I am afraid to Live a happy life

Listen, I know I’m going to get a lot of people disagreeing with me and thats fine, life is about debate, discussion and dissonance. Otherwise, how would you be able to make informed decisions, birth new ideas and practices, start new political systems and create societies on which morals, and lives are built? Anyways, I digress. My dadda, who went on to be with the Lord in December of 2022 use to say something to me all the time. Let me back track and tell you a story.

My dadda was so young and full of life dispite his age. I thought I would always have him.

Maybe not forever. Everybody dies but never on earth did I think it’d be this soon. It never crossed my mind that I’d have to say goodbye to him forever at such a young age.

He was only 71.

You see I was an only child. It was always me and my father. There was woman whom came into my life who felt short of what he and I needed. None lasted long enough to stay. I always felt I was what my father needed. You can say I soften his heart. And I did. A man who was proud to be a ladies man. Never wanted to settle down until his age caught up to him. Or in a case where he met a special woman. He would tell stories about this woman named Marybel, my mother, the one who got away. You see, me and my mother are similar in ways I never knew. I grew to know more of her this year 2024.

Marybiel was a woman with an endlessly giving heart, ambitious and intelligent, very religious, and sometimes stubborn – yet inexplicably open to new ideas and ways of being even though her staunch and steadfast belief in her own (her own meaning God’s) moral code. She loved my father, and many many of her friends and family that surrounded her, especially me endlessly. Yet we have only met briefly when I was born. Why am I talking about Marybiel now you may ask? Well, she helped shape my father into the man he was. She gave her last like it was her job, working, finagling, and moving pieces of her financial chessboard all for the benefit of our upward mobility. Rarely did she not share every and anything she had, often to her own deprivation. Oh, and mind you, she did all of this without the benefit of full sight. Imagine, a Spanish woman who grew up in the country part of Dominican Republic then moving to New Jersey, with a widowed mother of 11 children, she being the last born, without a clear vision, latina, and a woman. But despite all this she pushed and made a life. Most of all she shown my father that no matter the limits life brings you, you should make it beautiful.

Olga my abuela on the left, Marybiel on the right

I’m sure you’re wondering where I’m going with this and exactly what did my dad tell me, I promise you it will all make sense. Anyway, my dad had a sensitive constitution. He had an illness that often affected his energy levels and mobility. I noticed this change in May of 2020. And no it was not because of Covid-19. As you can see, I still can’t say the “d” word, it’s still almost surreal to write about him in the past tense, this man was my best friend, my alpha and omega. He was a businessman who took care of his family, was strict, and very protective when it came to me.

Everyone is built differently, everyone deals with stress in different ways. Some work-out, some eat like crazy, some work like crazy, and some resort to other more vice-driven habits, but my dad, internalized stress. It could be a man thing or something African men do in general. Im not sure but he wouldn’t complain, voice his worry, or hurt, he would internalize his stress until he reached a breaking point, one huge big bang that left me hanging, and me sitting silently, dead inside.

I was being the bratty child always wanting my way at any cost and desperately wanting my father’s attention. He gave me anything I wanted with no hesitation. When I decided to leave home to find my meaning in life after a breakup with my long-time boyfriend Kay, I wanted a fresh start. I wanted to know who I am outside of Kay. I felt I had no identity and my whole world revolved around him and my father. So leaving NYC was the best option. When I arrived to Texas with no real plan or purpose. I was on a faith journey. Although I have healed from the breakup; I didn’t feel mature enough to be on my own. I felt I needed my father with me to help me through this process. And he needed me just as much, but what I didn’t know on the other side of America was my father slowly dying. I kept adding my stress and my undiagnosed mental health issues onto my father. He knew his time was running short which is why he went back home to Cape Verde to make peace with what was to come. What he failed to do was to prepare me for a life without him. He felt I was in good hands of Gabriel, whom would watch over me. I did feel a bit of jealousy coming from my dad. How can I continue knowing one of my favorite people is no longer with me? Every accomplishment I’ll have from going forward would just remind me of him not being here.

So in the year around 2008, I felt me and my father becoming more of a father and daughter duo, sharing secrets usually only heard between two girlfriends of the same approximate age. He was the love of my life (as I type with tears rolling down my face), and as I grew older he started to see the similarities in our disposition, the way I hid things that hurt me, I would sit quietly for a very long time not uttering a word, he said one thing – “apple (my nickname) I learned one thing from a James Brown song, and I’m going to tell you now. ‘You got to live for yourself….'” And at the time I just took this on a surface level, “Okay dadda, you’re right.” But adulthood, living through the stresses of his death and the stress of a highly stressful work life and balancing relationships, has taught me what he tried to tell me all along, you’ve got to do things for yourself on a daily basis that are JUST for you. As a woman, I tend to put myself last in life. It’s embedded in my psyche to be the caretaker, the lover, the problem solver, and when I’m all done there’s usually just time to tuck myself into bed. Stress has done things to my body that have probably taken years off of it. As I type this, I’ve had a salad (no meat) and a bottle of water the whole day, trying to eat healthy is very bittersweet. How many times ladies/gentlemen have we neglected our own care to get other shit done? Our bodies, how healthy we eat, how much exercise we get, and how much time we take to pray, reflect, and check in with ourselves mentally all go toward a long life. We’re most of American’s future livelihood is under attack, our healthcare, and ultimately, our rights. We MUST take time to take care of ourselves. Things don’t work unless you do. If you continue to run on burnt-out fumes, taking care of everyone around you and the world, living off of and thriving on their seeming dependence on you, what will happen when you just can’t anymore?

Steps;

I now take longer showers, go to bed earlier, eat more greens and fruits, pray a little longer, find something to smile at, starting a new book, take a vacation, get a massage, and journaling. Even just taking a walk down the block and breathing. Made me feel better! That dope of dopamine from that me-time helps me a lot. On every other aspect of my life, I strive to be good and Godly, but where stress management is concerned, I’ll take his advice and try to live for myself more! I hope you can too!

xoxo

Kaya