growing up with strict parents—i mean, a parent, and two aunts who
raised me my whole life, who, took care of me, treated their
raising me as a paternalistic obligation my abstraction of a father
who sporadically came in and out of my life, could not do. in fact whatever
i wanted, they’d give it to me, giving material things to me and further entitling myself
to more material rewards, stubbornly learning about the virtue of labor
and the dollar i did, but i still had much to learn. as a growing teenager
i still expected gifts from growing up with my strict parents—i mean
a parent, and two aunts who would reward me when i was upset,
fussing when i didn’t receive what i wanted. these gifts that i had
were rewarding but emboldening this temporary happiness and
obfuscating my ongoing, toppling feelings of guilt, inferiority, and
inadequacy; putting my manipulative ways and misdoings behind me,
i hid them though i could never completely cover them up because
my memories impede on my thoughts once in a while. and no matter
how i, the child who was raised—no, failed—no, raised unsuccessfully,
i’d unintentionally look outside of my Black body and i would perceive
my individuality as a mannish semblance. i’d see me more as an artistic,
facetious Black man of pitiful naivety who was living without a self-unmade
trail and growing up, i did not know how my age had to do with my masculinity,
and my traditional role as a “man” in this Eurowestern world, along with slowly
understanding all that the Eurowest had brought to my eyes, were nothing more than permeating, doublespeaking lies, orating racist axioms, normalizing the everyday demonization of Black lives. my life is only worth a transient glance so fleeting—as long as there is money in my pocket, an English tongue smelling of a kind
of masculine piousness that reeks of pretentious White pedagogical prescriptivism,
no intrusive tears that could stain the fabric of my soft, dark skin, and a perniciously
cemented smile that bends my will and choice to show any sentiments of any other kind.
growing up with strict parents—no, a parent, goddamnit, who is a strong, Black Christian woman, easily becomes worrisome when i leave her. when i walk outside
toward this unpredictable, absurd world, she immediately worries, and voices frantic
cries of the envisioning of the intention, of my returning to her, few seconds after i
leave her home. and growing with a strict parent! From her spoiling and mollycoddling
me, i grew impatient and i interpreted her care as authoritarianism:
a nervous inclination to “have obligation” to do what is best for me
demarcating inferiority as not just uneducated Black people, but Black
people who were not in school, the vulgar Black people, the
“thugs” Black people, the Black people who have been to prison,
and just about anyone who did drugs and alcohol delineating my
greatness and perceived superiority as having always done well in
school, pollyannaishly documenting her infantilized perception of
me as “good” to others, (goodness is morally subjective, goodness is
not a material pursuit, nor is goodness objectively malleable.)
as her way of furthering her control over me, but my Mother’s ways
have not always been best for me as they, harmed me as I aged while she expects me to “be a man.” despite the stereotypical gender role of Black
manhood, i rarely casted doubt and probed what being a man, being
Black, and “masculine” meant to me ontologically. from me acting
stubbornly and manipulative, defeatist, even through the slightest
difficulties as I aged, it was as if my anger could not be explained
in a concrete way to express how lost i’ve been. i had grown up
spoiled, abused with recurring pains of my domestic abuse as a
teenage boy, that, my father caused me, the same recurring pains
that have a psychobiographical interrelationship with my being
shielded from the world: a loss of my personhood, and a loss of
Black cultural understanding i had been grotesquely whitewashed,
feeling that this sociocultural cue pulled me further away from the
Black community, as I have misinterpreted that being Black is not
something i do; being Black is something i have always been. growing
up with a strict parent, who is a Haitian immigrant, who did much good
in raising me as she and my aunts were subject to the misogyny and physical abuse my dictatorial grandfather put them through. My mother wanted a better life for herself and I, as being in Haiti, she could not manage her life economically. growing up with a strict parent, Mother did what she had to do, but what of the way I was raised? i am inclined to continue investigating why i do what i do:— why
i behave like i behave why i was passive-aggressively stubborn during that
trip in Florida, why i am in love with Life, but often afraid of living,
disgusted with the countless atrocities done by humankind,
why my paranoia and hypersensitive fear deters me to avoid wanting to enjoy
anything without thinking something might go wrong, why i have been
teased for not flaunting my experiences, why i have never excelled at a sport,
why i have unrepentantly assumed i am good at nothing, why i am a inquiring ideologue
of impractical worlds, situations, and outcomes that have been euphoric and picturesque of humans who
love one another for their differences—and not for capital gain, humans who do not kill for
capital, humans who do not kill when they themselves have been in pain, and humans who do not the impoverished, and disenfranchised, the secular and atheistic, the schizophrenic and psychotic, the depressed, existentially sapped, and anxiety-ridden.
growing up with strict parents, or growing up with a strict parent, whose inward pain
convinces the individual to ruthlessly self-shame because being sheltered makes them
feel like their lives are mistakes and whose gullibility and rebellion cannot be tamed
leads them to believe they have been cognitively unfit to survive in this world. The more i become aware that being sheltered and spoiled has
exacerbated my personal and social life, at least, i’m still alive, doing what i can to be appreciated and recognized.