Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [86]
Daddy and his wife said she was crazy to give up her welfare benefits. Grandma agreed. Nett said she would help type her papers. The children wanted to know if they could come with her. Ruth invited her to come over and have a drink to celebrate. Linda and Lorraine volunteered to help with the children. John hung up on her. Rhonda was so excited she thought she would burst open. The week before classes started, she was offered a three-month temporary assignment. It all seemed so easy. Rhonda wondered why she had not done it before.
By the time she was a sophomore, Rhonda had learned how to use a thesaurus, how to footnote a term paper, how to make stew in a Crock-Pot, and she had a 4.0 grade point average. She discovered that she was a decent writer. So decent, in fact, that one of her professors had accused her of plagiarizing a paper. The professor told Rhonda that she couldn’t believe a freshman could produce that caliber of work. Rhonda was mothering by telephone, becoming involved in political activities, and having a good time in her life. She had made new friends, and for the first time, she was having wholesome, nonsexual relationships with men. She and her male schoolmates talked about things that did not involve money or sex. It was a new experience for her. Besides that, Rhonda had a new boyfriend. His name was Eddie.
Rhonda met Eddie on a boat. She and some friends had taken a cruise up the Hudson River. As they were leaving the boat, Rhonda tripped over his foot. When she turned to apologize, Eddie smiled and asked her where she was going. He followed her off the boat to a club in Brooklyn, where they danced for hours. The next morning, when Rhonda rolled over in his bed, she realized she had just had her first one-night stand. It was a one-night stand that lasted for five years.
Eddie was kind and gentle, unlike any man Rhonda had ever known. He was three years younger than she was, but he was far more responsible and attentive than John could ever hope to be. Eddie helped out with the children when Rhonda was in school; he came over on weekends to take them out while she studied. He made Rhonda happy. Not just sexually satisfied, but happy to the bone. Theirs was a quiet, loving, and fulfilling relationship. This, too, was a new experience. There were just two little problems: Rhonda wanted to marry Eddie; and Eddie did not want to marry Rhonda. He stated quite clearly that he did not want a ready-made family.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he’d say, “I love you and I love the children. But this is not what I want for myself.”
Rhonda heard him, but she was sure she could change his mind. Every now and then, the subject would come up again, and Eddie would say the same thing. She would listen, get mad, cry, and then try to figure out what she needed to do to help him change his mind. Eddie never did change his position, and Rhonda began to suspect that Eddie was seeing other women. He was.
By the time she was a junior in college, Rhonda had learned some very important lessons at Medgar Evers and from Eddie. She had learned that when you are smart, attractive, and hardworking, some people will like you, others will despise you. She had learned that you cannot make people do something they are not willing or inclined to do. She had learned that if you make yourself available for people to use you, they will use you. She learned that if you work hard, stay focused, and put your mind to it, most of the time, things will work out for the best. She also learned that sometimes, no matter how hard you work, things just don’t work out the way you think they should.
There were also some things that Rhonda had not learned. You cannot make people like you no matter how hard you try. She didn’t know why she was so into people-pleasing. She had not learned that what you think about yourself is more important than what others think about you.