The Summer of 83

Most individuals look at the family as a safe place. Family is supposed to be an environment where you feel you can let your hair down and be your authentic self. However, in my family, it is the opposite.

I did not realize my family members were so duplicitous and hypocritical until I had endured so much histrionics and melodrama.  By that time, I had turned half a century. Which made me ask myself a very strange question, “Have you been sleeping most of your life?”

The summer of 83 has become a very poignant time for me because I recently found out that a night that occurred back then has set the stage for all my misadventures because it was relayed to others in a most unflattering manner.

Here is my story:

The summer of 83 was my first year in college and the time when I had begun dating. I had just met my beau and we had a ritual of having date nights on Fridays. This particular date night, we had gone to an event in the village and then went out to a Chinese restaurant near his house.

I was feeling a bit uncomfortable so we opted for take-out instead and went back to his apartment. When we arrived, his mother had just returned home from work so we asked her if she wanted to have dinner with us.

His mother never liked me from the very beginning although she put on a good show to let her son believe she was on board with the relationship. The fact of the matter was, she was jealous of me.

She was annoyed her son was constantly buying me gifts and spending all his free time with me. The fact she was unaware of was that I had done so many generous things for him from the time we met, it was only fair for him to reciprocate.

I never asked him for anything or put any pressure on him. But if he gave me a gift I was grateful and appreciative.

The woman hated me with a passion. Unbeknownst to me when we sat down to dine, her hand was quicker than anyone could imagine. She laced my food with poison. Innocently, I ate every morsel and spent the rest of the evening chatting with her until it was time for me to start making my way home.

I said my goodbyes and hailed a cab to the station. On my way home, I began feeling faint, and cold sweat began washing my body profusely. In a matter of minutes I came down with severe cramping and I felt as if I were going to have involuntary bowel movements.

Luckily for me, I had arrived at my destination and instead of hailing a cab straight away, I dashed across the street to the taxi service. I asked if I could use the lavatory. As I closed the door behind me in the bathroom, I suddenly became deathly ill.

Everything was happening all at once, I was vomiting profusely and having uncontrollable diarrhea.

In those days, there were no cell phones so I had to think fast to get myself together to call home for someone to get me. I remembered wearing a beautifully embroidered black mini-dress of which I thought would have been ruined by the whole fiasco.

I tore reams of paper to wash my outfit off completely to make myself odor free and presentable to go to the office of the cab service to call someone to get me. Thank goodness I made it a habit to carry perfume with me most of the time.

My adoptive parents were not speaking with me so I ended up calling my aunt and her husband to come and get me.

By then, I had returned to my pristine state, however, there was still the chance that the situation could have repeated itself. When my aunt came, she brought blankets to cover the car seat just in case any other incidents loomed.

I never dreamed she would have taken the scenario out of context insinuating that is how I am as a person. The way the incident was relayed to others, was as if this was the norm for me and it depicted me as if I were someone careless and remiss at hygiene.

I wondered why she would do such a thing, as she had raised me and knew how I felt about cleanliness and germs. Then it dawned on me, that what I had originally suspected was true.

It was not fated for me to meet my first boyfriend. It was a plot which was devised by the aunt who raised me and other members of my family. In my blog, I previously wrote about the fact that my aunt had known my beau’s mother because they went to the same convent school together.

I now know it was not a coincidence but a plot to corrupt me. They had no plan at all for me to grow up decently and live a prosperous, healthy life. The plan was to corrupt me with the ways of the world, then set me free, and hope that I would rake in the dough engaging in clandestine matters for the family. That was the only way they could tolerate me and for me to earn my keep at the same time.

They did not want to invest in me heavily because of the way they felt about my biological father.

When they saw I was stubborn and refused to comply with their lascivious and lewd wishes my beau’s mother took the initiative to poison me because they all belong to the same “cult”.

I was supposed to have died that night but for some reason, God spared me from the rat poison which was placed in my food. I did not know it then, but my birth mother’s family has always viewed me as an oddment and eye sore.

They never cared for my biological father and a lot of their feelings towards him have been transcended upon me. This is the reason why every chance they get they try to belittle me or try to make me feel unwelcome.

So all the while I was living my life believing my family was genuinely in my corner, they were not. They will only pretend to care about me if I degrade myself and conform to their wishes. Other than those terms my presence makes them nauseated.

I guess some people would be devastated by these facts but what makes all of these revelations palatable was the fact I did make a life for myself without them. Their actions have shown me that not because people are your relations it  means you have to be buxom buddies with them.

This is where I made my mistake, thinking we could all get along. When people are hell-bent on eliminating the competition there is never any getting along. There is only survival mode against their evil plots.