WHY NOT CHANGE THE ENDING?
by Linda S. Jones-Remson
I couldn’t see myself. But I could feel what happened. I was hurt very badly. I was looking around out of one eye. There was the taste of blood in my mouth and my words were unintelligible. The man responsible for my battered state made sure that I would always remember the day I told him he lost me to a man named Jesus. And I do remember. That was the day I found the strength to walk out of that living hell! I knew my choice might cost me my life, but I wasn’t willing to go on this way. I was ready to bury that part of my life and begin a new one. However that played out, I’d made my peace with it.
Standing up for myself had never been something I was good at. I was afraid of everything. But mostly of myself. I did more damage to myself during that period of time than an enemy would have! “Self-loathing”. I was filled with it. There were so many reasons I gave myself to excuse my recklessness. I was adopted. So you see, not even my own mother and father wanted me. If there wasn’t something wrong with me they would have kept me and made my childhood happy and safe. But they didn’t, and my childhood was filled with long periods of waiting for the next bad thing to happen. I thought that was how it would always be for me.
I’d lost the first man who loved me; my adopted father, “Poppy”. He was dark and always smelled like “Old Spice” and “Lucky Strikes”. He was my hero! I remember one sunny day in our backyard I stuck my finger in the spinning spokes of a bicycle wheel and promptly snipped about an eighth of an inch off the tip. “Poppy” was frantic! I thought it was wonderful that he was so worried. The whole time, until we got back home, after he treated me to ice cream for being so brave, I was beaming! Shortly after that he died of lung cancer. That cigarette smell I loved, was what cut short his life. I was 5 years old and I had been deserted by three people in my life; my biological mother and father, and now my beloved hero was gone too!