This Masqurade….
When people are wearing a mask, I am usually acutely drawn to their actions more than anything. I can play with the pleasantries but I always hear what’s not being said, and that’s why I am okay with easing back into whatever part of society my future has laid out for me.
I was in my last stretch of college, last year when the sperm donor of the birth portal decided to walk back into our lives. He looked terrible, tired, dirty, he stayed at a halfway house with other guys….I don’t remember the specifics of how he weaseled himself back but I know the sadness and even despair I heard in his voice…….. And that is how they get you….:-(!!!!!! This man didn’t apologize profusely for being a fuck up of a parent he had been, only how hard things were for him in the last couple of years since he left. I wanted a relationship so bad, or so I thought….I am in the space where I am being honest with myself and truthfully, I thought my life would fall on a different path when I re-connected with him. I thought I would do the professional thing, I tried my best to fit in with people I dubbed higher society——they usually came from backgrounds where their parents were in their life, so I was going to incorporate him into mine—-after all, people tended to like him more than the birth portal. It also felt good how people would approach me and him rather than the birth portal, made me feel like I really had family reflective of me. Over the years after certain people met the birth portal they stopped talking to me…..I had a home economics teacher in high school that pulled out all the stops trying to help push me on the right path with a job, getting scholarships things like that….. she met my mother and I thank God it was closer to graduation. She met the birth portal and I recall her visible re-coiling at her. I don’t know why she did that to her, —— I could take a few guesses why, but the eagerness she had at meeting her, left her the instant she met her and I knew I wasn’t wrong about many of the things I assumed about the birth portal up until that point. But it’s been like that for her every church or society she has tried to force herself into…... So I sort of took the sperm donor as a good luck charm in the beginning…..I scratch his back, he scratch mine. I would bust my ass to pick him up from one side of town to take him to work and when he got paid he would give me a couple of dollars and buy me a drink. Before long, he got comfortable and had me stopping at the dope man talking about he was getting something to level out his girlfriend…and there I was, just sitting, looking, trying not to seem sus’ my damn self, in the parking lot. He even insinuated on more than a few occasions if I wanted to try something, he would get it for me…that was a hard NO!!! Like sir, you haven’t been in our life for years, it’s been touch and go and because I am basically your chauffeur you think the reward is drugs????? God, looking back, I really don’t know why I accepted that from him, I can only say I was worried more so about my image I guess, what the so called friends would think too, maybe.
But, what I did take from him in those drives, was his sadness. I would listen to him talk about his dreams, how he still planned on taking that saxophone on the road, playing piano/keyboard again. He had and likely still do, a habit of becoming a big ole lush after a beer, spilling all of those surface feelings until he is talking about the feelings of things he try not to talk about because “he is a MAN’ (roll my eyes). In no time, he’s seemingly trying to apologize for not being there, saying the birth portal didn’t want him around, all the excuses, lies he told himself over the years to comfort himself for not being a piece of the parent he lies to himself and others about.
However, when this song would come on “This Masquerade” by George Benson, he would stop everything and sing, eyes closed, getting into the groove, swaying a bit, taking longer sips on his beer but he would sing his heart out, voice cracking at the parts he chose not to sing higher but he was in “his world”…….a deferred dream I would assure him, after he left the place in his mind where he one time knew he would accomplish his dreams. I felt sad for him, wished for him, encouraged him to practice on the weekends. It became a thing over the years when this song would come on, I would always hear his soul crying, there were other songs, but this song, listen to the words…..
“Are we really happy here
With this lonely game we play?
Looking for words to say
Searching but not finding understanding anywhere
We're lost in a masquerade”
…..His spirit/soul was trying to tell me it was wearing a mask even then…….
The drives stopped over the years but my message to him didn’t. He also had a thing he wanted to become a realtor, more like a, I can make money more than anything and he is really good with people—- I don’t think it was really a dream for him, Music was and is his dream. The last time he came over my place, I told him I was going to have to no contact him…..Personal aspects about my business continued to get out and I had to see him for what he really was. Over the years, I was the source of “get up and get out” in our relationship, he just provided excuses. When someone really wants to do something, they will work at any angle to accomplish it. The only thing he accomplished was being more messy in a family full of women…..I’d long ago stop accepting such behavior from acquaintances and definitely men, he like everyone else was someone I was going to have to clear out. It is serious now…. if you can’t support, help, encourage or put into me, on my mission to breaking away from these systems, it is no longer a boundary I can overlook.
It’s important to understand as an empath I can care, love, feel compassion for anyone. But when it crosses the threshold of my boundaries, it is not something I have to accept. I know why I had and understanding why I wanted a relationship with him BUT what I won’t and can’t take anymore is someone who doesn’t live up to the role/title they position themselves as, in my life. Let go of the idea I have a father, I never had one truthfully…..I am thankful for the individuals who have come across my life who have inspired, given me encouragement, pep talks, all of those things a father should have done, and that is what it is. I am not going to force accountability to someone who doesn’t understand their child is not a dumping ground for all the dreams they couldn’t accomplish. I can promise you I will never, NEVER, openly or quietly as I had in the past years, ever put so much into someone more than they do for me. This only left me open and susceptible to other spirits of people who took advantage of me.
I’m nobody’s victim, so boundary up!!!!
See those souls cry, say a prayer or words of encouragement if you want to, right then and there…..but do not, DO NOT take people on like this as though they are a challenge to fix or mold into your idea of family, friendship, partnership……14 years later they will demand a respect from you they never earned and it’s going to be on you to curse they ass out or ignore them.
Let me summarize…..I’m not pretending with the “masquerades” anymore —when they cross my path, I trust my highest self to deal with the situation in the manner that will allow me to continue to grow.
