A Series of Unfortunate Men

I don’t want to write anything too deep.  I just feel this incessant urge to write.  I just want to be able to spill my guts like Grandfather used to rip out the insides of a raccoon before he cooked it, calling it chicken.  Grandfather spent much of his lifetime with me, the eldest grandchild, following him around, trying to figure out what made him think, what made him tick, what made him great.  Despite the fact that he and my grandmother separated long before I came of age to understand, my grandfather made sure that the six children that he birthed and their offspring knew who he was, knew his side of the family, and being a presence as giant as Goliath in our development.  We would walk down the cracked up, crackhead filled streets to one construction site or another, one friends basement or another, and he would get drunk and brag about my accomplishments.  He stood on top of mountain tops of Hennessy and Brandy, daring his friends to select one of their own that could be as smart as, as beautiful as, as observant as his granddaughter.  As he challenged the world to see my greatness, he also challenged me to stand up and define what greatness would mean for me, forever shoving me forward with his rhetoric of superior intellect. “Look a man directly in his eyes when you speak to him.  He will know that you command respect. Looking someone in the eyes helps them know that you are paying careful attention to what they say, and they will know that you will hold them to their word,” he would tell me.  “A man is nothing if his actions can not back up his words.  Chin up.  Introduce yourself.  You are Mihausme.  You are a genius and you will never allow anyone to make you feel like you are less than the name that God has chosen for you.”   We spent so much time with him building me up, that it was almost impossible for me to believe that the world did not have my best interests at heart.  I lived in laughter and joy, though my family was working poor, and as a youth I don’t recall that there was anything that was too big for me to take on.  When my grandfather was alive, I felt that nothing could ever go wrong, no man could ever hurt me.  He’d “kill a rock” if I met misfortune at the hands of a man.  Maybe this is why I’m sitting in this place now.  Grandfather was my third eye, helping me see beyond that which the light touches; my third eye kept me trusting my intuition, believing in myself and in my spirit.  He, though not a religious or spiritual man, kept me understanding the God in me.   My grandfather died of cirrhosis of the liver in 2006, when I was leaving my third year of college.  I remember watching Goliath shrink to the size of David, and sifting through layers of devastation to find the will to keep going without him.  And I would.  Keep going that is.  But I didn’t keep that promise I made as he took his last breath.  I’d rushed in from school after hearing that he’d been admitted to the hospital from my Auntie.  She’d said that he wasn’t going to make it home from the hospital and we should all come say goodbye.  My grandma was there.  He looked so small.  I reminded myself that I would be as big as he had encouraged me to be.  We each took turns in private speaking to him.  When it was my turn, I didn’t cry.  I told him that I would do what he’d set me on the path to.  That I would finish school and not be distracted by men.  I would not do what all five of his daughters did by getting pregnant young, many marrying a man that took them down rabbit holes that they would not return from in one piece.  I promised I would live my life for me, for God’s purpose.  I lied.   In retrospect, I am clear that in spite of all he taught me and all his praise of my brilliance, I did not learn how to steer clear of the mistakes generations before me had predisposed me to.  For all the academics in the world, I did not know what it looked like to love someone, and to have someone love you back.  Maybe Grandfather was a tragic hero.  Maybe he was destined to cultivate daughters and granddaughters that would be any man’s dream because of their looks, their intellect, their drive and spirituality, but whom would live in confusion and betrayal because he did not model how to love my grandma.  We didn’t know how!  Or rather, I didn’t know how.  How to exist in love.  How to recognize real love.  How to be a woman living amongst men that both loves my family and husband without losing myself.  Maybe the way he left my grandma was the tragic flaw that affected the generations, setting in slow motion that snowball that suffocated the last twelve years of my life.  Honestly, I’m still working it out.  These stories are me acknowledging that I did not know how.  I hope it reads as a love letter to every man that so far, has been unfortunate enough to exist in relationship with me.  They were never going to win with me as I was.  I hope to do them a service of love by analyzing why.