Momma’s Curse
There are some things that you need to know about me. Things that I don’t like to talk about. Things that must be talked about. So, listen. When my momma was about 5 years old, her momma up and left her. Yep, my grandma excused herself from the breakfast table one fine country morning and walked away from her drinkin’, farmin’ husband and their four little kids. She didn’t bother with goodbyes; she just threw down her apron and walked out the door. Then, she drove off down a dirt road headed toward what she thought damn well had to be a better life. She wanted to forget that those yappy, needy kids ever fell out of her. And she did. She erased them from her memory without ever lookin’ back. It was like she never even knew ‘em.
I took me a long time to understand why my grandma did such a horrible thing. It was the 1940s, and hell, not a whole bunch of women walked out on their kids back then. But, like I said, it was the 1940s. It was the tail-end of the Great Depression. We were smack dab in the middle of World War 2. Life was a damn mess for everyone. But for women? Lord Almighty. Women didn’t have much in the way of rights to begin with back then. They sure didn’t sit around debating about birth control and family planning. When it came to havin’ babies, they were just stuck as all get out. Women like my grandma spit out babies one after another, year after year, often havin’ a handful of children before the ripe old age of 20 or so. My grandma was young and beautiful. And I suspect that she was just tired of being tired. Tired of cotton fields and cotton diapers. Tired of being sad and lonely and broke. Tired of takin’ wallops upside the head from my drunken grandpa. Just plain tired.
There’s another, more important, reason why my grandma was so damn ready to take off down that dirt road: She was cursed. Cursed! She’d been cursed by her momma to never know peace, to never know joy or love. To never be surrounded by a single human being who respected or valued her even a little. I understand now that my grandma was not a bad woman; she was just a tired woman. A tired, sad, beautiful young woman tryin’ to outrun a wretched curse.
I wish I could tell you that she took that curse with her when she ran off. But that’d be a damn lie. Because before she left, my grandma passed that curse on to my momma. Now, I’m not sayin’ that she passed it to her on purpose. I’m just saying that’s what mommas do if they aren’t careful: they pass on the curse that was passed on to them. Without even bein’ around to watch that curse manifest and mutate and multiply and mutilate, that’s just what mommas do.
She could have taken my momma with her when she left. (Coulda, shoulda, woulda, y’all.) Who knows how the curse might’ve revealed itself if my momma had her momma around while she was growin’ up? But look, the truth is that my grandma flat-out didn’t want my momma. Didn’t want her at all. The problem was, neither did anyone else. My liquored-up, mean-ass grandpa didn’t have any use for her. Poor Momma had nowhere to go.
In the end, she was “given” to her aunt. That’s how they talk about it. Like my great-aunt won a pie at that year’s carnival. “Step right up! You’re a winner!” And while I’m certain that my great-aunt had some semblance of love buried deep somewhere in her big ol’ bones, she never saw fit to share any of that love with my momma. My momma grew up as her aunt’s field hand, her hired help. In exchange for room and board, she wrangled the cows and pigs and chickens and tomatoes and okra and such. She wasn’t treated like family, y’all; she was living, breathing PROPERTY. And she damn well knew it.
She was a cursed little girl.
She grew up fast and she grew up physically strong. But like most kids who get a great big smack in the heart so young, my momma never really grew up. She stayed emotionally stuck at age 5, the age she was when she’d watched her momma leave her. No matter how many decades passed, no matter how many wrinkles collected on her face, she remained a lost and lonely 5-year-old girl, forever waiting for her momma to come back to her. Forever longing for her momma to tell her that she was worth something, anything.
When she was a teenager, my momma got tired of bein’ tired and she up and left the farmin’ life, just like her momma had done. She didn’t know where she was goin’ or what she would eat when she got there but she damn well knew she had to get somewhere else. Momma didn’t have anyone to pass the curse onto yet, so she packed it in her bag and carried it along that dirt road when she headed out to Anywhere-But-Here. She swore that she’d make a better life for herself away from that farm. She swore that she’d stay away from people who left her lonely and sad and used up. People who made her feel like she was nothing.
You know that’s not how it ended up though, don’t y’all? In no time at all, just like her daddy had done before her, my momma fell into drinkin’. Yeah, she fell hard into that hole of sorrow. And though she’d sworn to change her destiny when she left that farm and she’d sworn to steer clear of those who sucked every ounce of joy from her body, she never did either of those things. In her ineffective attempts to fight off the curse, my momma shuffled men in and out of her front door. One after another. After another. For years and years, my poor, sad, drunken momma begged poor, sad, drunken men for affection. And they’d give it to her! For a few seconds, anyway. If they told her that she was pretty (which she was but couldn’t fathom), they could slip off her slip, take a little slice of her soul, and then drive off like they never even knew her. She watched a lot of men drive off over the years. That was her replaying the heartache of her momma leavin’ her and never lookin’ back, right there. That was confirmation of the curse. Confirmation that she’d never be worth stayin’ around for and never be loved, even a little.
Just like her momma had done before her, my momma had a bunch of babies early in life. I was the second of her four “Uh-oh! What am I gonna do now?” kids. And, dammit, we all inherited that wicked curse: the curse of never feelin’ good about taking up space on this earth, never feelin’ wanted or loved or of any value at all. The curse of being nothing.
Lord knows, I thought I’d die still bearing the weight of that curse. But. I am not my momma. I am not my grandma or her momma. And I have determined this: I won’t pass my momma’s curse along to my children. It stops HERE. With me.
I choose to fight it. Lord Almighty, I choose to fight it! I have made up my mind that I will battle this self-fulfilling prophecy of doom, this condemned inheritance of self-loathing and self-slaughter. I want y’all to know that. I will damn well fight this miserable fate! I choose to counter the voices in my head taught to me by the voices in my momma’s head taught to her by the voices in her momma’s head. Those voices incessantly whisper in my ear, “You are ugly, a burden, unworthy, and unlovable. You are nothing.”
I reject those generational voices; I reject the curse.
I choose not to be a drunken victim of circumstance, a contemporary incarnation of the women in my family that suffered this curse before me. I choose not to numb myself with cheap, stale beer and shit-faced men who love that cheap, stale beer but don’t for one damn minute love me. I choose not to give in to the slow suicide of hopelessness. I choose not to let another human being define me, dominate me, or destroy me. I choose not to walk around with a gapin’ hole where my heart should be. I won’t be forever seekin’ to fill that hole with destructive behaviors that make me feel better for an instant but then make the hole bigger. And bigger. And BIGGER until that hole grows into a massive, swirling vortex of pain, forever sucking in more, more, and even more pain. Until that pain imprisons me and paralyzes me with its constant confirmation of my overwhelming NOTHINGness.
Hell no, y’all! Hell to the damn no.
For now, for always and forever, for y’all, I choose to fight. By making that one choice, that one shamelessly defiant, audacious choice, I have embraced the truth. The hard truth is that, cursed or not, we always have a choice: Whether we will let our happiness be dictated by the conditions in which we find ourselves or take responsibility for our own actions and attitudes. Whether we will be centered by a peace that comes from within or we will be dependent on others for our emotional needs. Whether we will recognize our own worth or we will, to our dying day, grovel for scraps of affection from another.
I know now that I can choose change. I can choose joy. I can choose to surround myself with people that value, respect, and affirm me. I can choose to be thankful instead of bitter. To be kind instead of cruel. To run toward serenity and not just away from a brutal curse.
We can choose, y’all.
We can choose to wake up each day in gratitude for the sunrise and we can choose to go to sleep each night with an appreciation for one more glorious sunset. We can choose to discover pleasure in the ordinary. We can choose to both give and receive abundant, spectacular, healing love.
So, hear me. Listen. I had a beautiful, very sad momma. And she had a beautiful, very sad momma, and before them, there were so, so many beautiful, sad mommas in this family. It’s been a curse for generation after generation, for as long back as anyone can remember. But the curse is broken now. We are free. Because your momma is a fighter. For you, my children. Every day, and with all that is in me, I will choose to fight.
I love y’all,
Your Momma
