To Anticipate Destruction 

 

My whole life, I’ve been told that I wasn't good enough. “No man will love you if you cannot cook, clean and bear his children with egos bigger than the universal lie.” Ok. Maybe I lied about the last part but it does not change the fact that my whole life, I still wasn't good enough.

 

I am a first generation African American and I will be the first to graduate in my household. I will be the first to go to college and I was first to be told that no man sees further than what is between my legs and so I've always been that girl that wanted someone to come checking for me. The real me. And yet when an Angel walked into my life, I waited and waited and waited for him to tell me that my mother is right by leaving me because I am not good enough. 

 

I want to be married one day. Or at least I think I do because even if my intellect isn’t enough, at least I'll be another kind of trophy. Reality is, I've been taught that marriage is the ultimate way to keep a man through my mother and yet her marriage with my father fails everyday, and the only reason why she stays is because of the fact that she can cook, clean and she had beared him 4 big egoed children, bigger egos than the lie that marriage is the ultimate way to make someone stay. 

 

I want to bear children. To multiply when I am sure that I can divide myself into two for innocent lives that are to exit my body in one of the most painful yet beautiful ways possible. I want that child to know that not every man wants you to feel the wet flesh between your legs. And you ARE good enough. 

 

I want to be enough. I really wish I was. I wish I could trust myself not to trust my mother's word. I wish I didn't measure my capabilities through the ability to fall in love with a man or how many cellular eggs will turn to people with the help of a man. But, I do. And so I respond to my mother by saying “You’re right. I am not enough.”