Addiction Chokehold

For the first time in my life, I understand the plague that has afflicted my family through the lens of addiction. Most, if not all, the major problems that impacted my child stem from addicts struggling to stay topside. My mother, my sweet mother, started smoking weed in middle school. Why would a girl between the ages of 10-12 years old be seeking escape? It’s a simple answer, she was born in America in the sixties. This means she grew up in the south in the 60’s and 70’s. She rolled out the red carpet and bore children in the 80’s and 90’s. We all know what was happening in those times.

It seems the people who had any touchpoints with the U.S. government at the time were predisposed to drugs and substances. One day, I asked my mother, where did your journey with drugs begin? She said it was from her brother. Her brother had gone to prison-- for what I’m not sure. He was then experimented on and given drugs and treatments that turned his skin white in some places. He went in a black man, came home and was re-named Pinto. Inspired by the horse breed notoriously known for brown and white fur discoloration. He navigated living in South Baton Rouge Louisiana as a walking science experiment. We know his condition now as vitiligo, however, in the 60’s and 70’s there was no explaining that to an uneducated people.

Drugs is what happened to all the smart, talented beautiful black girls with bright futures in the hood. My mother was one of them. Even though it’s 50 years later, my father still remembers being in 4th grade with my mother and they pulled her out of class because she was light years ahead of every one of her peers. She came to school knowing how to read already. Which, apparently, was an anomaly at the time. They pulled her out of class and put her in the principle’s office to get to the bottom of her abilities. They soon realized that there was no foul play afoot, just a smart ass little girl. She stayed out of the class to get supplemental lessons since the curriculum being taught presented little to no challenge to her.

She established her reputation in South Baton Rouge then as a force to be reckoned with. The envy of the women and the ruler of the men. Shout out to Erykah Badu. From there, my father was hooked. They started their relationship underneath the breezeway between lunch shifts and recess breaks. He saw her beauty and magnificence when they were just little kids.

All it takes is one to behold beauty and then the others follow.

The others followed.

My mother had options starting then and even until now. There was never a point in her life that she was not highly sought after and desired. She was a bad lil redbone who was smart enough not to have an ego. Wise people know that we know nothing at all. She was irresistible to men. Fast forward to middle school and now the popular bad boys want her. This was an unstoppable force. Once the popular boys want you, then you go that way.

She captivated the drug dealers, dope boys, broke boys, rich kids, etc. The world was her oyster. She had permission as a light skinned black woman in the south to be whatever she wanted. So why did she become a crackhead?

Well, despite being beautiful and smart, having a banging body and a dope personality-- she was a hurting child. She was hurting because she was the object of shame. She had nothing to be ashamed of but there was this undeniable feeling of neglect in her heart. She didn’t know her mother. Her mother did not know her, nor did she want to know her. My mother was born out of wedlock. As in her biological mother and father were both married to other people when she was conceived.

“Big Daddy Bill” worked for the railroad company and he got around like the tracks he built. Especially to women. He had taken up with a married woman in Mobile, Alabama. She popped the baby out and dropped the baby off. It was a baby girl. Daddy Bill picked that baby up and kept the game of hot potato going. He dropped his newborn daughter off to his sister, Tia and kept it moving on the way to California where his family and wife resided.

My mother grew up calling her aunt mom and her father uncle. The secrets run so deep that the only way to escape the pain is to fall into the comfort of drugs. When you're high, you’re granted access to the world your pain tries to withhold from you. The carefree, joyous scamp you are naturally can finally come forward and just be. You are relieved of all the burdens of sobriety because standing as a representative of your pain no longer is a requirement.

When you’re high, you can just be. You don’t have to exist in suffering. So, the people hurting the deepest are the ones seeking escape the hardest. My mother was a neglected child. She was always so observant and attentive. She heard the way grandmothers would rock back and forth on the porch chewing tobacco and talk about how her uncle was a low down dirty shame. She heard the side commentary of, “I don’t know what we gone do about that girl, she got so much of him in her, its a shame.”

My mother was taught to be ashamed of herself because her very existence was rooted in secrecy, lies, deception and savage behavior. Or was it rooted in love? If it’s as easy to love my mother as it is today, then couldn’t Daddy Bill have been just as easy to love? His charm likely captivated the women he took up with on the road. What if my mother’s mother was in love with her and her father? This surprise pregnancy took their little game too far and forced them to call it quits. It may never have been the case that my mother was not wanted. It’s the ramifications of what it means to grow up in the south in the 60s.

Women needed men to survive. My mother’s mother knew that her chances of survival as a divorcee in Alabama were slim. Daddy Bill had no intentions of settling there. He had a wife and a whole nother family across the country. This thing that had been born out of fun and games had come to a difficult stop. Trapped, scared, alone and irrational--the best plan conceived was to give the baby to a family member who, seeing her brother’s desperation, complied.

Daddy Bill loved his daughter, that much is obvious based on the fact he made an effort to still be a part of her life. He held secrets he couldn’t handle the same as we all do. His wife likely hasnt even a clue that her husband has a whole separate family that his sister helped to raise. The descendants of my mother rumble this world. We shake the rooms we walk in with every strut and stride. We are light and balls of joy that people can’t forget. We have the magic.

It’s dependent on what we choose to use our magic to conjure up. Every one of my mother’s descendants, which make up my bevy of brothers and sisters embodies the ideology that we are what we make up. Some of us decided to use our gifts to dominate the environments we grew up in. Some of us decided to preserve our magic for cities way bigger than BR.

Either way, every last one of us is gifted, talented, intelligent and well liked by everyone we meet. The energy we exude is transformative and rare. That’s why the grips and strongholds of addiction could never really take us out. Well, only one of us fell victim. It is extremely sad to say that we are all survivors. All 7 of us. Aaron, my brother who is slightly older than I am, died of a heroin overdose 4 years ago. Despite the severity of his condition, my dude held on to life for nearly a year later. We only just found out that he died because his baby mother came unhinged and took him out of the care of a medical facility.

That’s alright though because Aaron’s departure made way for my arrival. Losing my brother was the last straw on my secret keeping hat. And now, we are here--standing in the light of love never to succumb to the shadows of secrecy again. We are not going back.