Project: Color me Beautiful – My Match

CHECKMATE||

By: Chaka Bedell

Who would have known I would have met my match at 28. Born In Baltimore, Maryland Thursday October 1, 1987, 10 a.m. at Johns Hopkins Hospital. I was birthed by a mother who was a strong African-American woman, born and raised in DC and conceived by a father, a proud African man from Liberia. I was the youngest of three children. The first time reality would hit me in 1992, age 5, when I saw the vacuum fly across the room, my mom and dad arguing  about his absence for the past 6 months and her finally filing for a long overdue separation. Just a few months later, entering into 1993, the next year would bring about a series of events that would change my life until I reached 21 and would unknowingly encounter my match. One day, walking home from school with my older brother and sister, we were greeted by our parents in the midst of a physical altercation throughout our apartment in Brooklyn. It was a quiet building comprised of middle aged professionals, so one could imagine the magnitude of this chaos. Seeing our mother bruised and battered with a knife to her throat, we ran outside to her- then boyfriend, coming down the street and ran to the nearest payphone at the corner, calling 9-1-1 to come as quickly as possible. As enraged as our father was, at 5 years old I could rapidly foresee what could possibly come of this, yet too young to understand how this would follow me to the day I would meet my match. As the police arrived questioning everyone, they insisted my mother take out a restraining order, which she complied to with urgency.

A year passed and it was April of 1994. After such a disturbance a year prior, we moved forward to hopes for a positive relationship amongst my mother and father. My mom trusted that my father could respect the new standing of their relationship and come to an understanding that they would be cordially co-parenting moving forward. My father paid a visit for my brother’s birthday; showering us with gifts he had awaited to give. As we tried on our new clothes and played with toys, my father requested my mother provide him with some of his belongings he had forgotten and left behind during the separation. As she proceeded to gather them he stepped into the bathroom. Moments later running to show him just how much we loved our new outfits, we hear the shouting of two male voices and my mother screaming out “PLEASE DON’T DO THIS” and as I peeked down the stairs to the lower level of our apartment, I see my sister running into her room. I look across the hall and see my brother standing behind my father, who stands with a gun pointed directly at my mother and her then, live-in boyfriend, now husband. As gun shots flew through the walls aimed at my mother’s boyfriend. My mom rushed pass my father, running room to room, grabbing each of her children and frantically knocking on the neighbor’s door to shelter us. As we sat next door not knowing whether my mother was dead or alive, our neighbor’s wife did her best to comfort us. Time passed and my mother walked back in letting us know my father had been arrested and her boyfriend was being taken to the hospital, he had been shot but would survive.

After interrogations, court hearings, and sentencing, we would spend the next month packing up and relocating to Rhode Island and spending the next 12 years of my life growing up in a community completely opposite of what we had come from and previously been exposed to. My father was sentenced to 7 years for the charge of attempted murder, which would be served at New York States two most infamous prison facilities, Rikers Island and Marcy Jail. For those seven years and following we would only see our father imprisoned, twice a year and following we would have only the option of international calling. After his sentence was complete, he was scheduled for immediate deportation. That last night we fell asleep to the credits of Edward Scissor Hands, and to this day this eerie sense of nostalgia follows me when that movie premieres. I never imagined I would begin to enter into a vicious cycle I would battle for years to come.

After high school I attended college as far away from Rhode Island, as I could bear and during my last semester I began to encounter what I had not yet recognized to be my match. He was mysterious, kind, quiet but charismatic. He had a way about him that pierced through my soul, calmed and melted me. “This is it that is him, I have finally met my match” I would say to myself repeatedly in those first few months he swept me off my feet so swiftly. I was in a whirlwind, spinning so fast, lifted, and in euphoria, I had never felt this before, and I do not ever want it to stop. But it did. Repeatedly, like parlor doors, constantly opening and closing, smacking me in my face, with broken promises, confusion, missed calls, ignored calls, stood up, stranded, and after months then years of trying to figure out what it was, something had to give. And it did, it gave me so much…so much love, sex, passion, heat, and blows… to the arms, legs, stomach, and face. Hands wrapped so tightly around my neck, my body slammed against walls, kicks to the ribs, broken fingers, black eyes, insults, torn clothes, swollen jaws and vaginal walls, suicidal attempts, splattered blood, drenched floors and towels, holes in the walls, broken glass from dishes and windows,  from brutal beatings and make up sex, drinks thrown, pots thrown, dumbells, bats. “But I thought I met my match, I swore I met my match.” “I had met my match, but I had not yet removed my blinders.” 5 years of my life, constantly running to and from, in and out, up and down the east coast, wanting and fearing the love of a man who I just knew was my match. But why couldn’t I get it together? I kept getting it wrong, and with every attempt, I just kept seemingly messing it up more. After 3 years of beatings, cheating, and being completely torn down, ignoring all the voices telling me to let go and walk away.

From the relationship came baby boy #1, a restraining order in my back pocket and my match, unseen. But I had not had enough, I found my match, I did, but I was doing it all wrong. After about a year, we chose to revisit the relationship, and there would be no more physical abuse, there would be no more moving up and down the east coast, instead, there would be more let downs, more deceit, cheating, break ups and make up…sex. After having another child it was then that I would finally see my match, I would finally meet my match, and I would finally realize my match existed… not from without me but from within me. All that time I swore, in him, I had met my match. Everything I had ever thought I wanted and needed. So bad that I found myself reliving my childhood trauma, holding on for fear I would “fail” at trying to achieve what I felt went wrong and wanting to do it “right”. Everything I really ever needed, I held and allowed my past to haunt me and blind me, that I missed the point. I learned to color myself beautifully when I learned the point of valuing life lessons and experiences, those of yours and those that came and stood before you, all in the name of knowing who you are, loving who you are and setting your standards, upholding your values, breaking this dysfunctional heartbreaking, heart wrenching cycles and finding your strength within.

I had met my match. I had met… her… Thursday, October 1, 1987 10:00 a.m. at Johns Hopkins Hospital. I know her, I love her, and I recognize her. She has two beautiful boys; she’s spirited, vibrant, wise beyond her years, and colored in more beautifully. She now appreciates what her childhood truly gave her, and the man she thought was her match was her mirror, helping her to remove her blinders, so now she can see, and reflect back on him, and share what he has offered her in return; even if only from a far. You must find and appreciate the gift, truth, and lesson in all life has to offer. It exists in all you do, but we must remove our blinders so we can see and cherish things for what they are. Regret nothing because there is purpose in everything and everything has its purpose. We must grow from our good and bad experiences and know that no matter how hard or terrible things may appear, there is something to be gained, something to be changed. We are ever growing, and ever-changing.