Torn

CHAPTER ONE

There is always something to accomplish in life.  There may be something you have never done or a place you have never visited.  Take it from me - it's an ongoing struggle.  When does it end?  Or better yet, tell me where does it end?  It's funny how you are always expected to do better and be better than you are.  Why can't we be accepted for who we are, the way we are?

Just when you thought you had climbed the last mountain, there's always one more hurdle to get over  Once you make it to the top, there's always someone there to kick you down a little further.  Sometimes it feels like your success is only seen through your eyes.  To everyone else, you have yet to arrive.  You're still being criticized even when you have "conquered the world".

Have you ever been betrayed by someone you loved with all your heart?  Betrayal comes in many disguises and it's always that person you trusted more than anyone else.  That person you thought was in your corner, too often seems to be waiting for you to fail.

What do you do?  To whom do you listen?  Do you pick up your dreams and say to hell with everybody?  Do you tell yourself, forget about what others think?  This is my life, my struggle, my accomplishments, my hills to climb, my problems to solve, so step back.  Do you act like a puppet and try things their way?  The truth about it all is there is a winner in every race.  Why can't that somebody be me?  The ball is in my court.  It's all in how I play the game and if I come prepared with the mind-set to win.  If I don't fall for the trick of believing I'm fighting a losing battle.

I fell into that trap, and remained there for a long time.  I actually believed it was my proper place in lfe.  Imagine that.  For years I tried to meet the expectations of what a man wanted me to be, never asking myself what it was I wanted for myself.  I was never dreaming a dream for myself.  It was as if I were living my life through his eyes, his rules and his demands.  By so doing, I found a person afraid to make decisions, take chances, challenge his wishes and afraid to fail.

I never wanted him to discover the real me, the girl that needed to be seen for whom she really was, not realizing that he did see me in all the wrong ways.  He saw my weakness all along.  Blinded by a false perception, I wanted to be seen as perfect.  I lived to be perfect, in his perfect world.  I found myself always needing to be better.  Nothing about me was ever just right.  Working out three times a week, in and out of the beauty salon, constantly working on outer beauty and never grooming my inner person, until one day I looked in the mirror and saw a stranger looking back.  I had become someone I didn't know anymore, someone I didn't understand, someone I couldn't reason with or even touch.  I was always looking for that window to climb into his heart, not realizing it would never be open for me to enter.

I wanted to be his black beauty, placed on a pedestal molded for him, only for him.  I was his virgin from the start, pure in his mind, in his heart and in his hands.  So, I spent every day becoming the woman he wanted me to be.  My outer appearance was one of beauty and fine tuned.  I had the right job, the fancy car and the plush apartment sitting on the 17th floor of a Chicago high rise building off the lake front.  I was doing everything for his comfort, to his liking, forgetting myself.  All this to find something was still missing.

As I look back, the road has been rough; I remember the beginning very clearly as if it was yesterday, but my vision is blurred as to the path that leads to the end.  I can still feel the pain, the hurt, the tears and the laughs, the struggles, the victories.  No  matter how far I have come, there's still not one scar that has had time to heal.  My heart can remember the struggles, the endurance in believing we would make it together.  It seems far away.  It seems like I had come a long way; yet it still feels like only yesterday.  I ask myself why I couldn't see the truth.  Why me?  Why has love failed me?  There are so many things that bring me to the conclusion that I failed.  Now, I know the challenge started out being about him, only to end up being about me.  If I didn't have this hurdle to get over where might I be today?  I would not have reached for the top or maybe I would have.  That is one thing I will never know.  But the challenge is to allow me to overcome the hills before I find them one day behind me.  My only problem was I kept climbing over the same hill because it did not belong in my hat of victories.  This hill was not for me to climb.