It is no secret that I'm not easy to get along with. It almost screams from my pores. Actually, it's not that I'm hard to get along with. It's more that I am blatantly honest, aggressively so, and that ain't no shit anybody wants to deal with. I don't sweeten my words at all. So when my cousins decided to discuss Thanksgiving plans back in 2012, after years of feeling like I had no help, I served them bitter tongue. I was met with "you've never asked for help and you can do everything alone so we never offered." My skin literally boiled off my body and had to grow back....well, maybe not literally, but you get my point. I was pissed. And I cut the whole damn family off. When my mother died in 2016, I solidified it by cremating them with her. Errybody damn died that day!
But that was years ago. That was the angry me. That was the me who didn't realize I actually belonged in a family. That was the version of me that didn't understand the importance of being loved. Everyone says they want to be loved. However, do you actually know what that means? I didn't. A huge part of being loved is being accepted for who you are and not being condemned for who you aren't. But that starts within first! You have to be real with yourself about those nasty parts of yourself that make loving you a challenge....even you don't love those parts of you. So I had to do some work because I wanted to be accepted for being me, but I wasn't truly ready for my family to love me because there were still parts of myself that I didn't love. However, at the time, I couldn't accept that truth.
It was much easier to lash out and be bitter with the excuse of "ain't nobody finna play with me", than it was to handle my own shit. I'm an Aries all day, so anger and aggression are my native tongue. I know how to be mad. Until my mother died, I was ignorant to the other emotions. I knew the basics; happy, sad, and MAD. I'd never experienced all the shit in between and beyond those 3. No one ever told me about all the other shit! When I saw my mother's lifeless body lying on the floor of my childhood bedroom (the 911 operator had my father put her on the floor to give her CPR), I realized I was alone and I began to feel every last one of those foreign emotions at once! Lost doesn't begin to describe what I was. The very being that nurtured me inside them for my growth and protection was gone. And so was I. I was no longer connected to my roots. I was dug up in a nasty way! And it took me years to understand what I was feeling and even damn longer to figure out how to fix the shit!
It took close to 3 years for me to understand and realize that what I needed was my family. I needed the unconditional and undying love that I was used to having. I threw away family reunions, holiday dinners, random drunken nights full of laughs, and endless text messages telling me I was beautiful and LOVED. Oh baby, them Boone cousin LOVE!!! I threw away a huge part of my heart; a huge part of ME. When I rejected them, I rejected the very love that rooted me. I rejected one of the best parts of myself. I had a lot of work to do because I also realized that I hadn't provided a lovable version of myself to them. So I couldn't go to them until I was able to give them what they truly deserved. They deserved the best of me. They deserved the healed me. They deserved the evolved me. And they deserved for me to love the best parts of them unconditionally. Slowly, I am mending those wounds that I caused. I am a Boone and I finally know how to love like a Boone.