Your parents

"Her daddy was a hustler so she love them..." - Common

My mother and my father were like equal opposites. She was driven, he needed constant pushing. He wanted to run the streets, she was a homebody. So why they ever married, the world will never know.

I'm estranged from my father *cue daddy and abandonment issues*, so there's not much to say. The lack of his presence had a profound effect on me, and once I became of age and learned his story, it made all desire I did have to know him, dissipate. See my father left when I was 6-ish. I can remember it clearly. He came to school on crutches, wearing a Miami Dolphins sweatshirt, and told me that he had to go away for a long time. What I would discover 20 years later is that he was on the run from some "friends" of his. They'd burned with him an iron, and broken one of his knees/legs/ankles or something similar. They were coming after him, and at one point tried to come for us (my mom and I) in lieu of him. I guess it's a good thing she was accustomed to having guns pulled on her, cause she stood up to them without fear, instructing them to think twice before they chose to "visit" us again. She performed one last act of benevolence by telling his family that he needed to flee..immediately. And off he went, never to be seen again.

My mother...well she is everything. But the main thing is she's single (also chronically). My mother went through A LOT with my father. Not just the not coming home at night, women calling the house type of a lot, but constant fighting, gangstas visiting, and a whole host of other issues, she's never disclosed. So when people try to belittle her decision to remain single, it offends me. You can't compare your experiences to hers. She literally fought her husband daily, and when she got tired of it she broke the door with a hammer to put his ass out. Cops were called routinely and death threats were made often, from her and from him. And caught in the middle of it all was little ole' me. Life was really chaotic, but I wouldn't have known it. To me it was normal.

My parents together were a destructive force. An awful mess of too much wrong and not enough right. Their divorce was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.