~Shemeka Michelle
As I sit in my bed, I look over to my baby girl sleeping peacefully. For the first time it dawns on me that I’m really NOT who I use to be! Sometimes we get so busy checking the list for things we don’t have or are yet to accomplish that we forget to notice the feats we’ve conquered.
This may sound extremely crazy but at this very moment I just realized that I am not a heaux (hoe)! Have you ever known something but didn’t REALLY know it? Like the information was there all along but you couldn’t really see it because the light was dim? As I type this I’m feeling like a million dollars or as the songwriter penned “I hear the chains falling”!! “What chains?” you may ask. The chains of fear that I’ve lived and even succumbed to at times of going back to my old ways and the chains of wishing that people would stop holding me to my past. If I could change the old cliché it would now read “I may not be who your black ass wants to be but I am DEFINITELY NOT who I use to be”!!
Let me explain…..
I was trifling to say the least. I would have sex with man after man with no commitment. I would befriend women just so I could keep tabs on them in order to get close to their man. Yes, I was also THAT chick! Although I thought I had changed, for years I held the notion that with one flick of the switch I might go back to that old lifestyle. Even when I took steps towards that direction, I would accept those actions and justify the behavior as me just being who I was. Crazy….. Right? Not really. How many alcoholics, drug addicts or others who have participated in destructive behaviors continue to be bound by the thought that they can never completely heal or overcome?
After my eleven years marriage came to an end, I got involved in a wonderful relationship. For almost two years, I thought that the only reason I hadn’t succumbed to my old way of thinking was simply because I was in a relationship with a great guy. That means I gave him all of the credit. I would often tell him “I don’t want to go back”. I would say this as if I would somehow become powerless to resist any temptation leading me to a lifestyle I don’t desire. As I look over at my daughter I JUST realized that I’m not with a man at this very moment not because I can’t have one but because I choose not to be. There really is a big difference. Sex is pretty easy to come by if that was what I really wanted.
This is so deep for me right now that I can hardly put it in words. I recently read that “thoughts become things”. For many situations all we need to do is change the way we think about ourselves!! I’m feeling so good about myself right now! I’m not afraid of going back simply because I have NO desire to!
Free at last….free at last. Thank God Almighty I’m Heaux free at last!