Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [134]
AS I LAY ON THE FLOOR of my office, it all became clear. There had been a moment, however brief, when I tried to live life on my terms. I had taken my eyes off God and tried to do my own thing. Perhaps that was why I tried to negotiate the contract for myself. Maybe it was when I let myself be talked into staying somewhere I knew I didn’t belong. I knew that I had given someone control of my decision-making process. But none of that mattered now. The bottom line was that I had hired Karen because the moment I took my eyes off God and tried to live on my own power, I felt powerless. That state of powerlessness brought up all of Rhonda’s stuff, and I had fallen into her pattern of being a victim. My goodness! What a revelation!
It was time for a happy bath. Happy baths are the kind you take when you light candles and put on music you can sing along with. I think I’ll do Luther. No. That will give my husband ideas, and I’m not finished yet. Maybe I’ll do Patti. “Somebody Loves You, Baby.” No, I think I’ll do Al Jarreau. “Tenderness.” That’s exactly what I need—to be tender. I need to be tender with myself, with my thoughts about Rhonda, and especially with my thoughts about Karen. I understood that what I had done had been very unloving. I hadn’t meant for it to be, but it was. Whenever we make someone else responsible for our lives, we are not demonstrating love. It was Karen’s job to sell my work, but I now understood how I had taken it way beyond that. I had made her responsible for me. I had mixed business and friendship, and I had not honored my boundaries.
As the tub began to fill, I let my thoughts wander. I guess it’s hard to have boundaries when you were allowed none as a child. There is never a place for you to just go and be with yourself. You have no privacy. Wherever you are, somebody else is there. When you find a temporary place to be, you never know if or when somebody is going to walk up on you. I didn’t have a room or a door as a child. Rhonda had no place to retreat to, no place to go. Besides that, the adults in her life violated all of the boundaries she did have. I had carried that into my adult life. I gave up my boundaries much too easily. I needed to remember that business is business, friendship is friendship, and my life is my life. Whenever I lost sight of that, things got confused. Roles got confused. Now I could see how many times it had happened before. How many times I had lost sight of my boundaries for fear of making someone mad. Or when I thought I needed someone in order to survive. When I thought my survival was at stake, I would allow a person to be in my life in a way they had no right to be. In a way that I did not want them to be.
Slipping into the tub, I remembered something Aunt Mabel told me. It was something that she told me about my mother, Sarah.
I had found Aunt Mabel’s telephone number among the handwritten papers that my father had left for me. For some reason, her name stuck out in my mind. I remembered her from Atlantic City and the Saturday night basement parties. I also remembered hearing that Aunt Mabel was Sarah’s sister. I needed to know. I needed to know the truth.
Without thinking about how I would explain who I was, or wondering whether or not she would remember me, I called Aunt Mabel. I remember thinking to myself, Your mother’s sister will know exactly who you are. She answered the telephone on the first ring. I was so startled, she had to repeat her hello.
“Is this Mabel?”
“Yes. Who’s speaking, please?”
“Mabel, I don’t know if you remember me. My name is Ronnie. I am Sarah’s daughter.” That was the first time in my life those words had ever come across my lips. There was silence on the other end. I was just about to call her name again, when she spoke.
“Thank you, Jesus! Thank you! Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Father! You don’t know how long I have been