1.29.2018

Hey there,

Lakita here. I just thought I’d sit here with my coffee, cigarettes and my “I’m fucking sad” playlist and put this virtual pen to virtual paper after a really long time. I’m not actually sad, just a little irritated.

Today marks four months for my newfound romance with the most amazing girl in the world. She’s a real keeper and not the kind that plays football. A real stunner and a great listener. I can’t find a single flaw about her except for the fact that she comes from a very sheltered household and still has a curfew. I don’t know how I’ve been without her for so long, but this girl listens, man. She not only listens, she analyzes and understands, then she offers her best reply. I like it when she vents. She’s still getting the hang of opening up to me, but she’s getting there. I like learning new things about her every day that I’m with her and I like that she learns new things about herself that she didn’t know existed.

‘Read my mind’ by The Killers just started and it couldn’t be more perfectly timed right now. I think about her so hard when I hear this track that I think it was made specifically for us, you know?

I still wonder what she sees in me. Every day, I do. What is it that makes her love me this much? I’m damaged to the point of no return and I’ve experienced so much trauma. On top of all that, I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Most of which I’ve told her about, but yet, she looks past all of that and calls me strong. She’s even proud that I’m still hanging on and that I’m alive. It’s as though angels ARE real and that one of them has been sent to me. Or maybe she sought me out of her own volition. This young woman, beautiful and pure, found me at my lowest point and pulled me out of that place. I may only be halfway out, but she’s still pulling. Nothing or no one can make her let go unless I pull my hands away and let myself fall back there. I won’t do that, though. I like healing. Healing with her is amazing. She’s the cage I didn’t know I needed. The cage to bind me to the land of the living. Not the land of simply existing. The kind of living where I want to wake up every day and greet the day with that ‘Good morning’ text from her. She gives my life color and when she’s near me, I swear everything has a pulse. Everything is alive.

Yesterday, I lost my words. The words I wanted to say to her when I was so overwhelmed by how much I love her, the words that were nowhere to be found. All I could do was hold her and my eyes welled up with tears she didn’t see because I got rid of them so fast. Someday she won’t have to leave because there will come a day when her home is also my home. I wonder if she knows that my home doesn’t even feel like a home to me. My home is wherever she is. The place she lays her sweet head and everywhere she is, that’s where my real home is.

I wonder if she knows how at peace I feel when she lets me rest my head on her shoulder and sleep there as she holds me like a fragile thing. She’s asleep right now and I hope she dreams of only pleasant things. I love her and I want to give her the world. Or as much of it as I can, however little that may be.

Here’s to you, Maryam. The lantern that lights my way through the darkest of paths, the extra push to get out of bed each day and the beating in my once-still heart.

I love you.

 

“Have you forgiven yourself for the things you’ve done?”

The question isn’t one I was asking myself, it was posed by a good friend on Facebook. There were a lot of comments about ever-haunting pasts, toxic personalities and even some answers that were self-deprecating. Without thinking, without so much as trying to gather up the words to type, the following simply spewed out from my fingertips and onto the screen. I even had to reread for it was like someone else wrote it, using my body to perform the act.

“Lakita S. Harry : Imagine there are two Lakitas. The one with a conscience and the other with only the desire to be impulsive. The one with the conscience literally takes a back seat to everything the impulsive one wants to do. There is no in between. Every so often, the one with the conscience -a moral compass, so to speak- will finally get a chance in the limelight only for a brief time when the impulsive is too ridden with guilt and terrible thoughts. Too much that it gets harder to cope. The only rational version of me now tries to perform damage control, but guess what? This only helps temporarily and then it’s all back to square one. There’s no forgiving myself. There’s only finding ways to cope and live with it because Lakita doesn’t know how to truly forgive anyone, even herself.”

While I may not have been thinking when I commented, after rereading I realized that not only were the words true to the very last bit, but that it was probably written by my rational side. The side with the conscience and moral compass that I almost never listen to.

I’m almost certain my friend will have no idea what I was talking about, since he hasn’t any context to relate to, but I’m pretty sure he will have questions. As I’ve told anyone who has asked me about myself, I am an open book. I have almost nothing to hide and I will answer him when he comes forth.

Have you ever kept a secret for yourself for so long that you had to split yourself into two just to keep it? The better side of me knows the things my impulsive, live-fast-die-young side has done and they will remain secrets for as long as I am alive.

 

Thoughts?

Will I ever get over my father?

It all started at the age of 5. My mother, father and myself lived in a 4-wall zinc shack held up by four wooden posts. Having nothing more than a bed and a barrel of clothes inside, a small wooden patio and a yard pipe where we bathed, brushed our teeth and did the laundry. My mother did the cooking on a fireside made of bricks and mud. She worked as a clerk at the timber factory and he worked on houses. A mason and a philanderer.

They were hardworking parents. My mother would bring home her pay and he’d take it all away so he can spend it on liquor and his friends and his women. Of course, my mother was unaware of all the others. Little did I know, she had money kept in secret; she was planning to leave. I was so sheltered from this information by my relatives until the day finally came for me to find out. I was young, 5 years young, but I saw the bitter truth about my father that day. Yes, I saw; with these brown, almond eyes. Eyes that are just like his.

The young girl, barely fourteen years of age, came to visit. I merely thought she had come for her tutoring my mother would give for free. A very educated woman my mother is. On this afternoon, she had come for a very different reason. It was on that day that shocking truth had come to light; my father was sleeping with this girl. Unbeknownst to my mother and myself, he saw this girl on a regular basis. It was until my mother came home and saw me sitting on the patio all by my lonesome that she realized something was going on. The noises coming from our shack was enough to stun her and without thinking, she opened the only door to find them at it. The girl fled. He wasn’t sorry. He tried to justify his actions with measly excuses and in a rage, grabbed mom’s purse to take her money; money he did not find. Mother was very crafty, she had somehow known that that their days together were coming to an end, so she had cut a pocket in the bottom of her bag and hid her pay there. They fought, she cried, I cried then she took me away to her mother’s house where we lived for most of my life.

Steve, the name of my father, visited me once. ONCE. My mother had no objections to him coming to see me, but he never came after that.

This man was supposed to be my protector. The one who’d show me how I need to be treated when I get older. The one who should have been around to set the standard of men who will enter my life. This was the man who was never supposed to leave me or hurt me. This man left.

I’ve tried really hard to forgive the man, but I try in vain. Some say I have “daddy issues”, but tell me, how can I not? How can I ever love another man when the one who was supposed to love me unconditionally just abandoned me and hurt my mother?

How can I forgive this person? I need to move on but I don’t know how. I want to talk to him and hear his side of the story, but I despise his face. How do I not be bitter towards him? I deserve to heal after seventeen years of being scarred by his betrayal.