When I look back at my life I realize that between the Republic of Lena and my adoptive mother’s family I was surrounded by hate, criticism and indifference my entire life and was not even aware of it.
It is a sorrowful day when a person’s normal is hatred. When it becomes the only thing they have ever known. It made me realize how miraculous and magnificent God is because even when I was entrenched in all that hatred and animosity he showed me and gave me the capacity to love.
It is unfortunate that during most of my life I loved and cared for the wrong people who used and abused me, but that is all par for the course especially when you were never taught about love and what to look for in a loving person.
With me it was always trial an error with only my instincts to guide. I know if it felt awful it could not be love and if it felt good it might be something like love.
My adoptive parents will tell people I am not loving and that I am miserable, but so are they. Everything they accuse me of, was mirrored from them. Even my penchant for spewing profanities were learned through their tirades with one another.
They have become so paranoid because the folks they harbor are untrustworthy so they believe everyone is like them. They have cameras strategically placed all over the house and every single phone conversation is recorded.
Even when I used to visit my adoptive father at his office I found out one day that our conversations were recorded after I had heard an echoing noise whilst speaking to him.
They are always looking for the bad in me while the people they perceive as good are running rings around them and they do not have the slightest clue.
Their biggest contention with me is that I am always kvetching…It is a Caribbean habit which sometimes gets a hold of me when I am extremely stressed. I will argue with the wall if I bounce into it, I will argue with my car keys if they are not working properly, I will argue with any neuter gender thing when I am distressed. It is a Jamaican thing that they do at times when on the war path.
What they conveniently leave out is the fact that I am a genuinely happy person full with natural gaiety and laughter which they translate as stupidity. I am like the simple angel who finds joy and amusement in the most mundane things.
An act they like to call absurd and foolish. Everything for them is seriousness all the time, they barely smile or crack jokes anymore.
When I am around them I become like a colicky baby because I pick up on all the symptoms which are wrong in the household. Every negative emotion becomes a part of me which then causes me to lash out by being miserable.
As a matter of fact, since most of the times I am extremely quiet my doctors often felt it was a good release for me to air my grievances when I felt buggered. Instead of holding on to them and stewing unnecessarily causing my blood pressure to rise or my asthma symptoms to become exacerbated.
At least when I verbalize my discontent they know exactly where they stand with me. There are others in the family who are laughing in their faces while sharpening the knives to stab them in the back.
My adoptive parents would have liked me just fine if they never had to take care of me. Which technically they only did for about four years after I migrated to America. Honestly, they really don’t strike me as individuals who wanted to be parents because they rarely acted like it.
At times I wonder what it is about me they cannot stand, then I realize it is the DNA of my biological father.
Fighting For My Life Memoir 