Acura Saint has always felt like she was damaged, through all the things she's been through and all the trauma she tries to keep locked away. Falling in love is the last thing she wants to think about.
She can't love another when she can't stand to...
When the voices came back this time, it was a lot more difficult to manage them, I was constantly reminded of my childhood. When I was 5, 6, 7, and so on. I was reminded of when my father lost his job and we couldn't afford to live in our home anymore.
My mother took Emani, Vinnie, and me to live with our aunt. My brother Vinnie is autistic, he can't talk, and when he was younger he had so many seizures that somewhere in the mix his hand broke.
To this day it isn't fixed, we couldn't afford it. Vinnie is about 16 years older than me and Emani is 4 years older than me. Can you imagine a 6-year-old, 10-year-old, and 22 years old crammed into a room with 2 beds living in an apartment with my aunt? I don't remember how long I was there but I do remember one night I and my younger cousin were hanging out in her room and she asked me if I wanted to play doctor.
She had told me that one of her older cousins taught her how to play. I didn't understand what was going on, and how she was younger than me doing this to me.
It went on for some time until my mother could afford to buy us another house, and when we did move in I was excited. I had my own bedroom, one I didn't have to share with my mother, sister, brother, or cousin. I was alone, alone in a house I wasn't familiar with.
Alone with all the nightmares, I had lived before I was even old enough to understand them. Those nights I would go down the hall and sleep in my sister's bed, that's until my father said, "I was too old to be 'afraid of the dark'. Simply, I was confused because that's not what I was afraid of, I was afraid that he would come into my room.
Or reliving those nights at my aunt's house, I was afraid of being alone because when you're alone anything can happen.
I'm not afraid to be alone now, because I was right as I got older it got easier, but I wouldn't use it easier. I would say as I got older I got 'use to it'. Use to being alone, use to no one understanding or believing me. I realized no one would because I barely did.
I remember every birthday I had I would cry because I wasn't getting happier, my body had begun to show. And even though, I was still the skinny girl that weighed less than 90 pounds. People still made it their job to make quotes on my body. After I had gotten my first period and my chest began to grow, in tight shirts others could notice.
I didn't know one of those would be my father, I recall the moment we were about to sit down and eat dinner and he said, "You're filling that shirt out, Acura." I was uncomfortable. I mean every young woman at some point grows boobs, people are going to comment on them. But my dad? Back then I was surprised but now I'm not.
I remember when my sister had left for college, and he tried to get closer to me. I was 15 and by that time everything was coming back. I understood things a lot more. I was confused as to why he thought it was okay for him to pretend nothing ever happened.
All that stuff he had said to me, he forced me to believe I wasn't anything. All I wanted was a father to love me so I tried to find love within someone else.
Adonis Smith was my first love I think, I was in love with the attention he gave me, how he treated me. But did I love him? I'm not completely sure. Adonis' life was just as complicated as mine, we were best friends.
Until I got feelings for him that he said he had for me too. He treated me how I thought a woman should be treated. I loved his smile, and his laugh, his sense of humor, the person he was behind closed doors. How he made everyone believe he was just a street nigga when on the inside he was hurting just as much as the rest of us.
He popped percs, and sipped lean, smoked too much weed. For us to only be 16 he put on a grown man front. In the end, I realized he was just a little boy.
We never put a label on us, but we shared how we felt about each other. We kissed and did couple-like things. Whole-time he was just using me, using me because I was his escape from his reality. He led me on, made me believe I was the only one he loved. He retaliated and told me to stop, 'acting like his bitch'.
That we weren't anything, angry because I told him I wasn't ready to give my body to someone. He'd said harsh things to me before, been with other females but I stayed by his side because he apologized. He told me he wouldn't do it again, that I mattered too much to him and he couldn't lose me.
I was attached to him, attached to the person who used to be my best friend. He would yell at the people who laughed at me. He shielded me because he cared about me and that I was too innocent for the world. I kept thinking that person would come back, at times that person spilled through the cracks in the walls.
But his friends had got to him and told him he was a 'bitch' for not having sex with me. Because by the time we were 16 my body was more developed than it was when the first time I got boobs. The day he told me I acted like I was better than everyone else was the last day I talked to him.
He told me I knew nothing about him when I was really the only person he could trust. He called me out of my name and pushed me away, one day his best friend told me he did it because I wasn't built for his lifestyle. He was always going to be the boy who did drugs, got shot at for hanging with the wrong people.
That sooner or later he would meet his death date and he didn't want to hurt me. But the truth is he was already doing that.
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