“Without a struggle, there can be no progress.” - Frederick Douglass

Unlike some of my Daily OM posts, this is an original piece from me.

I will try to not do a stream of conciousness, but I need to get this out of my system (even forgive me; I may end up having a few typos on this one).

So, I have been having to write a paper about an experience and reflect on the experience, a moral to the story if you will. I wrote about an incident about my mama (still not sure if I will post it here or not). I didn’t even want to go to class, but seeing as though I am currently $10k in debt with loans, and seeing as how the professors will all get paid whether I go to class or not, I decided to go. I’m sorry to say that I was 15 minutes late for my first class, was totally unfocused on my second class, and sat right next to my professor and almost snored in my third class.

My tired was tired. My roommate said that I had tossed and turned all night after I attempted to go to sleep at 2am. It had been a rough morning. At noon, I was on my way to my room when I decided to go price CD players. I spent the next 2 1/2 hours focusing on nothing. I barely remember where I went. I decided that I didn’t need nor could I really afford a stupid CD player, that the tape that I would use the tape that I had at the room for the adhesive hooks instead of buying new ones, and I didn’t need a stinking lap desk to study in bed, it’s not like I can study in my room anyway–I just find myself scattered or something–so I’ll just go to one of my secret spots on campus to study.

So I was on my way home when I started thinking about my paper about my mama when I had a train of thought. I remembered the first time I saw her lifeless body in the hospital bed that I never recognized as her deathbed until this moment. I remember touching her fingers that were not desperately aching for circulation, I touched her face that no longer pursed with anguish then I looked at her amputated leg when I saw that her leg–that had gone from cutting off toe to toe, then half of her foot, and her leg below the knee before the final amputation removing the knee that she had replaced–had completely healed.

I had a moment of deja vu. I had dreamed this moment, I had dreamed that I looked at the lower half of a bed and saw one leg and one amputated leg. I did not remember the dream at the time, though I do now remember that I was trying to find out who I was looking at.

In essence, I was warned that this would happen. I just didn’t know to whom it was happening, nor did I know that the rest of the body was my mama’s body.

I fell apart when I realized it back then, two years ago and two weeks ago this day. I realized today, as I was thinking about this memory and the paper, that my mama’s pain physically was my pain emotionally and now that her pain was gone, my pain should be gone, too. Her losing her life released her from her pain and released me of her pain. We were free. I am free. I have a gaping hole of absence for my mama that feels irreparable, but I am free. I am free to live the life I should have been living long ago. I have been afraid to live an excellent life because I knew that my mama could not live that life with me. Today. Today. I have to start learning how to give myself permission to work hard, to not let myself become wary, to do my best, to show myself as a beautiful woman, to take care of myself, to love myself, to free myself.

Because we are free. Because I am free.