Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [47]
I still panic when things don’t go well. I still beat up on myself when I make mistakes. I automatically believe that I am the one at fault, the one who is wrong, when people get upset with me. I still doubt myself when I am criticized or challenged by other people. I allow them to say too much about what I do, how I do it, and when I do it. And I use what they say as the foundation for why I do it.
I had to fire Karen. Period! I had to figure out why I had not or could not seem to honor my own personal boundaries when dealing with her. Hell! I knew this was not about Karen, it was about me. It was about new levels of the same old wounds. It was about uncovering them, understanding the influence, and healing them.
I had to continue, but I could not take another minute in the tub. It was time to get down. And that’s just what I did. I placed four big bath sheets on the floor and lowered my wrinkled body onto three of them, covering myself with the fourth. It was time to “get naked in front of God,” as Grandma used to say. It is hard to believe that as mean as she was and as badly as she had treated me, I could still find some of the things she said to me useful. I guess there really is some good in everything and everyone.
Uncle Leroy was a mystery to Rhonda. When he was sober, he was silent and brooding. He rarely spoke when he came home from work. He ate in silence, made little comment on his activities of the day, and refused to answer the telephone. He never asked about the children, even when one of them was sick. Rhonda had never heard him mention his family, his job, or even the weather. She did know, however, that Uncle Leroy had a girlfriend.
But with a few drinks to loosen his tongue and his temperament, Uncle Leroy was a totally different man. He’d tell funny, risqué stories to the children when Aunt Nadine wasn’t listening. He’d pretend to be a wild stallion and let Ray, Rhonda, and Beanie ride around the room on his back while he bucked and tried to throw them off. Sometimes Uncle Leroy would grab Aunt Nadine and dance her around the house, singing off-key love songs loudly in her ear. The children loved it when he’d do his James Brown imitation. He’d use the broom or mop for his microphone while he did outrageous dance steps across the kitchen. When Aunt Nadine told him he was acting like an old fool and scuffing up her newly waxed floor, Uncle Leroy would sing his promise to lay down more wax and paint the whole kitchen to boot. When he was drunk, Uncle Leroy had a need to paint. He painted the kitchen every other month. First it was pink, then yellow. Once he pained it a dark, almost navy, blue. Rhonda, Ray, and Cousin Beanie had to cover it with three coats of paint when sober Uncle Leroy went back to work on Monday morning. The best thing about Uncle Leroy when he was drunk was that he’d leave his money lying around as he slumbered through intoxication to sobriety.
Rhonda learned how to rob Uncle Leroy early on. The first time, she was scared to death. How would she explain having money? You get an allowance, stupid! How would she hide the things she bought with the stolen loot? Buy things to eat, fool! Ray robbed him, too, but Rhonda never knew how often or how much he took. Rhonda stuck to coins. Fifty cents here. Thirty cents there. As long a she did it when he was drunk, Uncle Leroy never seemed to miss it.
Aunt Nadine had started having