He was tall, barely tan and at forty-five, his thick wavy hair already gleamed like new chrome. Old Spice tickled my nose when he held me close; it is still the sexiest scent I know. Even then my parents weren’t particularly fond of me. I was the source of their mutual resentment, the “accident” that forced them into violent union. But, until that moment, I’d felt safe; until that moment, I was his Mike and I knew my uncle loved me.I’d been to the doctor that afternoon. Of course, I don’t remember why, but I remember getting a, “this won’t hurt a bit,” shot. Uncle stopped by to check on me, but too soon his attention was focused on momma. Like any self-respecting three year old, I wasn’t having him giving away my attention. So, moaning, I climbed off the couch, limped over to him at the dining room table and tried to tell him the shot she said wouldn’t hurt did. He laughed at me; when I protested and reached for him, he scolded me. My beloved uncle sent me back to the couch with a swat; then he and the woman who regularly reminded me I was a mistake shared a long, loud laugh at the little faker. Never since have I felt so shamed or betrayed.Fast forward ten years, I don’t remember what the yelling was about, by the time I was thirteen all the screaming and tears kind of ran together. I remember momma had this skinny beige belt she used to whip me with. She was standing in her bedroom door lecturing me and popping that belt when time stopped and the world went dark. “I wish I’d had the courage to abort you.” She yelled that a back alley abortion, after my sister was born, nearly cost her her life, and only her fear of reliving that experience or worse forced her to bring me into the world. “I wish I made a different decision. I wish I’d never brought you here.” Those words, the fear that they would someday come flying out of my mouth and murder some innocent child, deeply colored my decision to abort my own children,“You little bitch.” I heard daddy yell just before my head hit the wall so hard the plaster cracked. He was shaking me by my throat, swearing he’d kill me when I passed out, thinking he had.Daddy beat up everybody in the house; there was no protection and nobody was safe. Whenever he was done venting his rage, he’d tell whoever he’d left in a broken heap, “If you don’t like it, you can get out.” My mother and siblings not only stayed but they groveled and scraped to please him. Me? I wanted him to be crystal I didn’t like it and I left. Years of being molested by my dad taught me that my body had the power to make men do things. After that beating, I put my knowledge to practical test and talked a Navy man I knew into sending for me. The night I landed in San Diego was the night I lost my virginity. It was painful and bloody, but it was alright, because he said he loved me. I was fourteen. Next morning he left me sleeping and went to work; I awakened to police bursting through the motel room door. The manager, who’d let them in, stood there gawking, as they hand-cuffed me, still naked in a bloody bed. A cop told me my navy man had called. Later, when I got the chance to ask him why, he told me my cherry was worth the price of a plane ticket, but better I went to jail then him. The promiscuity began then and there; in that moment I knew daddy was right – the only thing about me that was any good at all was the little hole between my legs.My daddy used to tell me that I was such a worthless bitch I wouldn’t even make a good whore.I broke away from my dad’s house just to find myself living with a bigger, angrier brute. He beat me so regularly nobody needed a calendar. Michelle’s eye is black; Michelle’s in the emergency room it must be Sunday. I left him the day I finally realized one of us was going to die; on that day I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be me. I picked up my then two year old daughter and walked out the door. He reached over my head, snatched her from my arms and told me if I turned around he’d kill me. Not wanting my child to watch one of her parents die at the hand of the other, I pilled my t-shirt over my head, flung it backward into his face, told him he could have everything I had but my car keys and ran. By the time he regrouped to chase me, the car door was locked and the engine running; he claimed I ran over his foot when I took off.Over the years I’ve been beaten, raped and kidnapped at gunpoint. My momma, who’d been watching my oldest daughter while I worked and struggled to grow up, stole her. She had me declared unfit and served me with papers, on my job, that immediately terminated all access to my baby. I hired a lawyer who’d been a long time “friend”; I found out some years later my parents paid him to botch the case.Discovering that stealing my children had been a carefully laid plan destroyed whoever I had been. It was the first time I was confronted with I set before you life and death. Choose…even in the depths of that dark insanity, I had enough sense to know if the teacher gives you the answer, take it. From that day to this I’ve been fighting to break the cycles and stay the generational curses. Twenty-one years later, here I sit telling horror stories to you.It’s that hell fire and pain that makes me do what I do. Not because those who were “supposed” to love me most betrayed me and left me for dead, but because, by grace, I’m still here.Folks who have no experiential knowledge of hell are generally of one of two mindsets. They either believe it’s an inescapable forever sentence or that escape is merely a simple decision away. Though I’ve met many who seem irrevocably stuck, I know there is a road out. And like you I’ve heard the tales of those whose life turned one hundred and eighty degrees with just a touch, but I’ve never met anyone who was Enoched out of the fire. It’s a bloody, sweaty, painful process that demands more from you than you think is with-in your capability to survive. Cool water is respite afforded the warrior who desires it above even life.Nearly fifty years ago I told God that I didn’t know what the truth was, but I knew the folks around me were lying to me. I told God I’d do anything he wanted me to do, if he would just show me Truth. For all ya’ll that don’t know, be very careful what you ask of Divinity, and more careful still what you promise. That which you ask you will receive and you are accountable for your word and all you are given.Ya’ll know I don’t allow no preaching in the pages of Not Ur Momma’s News; that’s because I see too often the names Jesus and Allah are hurled with the same divisive venom as house saggin and field saggin. So, I hope ya’ll will forgive or excuse me as needs be, but I’m gonna take a little momma license up in here and show ya’ll my heart.See me and God we got this thing; it’s my Daddy and my Momma I’m talking about. Yin Yang, if you need a picture. This ain’t no pulpit, ceremonial relationship either and I’m not talking to you about something I read somewhere. I know who held/holds my hand. I know who so often picked me up and protected me from the worst of the flames. God has many names, many faces spanning myriad centuries and cultures. And I know all of those names describe and refer to the God whose name is above all names, to the God, my God, whose name is simply…Love.My mom and dad told me they planned to name me Gloria Blanche after my grandmothers. I always thought it was a very kool name, but my Dad and my Mom had other plans. For reasons the earthly pair could never quite explain, the named me Michelle Diane. It means Warrior Angel, Hunter Goddess ya’ll and I am my Parent’s daughter.I am here, NUMN is here because I have lived, survived and largely overcome nearly every kind of pain imaginable. I failed at or destroyed everything I touched; I can write tomes on how to muck stuff up. I am here because in a moment of abject darkness, Love whispered to me.Ya’ll, I could have been, should have been dead. I’ve looked down the barrel of five different guns, and no, I wasn’t cleaning them. I could have, should have been under the jail, but Love got me out of a money case that might have cost me twenty-five years. I coulda/shoulda been in a mental institution; ya’ll read the history. I coulda/shouda had A.I.D.S.; I won’t count the lovers if you won’t. But Love…Can I talk to ya’ll just a little about Love?I’d seen, lived a whole lot of miracles, but none of them really registered until that afternoon I realized Love, despite of all I’d been and been through, Love covered every ugly thing I’d ever done. Love loved me without judgment or condition, Love loved me.I love you like that, no matter who you are or where you’ve been, because more than anything I want you to see my Mom and Dad whenever you see me. Let’s not get it twisted. I ain’t sistah super spiritual and I need a dictionary to even spell perfect. I get mad and tired, lazy and moody. Sometimes I pump a whole lot of arrogant hoping nobody will notice I’m overflowing with fear. I come to give freely what has been given me, a simple and abiding love.The other day Belinda and I were working on the business plan and the question arose, “What qualifies you to lead?” Messed my head up and I couldn’t come up with an answer. Until that moment, I hadn’t stopped to consider whether I possessed the expertise to publish NUMN and TBBU or organize a community micro-funding plan. I was just merrily and rather haphazardly doing what I do. I had to stop and think; you’re reading where the process led. Bear with me just a little longer please. I want to share a little about the middle with you. I know you’re getting tired of me talking, because I’m getting writer’s cramp.Anyway, in short, my qualifications are thus: Ten years on staff journalism experience as an investigative reporter and copy editor and thirty plus years experience as a freelancer. I am an award winning, Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy trained, sales professional, with over seven years, ranked in the top twenty percent, experience. And with a partner, owned and operated one of the most successful Adult Entertainment businesses in South West Florida – legally – with a business license and paid taxes, mine anyway, and without drama or arrest, for six years. We were averaging a couple grand a night and I admit I did ask my dad once if that made me a good enough whore for him. Lord knows he wasn’t turning down any of the money.There you have it ya’ll. I suffered; so I recognize pain when I see it. If I can make it even a little easier for someone else than it was for me, I’m there. I know what it is to be in a pit so deep and dark you begin to question if light is a mere figment of imagination. I’ve fondled many a razor blade ya’ll, but I know the way to the light, because I’ve walked the road. Perhaps my pain can/will show another that there is more than hope, there’s a way out.I know the roots of the horrors that once shattered me are largely the roots, the curses pervading and fragmenting African America to this day. The rape my great-grandmother likely endured is the same rape my mother endured. The same rape that made her indifferent when she knew my dad was molesting me. The frustrated rage that caused papa to beat her for what the massa had done to her is the same festering psychosis that fueled daddy’s violence and made my black eyes a time piece.My momma used to say, “The time has came and something definitely gotta be did.” I’m here to turn over the tables in the temples. I hear somebody singing, “Waiting, waiting, waiting on the world to change.” I came to break up choir practice; just stopped by to tell ya’ll, waiting ain’t fixin to change nothing. Barack Obama cannot and will not fix it. Must we be reminded so soon? Obama isn’t our savior, merely the public face of the force that is us. I’m here to tell you the days of waiting on them and somebody are over. We are them and you, you, you and me, we’re somebody. I hear to tell you yes we can, while everybody is focused on a suntanned version of the same old government posturing, yes we can create and secure economic autonomy. In scant two years, we raised 800 million dollars to buy the Oval Office; surely in these next four we can accumulate enough dollars to buy back our communities. I have a dream that one day little black boys and little white boys will truly come together on an equal playing field, because both are in complete control of their own destiny. Yes we can take advantage of the larger economic fiasco to free our entrepreneurial spirits to soar from the ashes. This country was built on the backs of our innovation and creativity, and it is with that same innovation and creativity we can and must claim what is rightfully ours, Yes we can stop begging for reparation and protesting in Jena and in front of Rent-a-Center like a spot on the evening news is gonna get us a little extra justice. America is reeling. The economy is in shambles; there’s a … Barack Obama in the White House and Stephen, oops Steele figure heading the GOP. The “silent majority” is freaking out; look at ‘em they’ve got Rush Limbaugh in charge. Al, Jesse, Tavis and the boys have been rendered as immaterial as they have been ineffectual. The old dichotomy is shattered; social chaos and general confusion abound. While the focus is on whether we are ready for a lesbian on the Supreme Court, I say the time has came to take a page out of that old book. No, not the Bible, Soledad Brother; the time is come for us to march on long ago given orders. Yes we are the masters of our fate and I say, right now, yes we can infiltrate and overtake.Reprinted by Permission of Not Ur Momma's News
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