Matters of the Heart

See that little flower pot I'm holding in my hands there?
The flowers inside?

Dead. (you know who else looks dead? me in this picture. I didn't realize how wasted I looked until now. This illness has really taken a lot out of me)

It hasn't even been a month since a neighbor gave it to me.

See, I think I'm cursed. I can't seem to keep any of my flowers alive!

Which is why I've developed a liking for dead, dried flowers over the years. My bedroom in Virginia was full of them. I still have a bouquet an old boyfriend gave me in eleventh grade and flowers my mom gave me at graduation and on my birthdays. Here, in my apartment, I have dried the giant bouquet of roses ND brought me when Mitch originally returned from Kelowna, back in October 09.

I like dried flowers. But I would like to learn how to keep some alive, which is why I plan to attend Calgary Seedy Saturday! If you are not up to date on what Genetic Modified Organism are, how fucked up it is that they're starting to be able to grow pork in a petri dish or how Monsento has been fucking with your food, then watch Food Inc, inform yourself, and understand that if nothing is done to stop it now, well you may as well stop having children because the future is FUCKED.

What Monsento has been doing to smaller agricultural enterprises is a crime, but folks now a days are too retarded and hypnotized by pop culture and the lie that is the American Dream to rise in protest.



Which brings me to the conversation my mum and I had this morning.

I was telling her about Mitch calling me yesterday. Which he did. He called me for the first time in weeks to let me know that the doctors advised him to return to the hospital because of the 'hostile' environment his mother and father were fostering at home...trying to get him to not be a part of his daughter's life and all...I'm sure, under the excuse of a supposed future he was supposed to have, one of course that was completely under their control and according to their whims.

And I was sitting there through that whole phone call listening to him whine about how abnormal is family was and the only thing I could think of is: IT TOOK YOU THIS LONG TO FIGURE THIS OUT?

I smelled the craaaaaazy off those people the minute I met them. But polite me actually stuck around long enough to see them pull it out (as if they could really hide it) and the only reason why I did is because I loved Mitch and I thought 'well he just needs to learn that having toxic parents isn't the end of the world, he just has to keep them at arms length until they learn how to respect our boundaries, or they can keep the fuck out forever'.

Either way my mom tells me that WE'VE given Mitch more chances than he deserves and he can honestly go fuck himself.

And I agree.

Meanwhile, Mitch claims that he's seen the error in his way, in trying to seek the easy way out, and if only he were allowed to be a part of his daughter's life he might learn how to live a healthy life, surrounded by healthy people.

And I agree.

It has never been my goal to keep him away from her. Everyone aware of the situation are aware that I've moved heaven and earth to make him be a part of her life, going as far as placing her in his arms while he's in one of his little pity-fest to try to make him realize that each second he spends feeling sorry from himself he loses a chance to bond with his daughter.

Either way the simple fact that the doctors actually thought that being around his family was a danger to his mental health speaks a lot on how disagreeable they are. I know his doctor in Kelowna had a limited to no-contact with family policy, and his Calgary doctor spoke extensively with his mom, so of course she was able to lie to him and make him believe whatever she wanted him to, I'm the devil, this and that...

Now this doesn't change that it was his choice to abandon Lilo and I for the false promise of financial stability his parents offered him. And the bullshit they pulled...I gotta tell you.

Absolutely unbelievable.

This past holiday season it started with facebook messages from his brothers on his mom's 'suggestion' (I would say influence) urging him to supposedly come back home so he can enjoy a perma-vacation of some sort. They would promise him that if he went back he can get some rest, eat healthy food, go enjoy some time off at Big White, and the way his brothers would leave comments on his facebook would be in the tone of 'hey we're having fun, why aren't you here'...and see they were doing this back in Christmas, actually trying to get him to go spend Christmas with them instead of here, with his own child.

I told him back then:

"Mitch, what kind of people would want to take a man away from his own child on your first holiday together? Let's not even mention that they are your parents, but if they seek to take you away from their own grandchild, since that grandchild is black and apparently not worth much, then you need to open your eyes and see things for what they are. Your parents are racist pigs. And if you continue to be okay with their behavior, just as I have deemed their presence unhealthy for Lilo's emotional and mental well-being, I would do the same for you. Your job is to protect your child. So fucking do it. Or I will protect her from all of you."

But just as there is a serious lack of moral in this family, all the 'kids' have grown up in fucked up environments: the TV was the babysitter, instead of moral values being instilled they're constantly bribed to do things they are obligated to do.

Of course they don't want to be normal. They don't have to be. Mommy and Daddy have money, I don't have to go to school. Or Mommy and Daddy have money, I don't have to obey any sort of social or moral law. I can fuck with whoever I want and get away with it.

In Mitchell's case what I've been able to deduce is that whenever he was having troubles in school he was transferred to another school so when regular teenagers just get over bullying and built some toughness, Little Lord Fauntleroy over here has never bothered to lift a finger to do anything for himself, which is the way his family would have it, as it makes him more pliable and controllable. He's never had to work for anything he's got so he takes everything for granted, including, my willingness to include him in Lilo and I's life, after what he's done.

My personal opinion, on his illness, is that the human will is a powerful, powerful tool. Will will make a man who's been told he would never walk again push himself to the point that he can. Will can make a schizophrenic, someone who's been deemed incapable by society, become a highly respected scholar and professor. Will got me off my ass when I was in a psychward and helped me graduate high school and move across the continent to go to university. On my own.

And a strong will is what's pushing me to pursue happiness, health and wholeness despite the so called odds stacked against me. The so-called odds his family thought they could use against me as a scare tactic to get me to do what they wanted me to do, when they were trying to coerce me into giving my own daughter up, but the thing about these kind of people is that they have become so convinced of their 'own power' based on their ability to suppress and control the mentally ill people in their own family that they're starting to exaggerate their own ability to make things happen.

Just cause you're surrounded by weak minded folk doesn't mean you can dominate everywhere else. Just because Mammon is your God doesn't mean he's mine.  Besides, the African women in my family are made of mother-fucking Gundanium as far as I'm concerned.

Wherever there's a will, there's a way. 

And I've seen them use those scare tactics against Mitch. Whenever he suddenly tried to push himself his mom would be quick to tell him what he can or he can do. And to see the light dim in his eyes. It's so sad.

It broke my heart.

Independence, is non-existent in all of them though, in the more laughable cases(the creepy female cousin), being loud and boisterous about being independent while running back to mommy to get money, only to return on the soapbox...is just...really sad and hypocritical, but clearly, the way to be.

And despite all of this, their arrogance is still present. Though in my eyes, it's nothing more than a pathetic show of desperate people fucking each other over in the semblance of doing good, to them, it's their way of life. And they have the right to be as fucked up as they want.

As long as they keep that shit as far away from my daughter and I as possible.

My family has observed this bullshit and my mother has taken over Mitchell's financial responsibility to us while I was unable to work and receive benefits, so not only am I blessed to finally have a healthy relationship with my mum, but I definitely understand her aversion for him. Just as she has said, " I spent more time talking to Mitchell than I talked to your own older brother, Yolande, and if after I made all that effort it meant nothing to him, then it is done. We have done all we could for Mitch. We welcomed him into our family, but he and his family chose to behave like they were important, we don't want anything to do with them anymore."

Then of course, the conversation takes a weird turn...

To be continued.

Gotta go pick up a parcel at the post office.