The Awakening (Phase 1:Facing the Truth)

“You can’t do what you want and be married to me”-JOR

April is my birthday month and usually the time I start something new. I treat it like my own personal new year. I’m a spring baby. Aries is the first sign of the zodiac, Spring represents new beginnings, and around this time of year I start itching for a change. For example: I started my weight loss journey 10 years ago April 1, took my first trip out of the county in April the same year and I chopped my hair off April 2017. Many milestones of my life have been achieved In April, but perhaps the greatest day of my life thus far other than the day I was born, was my DIVORCE DAY or D-Day as I’d like to call it.

Divorces are painful, no matter how good or bad the marriage. Mine was painful for many different reasons. It all seemed like a blur or really bad dream that took me 4 LONG years to wake up from. On a Saturday afternoon in early February while in the house in the Virginia woods I woke up from a long nap. I sat up in the bed, yawned, stretched my arms out above my head and when I opened my eyes after a few rapid blinks, I looked around the bedroom. I squinted, rubbed my eyes with my fists, opened them up again and what I saw around me was utterly terrifying! Nothing looked familiar and I didn’t know where I was or how I gotten there! My entire world came crashing down in that very moment. I could see clearly for the first time in a long time and the truth that had been revealed to me was so disturbing that I knew right then and there I was running out of time. As the clock started ticking, my senses were heightened, and I began thinking back to all the strange occurrences that took place in my home in MD- the vermin, the lights, and the failing appliances. I remembered the constant night terrors I was experiencing, my declining health and vision, the windows I was forbidden to open, and all the times he claimed to be “praying for me” while I was sleeping. I thought about the friendships I had lost, the family I was missing, everything I gave up, all my dreams that were derailed, and the substantial life insurance policy he was adamant about securing once we moved. The truth was staring me dead in the face-the truth that was always there but didn’t want to see. Minutes later I could hear him making his way up the stairs and suddenly everything was moving in slow motion. In my sudden panic, I realized I couldn’t let him know that I “woke up”. In the weeks ahead, I remained calm and focused on making a plan to get out. This was the beginning of a point in my life that I call “The Awakening”.

Although the moment I just described seemed sudden, this awakening is something that had been building up within the last year of my marriage and happened in 3 phases.

Phase 1: Facing the Truth

We are conditioned from birth to believe what is supposed to make us happy. We grow up watching those Disney movies with female protagonist princesses being “rescued” by handsome princes and living happily ever after. With these fantasies ingrained in us as children, naturally getting married is likely one of those things that end up on a woman’s happiness checklist. That wasn’t me. Marriage was never really on my list until I started feeling the pressure as an adult to fit in with everyone else. Unlike most young girls, I didn’t grow up fantasizing about getting married in a big fluffy white gown. I fantasized more about my prom outfit than anything and I have the sketches from my 11-year-old self to prove it.

In my adolescence I was totally a mama’s girl. I idolized her style and thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. My mother (a twice married woman, now married to my father for 31 years) instilled in me from an early age that men are NOT to be trusted and that I should never aspire to get married or have children. She raised me to be independent and self-sufficient. I believe many black mothers (maybe subconsciously) raise their daughters this way- possibly as a means of survival due to the perceived lack of support and opportunities provided by our male counterparts (we’ll revisit this later). I was never afforded the same type of coddling from my mother that my older brothers were accustomed receiving. My parents worked hard to give us all an above average life. But I’d like to also believe that anything my parents provided me beyond that I earned by being responsible, dedicated, and self-motivated. In fact, I was much harder on myself than my parents ever could have been. Was I a perfect kid? Of course not! However, I possessed a certain undeniable drive my older brothers lacked growing up. Often in the black community, the boy’s mistakes are rewarded with extra attention and the girl’s successes/achievements are undervalued. We’re expected to be stronger, smarter, and more responsible while the boys get extra credit for NOT screwing up and just doing what they’re supposed to do. My mother told me once that my brother would be alright in life because he can always find a woman to take care of him. In other words, it’s ok for my brothers to be dependent, but completely unacceptable for me. There is no back up plan for us. We don’t have the luxury of being mediocre. If we choose to stick with the shallow dating pool within our own community, the chances of “us” finding a Prince Charming barely exists. Marrying rich, successful, or even just “stable” are very slim.

And with that being said, these are our perceived options:

1. Have children out of wedlock, marry the government through the welfare system, and depend on Uncle Sam to be our provider/protector.

2. Lower our standards and settle for someone of a lower educational socio-economic status, with a criminal background, and/or with less education.

3. Try to fix/raise someone who is emotionally underdeveloped/damaged/unavailable.

4. Stay single.

And out of all the black men who may be eligible, good luck with finding one who doesn’t only date white women, isn’t an a**hole, on hard drugs, gay, or dead. Sounds promising doesn’t it? Hell no! It’s discouraging AF and most of us end up just settling for whoever isn’t an asshole or we just give up completely. No wonder I thought at first my ex-husband was a unicorn. Here is a black man who had the same attributes that I was bringing to the table (own place, a car, and a job, no out-of-wedlock kids, no criminal background, and a degree) which I had never encountered before in my adult life. While I thought I was thinking I needed to step my game up, I gave him extra credit for what would otherwise be considered standard for any able-bodied, 39-year-old man.

My grandmother was the head of her household. She was abused by her first husband and all the subsequent men in her life were just accessories with no real redeeming qualities until she married again much later in life. My mother was the first amongst her older siblings born out-of-wedlock. Although she had significantly lighter skin everyone else in her immediate family, ironically, she was the black sheep. In efforts to combat their open resentment towards her, she fought hard to be accepted. She was the first in her family to graduate college and earn a master’s degree. Back then, this type of achievement was unprecedented for a black female from a fatherless household in the projects of South Baltimore. My grandmother’s male children never graduated middle school/high school. I don’t remember my grandmother ever openly expressing her pride in mom’s accomplishments. Instead her much more disturbed/troubled/unstable siblings were showered with attention/support financially and emotionally. She grew up seeing her own mother struggle to raise her 5 other siblings, go to work every day, and put food on the table all on her own. I can’t blame her for her perspective. In the world she comes from, this is the norm.

As a culmination of my personal background and cultural environment, I was set up to fail at marriage before I even entertained the idea of it. Most black women of my generation are. Maybe as a result of her own life experiences, my mother never proudly proclaimed her happiness. At least I never saw her do so. As far as I know, her life was riddled with hardship, misery, and disappointment since the day she was born. Marriage and children basically cemented her misery for eternity and she accepted it, with her only escape being shopping for clothes, shoes, and jewelry. I was handed this negative baggage to carry around with my entire life while subconsciously hoping I’d be able to prove my mother wrong, change her outlook on relationships, and get her to see that happiness in life was possible. To my dismay, I kept proving her right time and time again to the point I was starting to believe that I was destined to be alone and she had cursed me.

Yet, despite my mother’s anti-marriage/children/relationship indoctrination, tucked away deep in my empathic psyche, I am a raging hopeless romantic. Yes, I admit I believe in those Disney-esque fairytales, soul mates, twin flames, “the ONE”, or whatever you want to call it. I believe in true love-The kind you’d jump off a life boat onto a sinking vessel for, catch a bullet with your teeth for, kill rodents of unusual size for….. or the kind of love that inspires you run, name your shrimpin’ boat, and accidently make history all over the world for. Yeah…THAT kind of love. So, when I received my marriage proposal, I believed that’s what I was signing up for. When I first told my mother I was getting married, I braced myself for the backlash. Shockingly, she was very supportive! It was confusing and strange. I almost didn’t understand it, but I ran with it anyway and didn’t ask questions. It just felt good for once to have her validation and approval, but I kept myself on guard just in case. Good thing I did because just hours before walking down the white sandy isle in the Dominican Republic, my mom (and dad) caught me off guard and sucker punched me their concerns, but it was already too late. I was secretly married at the courthouse 3 weeks before.

The truth was right in front of me less than a month into my marriage. Nevertheless, the determination to prove that I could be “normal” blinded me. The honeymoon stage that most married couples are supposed to experience eluded me, even while on my actual honeymoon in paradise. Instead, in the weeks after our official wedding day, I found myself in tears after arguing over something as inconsequential as toilet paper. I was taunted by the voice of regret that I silenced over and over again. I remember thinking to myself “seems like he is the only one benefitting from this marriage.” I felt guilty for even thinking that. I was hit with the harsh reality very early on I read an article that talked about how there is a period of mourning your single life after marriage. I thought that was what I was going through and once I got done grieving, I’d get my fairytale. Well, the grieving never stopped….

After 4 years of pretending that marriage was full-fulling and wonderful, how did I reach my breaking point? Well, as an empath I can take a lot of BS. However, it’s usually something trivial that pushes me over the edge. That ”something” this time was a haircut. Yes, a haircut. It was around April 2016 (nearly 3 years into the marriage) when that itch for a change came around. I saw an amazing haircut on Instagram and I was inspired! As part of my upbringing and grooming for independence, my mother gave up dictating how I dressed myself since the age of 5. Now as a married woman I had to ask for permission??? WTF! I approached him the idea which resulted in him having a full-blown tantrum! How dare I want to something that would possibly make me happy that doesn’t involve him? He was offended that I would even suggest cutting my hair and supported his stance with biblical scriptures about wives obeying their husbands. I mentioned to him the very fact my own mother didn’t even tell me how to dress as a child and he responded with “Well, you weren’t married when you were a child.” Like somehow being married, or just being married to him was worse than reverting back to existing as a 5-year-old. And now that I was at his mercy and in his territory, he threatened divorce whenever he didn’t get his way, even when it came to my physical appearance. I remember thinking to myself, how did I get here??? HOW!? I went from complete independence to not being able to make decisions about my own hair growing from my own scalp??? Seriously, WTF! He told me that I didn’t belong to me anymore and that I belonged to him! He owned me. In the movie Clueless, Cher Horowitz, after reeling from a fall out with her best friend and failing her driver’s test, said to herself. “It’s like I’m in some sort of alternate Universe! I have to get out.” That’s exactly how I was feeling. Out of everything I put up with, that was where the line was drawn. I started checking out emotionally, but because he was always breathing down my neck, I didn’t have any private time to process my feelings. I started going to the local Wal-Mart to sit in the parking lot for hours just to have “me” time and when I was alone with my own thoughts I’d look at myself in the rear-view mirror. What I saw staring back at me was scary. I had become the Walking Dead.

I was no longer Sunni-The Sunni I knew and was raised to be. The Sunni that was known for her bubbliness was now flat. The sparkle in her eyes was now dull. The Sunni who was always genuinely accepting of others now found herself judgmental. Sunni Diggs died and Sunni R*%^$&#* was someone I didn’t like or even know.

I wanted so badly to convince my mother fairytales were possible through the example of my my own marriage. I suppose my mother tried to do the same with my grandmother with her marriages (generational curse perhaps). I knew that once I was willing to admit to that my marriage was in fact a nightmare that I would be admitting to failure, proving my mother right yet AGAIN. I had to let go and mourn the happily ever after that I’d never have. People say “the truth hurts”. Well, the truth for me was excruciating. The disappointment was too large a pill to swallow, so I crushed it up with some courage and added tears to make it go down easier. Finally, after several months of reflection, I gathered the nerve to confide in my closest friends. For the first time since I said “I do”, I admitted to them and myself that I was unhappy….OUT LOUD. But unlike my mother, I decided I wasn’t going to accept it. That was the beginning of the end, and not even a haircut was going to fix it.

(To be continued…….)