i'm also quit violent. i have never hit a man -- but i'm always ready to swing them thangs. my mother was beaten. severely. my father's mother dealt with that bullshit from my grandfather until she stabbed him in the leg with a fork. calmed his ass down -- but not his attitude. he would keep that fire in him until he passed from cancer. it was crazy, cause i never saw that while he held me close. i thought he was HEAVEN. but i know he was hell on earth when it came to my grandma. and i just don't know why. my maternal grandmother had it a lil' different. she dealt with verbal and emotional abuse. and she was a trooper. she held down the entire family. got me and my sister and my brother and my mother into school. talked my grandfather (who remained her best friend even after they divorced) into going back to school. she was just the dopest. i think i have her spirit.

i tend to want to help EVERYONE. especially whomever i am dating. and it can be hard. amari's father -- the ass that he is -- benefited from this immensely. i did everything from helping him with his financial aid papers to transporting him from one job to the second job! but i believed in him. all because he was EVERYTHING that my father WASN'T. or so i thought!

my father was a womanizer --- he wasn't faithful *found that part out when amari was 3 months old!
my father was hardly there for me growing up --- he is only there when i make it convenient for him to do so (i.e., buy airline ticket, call constantly, etc).

and the list goes on. i thought he was a good guy. and i found out he was human. like everyone else. problem is -- i got a problem with liars. a big problem. my father was good for telling me one thing and doing another. it happened enough that i gained a complex with people saying something and doing something totally different. even now. i SPAZ out if someone says one thing and does the total opposite. i'm like "BE HONEST ASSHOLE". we aren't kids - there is no PUNISHMENT or TIME OUT. be a freekn adult! i can trace it back to the last childhood memory of my father.

i was 12. and we were at my grandparent's house. my father was downstairs getting high with a cousin. i wandered in the room, trying to be nosey -- ya know, doing what young kids do. and caught them. i ran upstairs to tell my grandpa - thinking it was nothing huge... as i had never actually SEEN him getting high. but after my grandfather went OFF and tossed my father out of the house -- i knew i had messed up. i kept saying sorry and my father brushed it off. said, "hey. don't worry. i'm just going to the store. i will be back. what do you want?"
i asked for an orange soda. and then i didn't see him again until my high school graduation. it wasn't until i reached my mid-twenties that i realized i was deeply affected. besides steering clear of men that even remotely resembled my father - i also refused to drink orange soda.


go figure...