The Product of a Broken Heart

by Crystal Ismael

  When I go in for a checkup, I usually get blood work done so that the doctor can get a better look at what may be going on with me. On the outside, I might be smiling and laughing but may actually be having some ongoing deep-rooted issues that are without detection on the inside.

  I remember talking to a cancer survivor, and she told me she was feeling good. In fact, she was planning a vacation when she decided she might as well get her checkup before she headed out for the week. She later found out that she was in her second stage of breast cancer. Shocked, she had no idea what was going on internally because on the outside, things seemed fine. That’s what we have to do. We have to get our deep-rooted checkups; and that’s what I did.

  After the twins and Amanda were born, I was totally focused on them and on work. What I needed to do to improve myself was thrown out the window. I buried the hurt and covered up the pain of the past, along with the tears I hid from everyone that embraced my presence. I decided to lock what was going on with me into a closet and throw out the key. I told myself that life was not about me. I had to forget about myself and deal with what was going on at the time, and that, in itself, was too much.

  I hear so many times women say, “It’s not about me. I have to focus on my kids,” I have too much going on to go to school. I have too much going on to stop what I’m doing to work on me.” From experience, I know if I’m not healthy mentally and physically, how can I be there to focus on my children or others who are counting on me.

  Life comes with so many responsibilities, which sometimes feels like a list without end. Sometimes it can feel like if it is not one thing, it is another. If it’s not a flat tire, it’s the car not starting; if it’s not the car, then one of the kids decided to lose their minds. If I didn’t make change or make dealing with myself a priority, later in life the deep-rooted problems I wanted to suppress all those years will definitely resurface.

  On Sunday mornings my mother used to say, “What’s done in the dark will indeed come to the light.” I would have to agree with her. All I was doing was working, working, working—did I say “working”?—killing myself, finding myself year after year in the same position, going in circles, resembling a hamster on a wheel, moving but not going anywhere, not noticing that he is still in the same place he has always been. I was barely making it, working just to go cash my checks to pay bills. I woke up sad just to go to bed mad. I was trying to get ahead, but I wasn’t moving! I buried Dana and didn’t see that I was equivalent to a dead man walking, roaming with no direction and no vision, numb to life, numb to allowing myself to feel, blind to the reality of what was going on right in front of me. I was seeing but not seeing at the same time. I was lost in a world I couldn’t find a place in by allowing my issues to drive every increment of my life.

  I didn’t know who I was, let alone what I was supposed to do besides go to work day in and day out and tend to the kids. Smiling was abnormal to me, and worrying had become normal, with anger and sadness following. All were symptoms of something deeper going on inside of me. I gave up on the dream that life would somehow render me my little girl dreams or that somehow, I was going to live the fairy-tale life I had dreamed of as a child. I stopped allowing myself to dream. Year after year, I found myself doing the same thing but expecting new results.

  As I lay on the couch in my mother’s living room, I began to fall in and out of sleep, waiting for her to wrap up one of the specialty meals she was putting together. I could hear her humming to one of her old gospel songs, clapping when it hit the part of the song she liked. I smiled, trying to stay awake, drifting in and out. I finally fell asleep.

  I found myself drowning. As I slapped the water to stay afloat, I looked around and found that nobody was there. Names and images came to mind. Where is my father? Can’t he feel I’m hurting and near death? Would he at least show up now? “Father, can you hear me now,” I yelled out!

  I yelled for help. Where is Christian? I gasped for air. I thought he loved me. He told me he cared for me. I panicked as I grasped to stay afloat.

  “Mama!” I yelled. If anyone would come to my rescue, surely it would be her. She would hear me and come to my rescue. “Mama!” I screamed. “Mama!”

  I spun around to see if she was coming. I spun and spun, looking to see if she was running to my rescue, but the more I yelled, the more perplexed I grew.

  “Wake up! Wake up and get up!” I heard her voice. I heard her, but where was she? I heard her. I could almost feel her, but neither she nor anyone else was there to rescue me.

  “Wake up!” Her voice yelled as if it was thunder that shook me.

  As I screeched and jumped up, I realized I had been dreaming and was still on the couch at my mother’s place. I shook myself to come to grips with what had just happened. What did it mean? What was this dream trying to tell me? I wiped the sweat off my head with the back of my hands, looking around to make sure that I was in reality and if my mother had heard me.

  “Mom!” I yelled from the living room. “Mom,” I yelled again.

  “Yes, Dana,” she said calmly as she peeked her head from around the corner to see what was going on. Nothing, Nothing I said quickly, trying to catch my breath.

  I sat on the couch trying to figure out what the dream meant. I soon realized that it was letting me know that I had put too much trust in people to save me. I wanted my mother to save me, as well as Christian, my father, and anyone else who came into my presence. I had to learn to deal with myself and come to grips that not one of them could pay that price to save me from what was going on with myself. I had to stop looking for salvation in people.

  “Dana,” my mother said, “you all right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, it sounds like you are uncomfortable in there. I hear you moving around.” She peeped her head around the corner to look at me again to make sure I was really ok.

  I looked toward the kitchen as if she was going to continue the conversation. Of course, she didn’t.

  A soft knock came from the door.

  “Who is it?” I asked, eager to get my mind off the dream and my mother yelling back and forth from the kitchen. I could hear my kids crying on the other side of the door, impatiently waiting to get in. It was my sister, who had taken them while I was in the hospital.

  I jumped up and dashed to the door and quickly opened it. I smiled when I saw them, quickly embracing the fact that I might not have been here with them and for them. I grabbed the kids and started kissing them one by one, laughing as they did that little baby laugh, slobbering from their mouths to their chins.

  “You alright?” my sister shouted over the yelling of the kids and the television my mother turned up just so she could hear it in the kitchen as she made lunch.

  “I’m fine,” I said sighing, which felt like the hundredth time in the last hour since the sudden “Are you okay?” every time my mother heard me cough or move.

  “Well ” my sister began.

  I rolled my eyes because I knew where this conversation was headed.

  “I hope you get your act together and start tending to your kids,” she continued, ignoring my rolling eyes.

  I thought to myself, who does she think she is? But instead I replied, “Yep, you are right, sis.”

  I tried not to make eye contact to avoid the notion that I wanted to talk to her, and continued to play with my kids, ignoring anything else she wanted to ask or tell me.

  The phone rang and my mother answered, using the high-pitched voice she uses when talking to someone professional. Then, “Dana!”

  I rushed to the phone, ignoring the conversation my sister was about to start. I would rather talk to anyone than have that conversation I said to myself as I moved rapidly towards the kitchen.

  “Hello, Ms. Dana, how are you?” It was my boss from the nursing home, Rachel.

  “I’m doing good, Mrs. Rachel
,” I replied.

  “Are you up for returning to work?” she chimed in before I could conclude my sentence.

  Ignoring the urgency in her voice, I said, “Yes.”

  “Okay,” I will put you on the schedule to return next Monday.”

  “That’s fine,” I said firmly and hung up before she tried to ask me any questions about the days, I requested to be off, to gather myself after my suicidal incident.

  That was one thing about nursing home jobs—you would always have one, I thought as I headed back to the couch, forgetting what was going on at the present moment and my sisters’ look of concern that said I was not okay at all to be returning to work. I didn’t know why she suddenly thought she had all the answers to life. I glared at her as she rolled her eyes at me and then quickly went into the kitchen to help my mother prepare the plates for lunch. All I knew was that I was eager to get back to my job and my coworkers … especially chasity.

  I stood up, stretched, and took a deep breath, inhaling the air on this crisp morning. “Ok, kids, we are going to wrap it up in bit so I can go make lunch,” I said.

  Time quickly passed as Christina and I sat on the porch. I forgot she was there, as her head barely came up from the movie she was watching on her phone. Amanda gave me the sad face, as if she needed more time to play. As I walked back into the house, I found myself wanting to cry, not tears of sadness but tears of joy. I looked back and saw how far I had come to where I am now.

  I started to laugh at myself as I entered the house and shut the screen door, remembering how I used to track my progress. After telling Christian that we could no longer have a relationship outside of the kids, and taking control of scars from the wounds that I allowed to heal, I thought life was automatically supposed to get better. I thought removing him would clear the way for more happy days. I thought if I left the drugs and drinking alone that somehow my fairytale life would unfold. So, I started writing my progress and goals on sticky notes, nailing them to the wall, hanging little notes in the bathroom mirror to remind myself what to do and what to stay clear of.

  I had to remind myself how far I come and to encourage myself along the way. This technique reminded me of the YouTube videos I used to watch when I decided to grow my hair out and become natural. The ladies committed themselves to a hair challenge and took pictures of their progress. They started out short, and as the months passed, they would measure their hair again. You could see the excitement and glow in their eyes as they revealed the results of their challenge. One thing I noticed in the videos was the ladies always showed pictures of their bad days and attached quotes about the frustration they experienced through the process. It was not easy, but as they went, the measurement of their progress improved in each recording, which gave them the drive to keep going, to keep pushing and striving.

  That would trip a lot of people up in their process of becoming “a new you.” Many women want to change, so they work on change. A week into a change, they quit before they can even see the manifestation, expecting change to be an overnight process. Like my mother always said, there are a lot of microwave-thinking people. These women on YouTube checked in and did recordings on their hair growth month after month. They invested time into the change they were trying to capture.

  Once I had the vision and goals with a firm foundation, when the process seemed like it was more than I could bare, I didn’t give up, I continued to fight. I had a vision, and I set the goals to obtain my vision. Just like the ladies in the videos. I eventually learned that vision makes you not want to be in certain places and do certain things that would compromise you reaching that vision.

  I had to understand that change requires the willpower to stay the course until I see the change that I expected, and the power to remain until it’s time to move to something greater. That’s why so many people fail at diets. It’s not that the person doesn’t want the change, to become a little lighter, to lose a little belly fat, to fit into those old jeans, but diets are temporary fixes for temporary situations. So, the option to quit is always on the table. But once I made a permanent decision to make a lifestyle change, quitting became absurd to veer towards. I could make up in my mind to change, but if I was not willing to keep putting in the work and stay the course despite what it looked and felt like, I would have never seen change. Becoming mature in change I had to understand that my results won’t happen overnight, even though I would have liked them to. Yet in time, with dedication to my process, I started to see the manifestation of the work, tears, and effort I put into the results I was trying to shoot for, and that was to heal myself of the damage that life and my choices rendered. And to move forward in a new me. Ultimately for me to obtain my vision, there must be a point where I can step back and evaluate my life to see what’s working and what’s not working.

  That day I almost lost my life showed me just what was working for me and what was not working. I now take the time every morning to see what needs to change, who needs to be out of my life, who I need to keep close, who is hurting the vision for my life, and who is helping the vision. Everyone does not need to be in my space, knowing that does not make me a bad person, instead it makes me a responsible one.

  “Deal with it!” I said laughing to myself. I now tell my daughters the same thing when they come home from a bad day at school, complaining about this and that. Who likes them and who didn’t. I would always give them sound advice and always conclude the conversation with “Now deal with it.” Let go of the people and things that you obviously see don’t need to be in your life. I tell my daughters’ all the time, if they don’t like you, that’s fine. Go around kids that like you and share your likes. Of course they can take all the advice in the world, and can read all the books in the library about how to fix a problem, but until they put the pedal to the metal and deal with it, they will be like a dog chasing his own tail, never catching hold of it.

  It was a must that I set goals, and to track my progress for that very reason. knowing what is working and what is not working. My daughter Amanda always struggled with math. I would tell her, “Let’s try to get your grades up by the time progress reports come out.” This caused her to stay after school for help, missing TV time and sometimes play time on weekends. Since she now had a vision, a goal and a deadline to meet, it gave her a little spunk and a sense of urgency to complete a task. She had to step back to see what she could have been doing wrong, and to pay attention to her thought process on math.

  In order for me to have had a mentality shift, I had to ask myself why I wanted to change from my present situation. If I could not have come up with an answer, then it will be just something that felt good at the moment but had no true vision or depth that would withstand the process ahead. Just like the dieter, and the lifestyle changer.

  I had to let whatever I was aiming for, be a firm enough foundation to hold what I will endure during the process. This reminds me of when jordan asked for a cell phone recently. As common as it was to see every child with a cell phone to their ear, I had to ask, “What do you need a cell phone for, besides everyone having one?”

  He hunched his shoulders and said, “I don’t know, Mama. I just need one.”

  I quickly and firmly told him, “Then you don’t need one. How can you need something and don’t know what you need it for?”

  Soon he got smart and came up with a reason he felt he needed one. If he didn’t have a strong reason for needing a cell phone, he wouldn’t have an appreciation for the cell phone. It would be something that felt good at the moment. When I make a decision to do anything in life, I always ask myself, “Why am I doing it?”

  I sighed one more time and walked back into the house. I walked down the hall to my room but couldn’t help but look at the pictures of my family hanging on the wall. I smiled and walked into my room and sat on the edge of the bed.

  I thought back to the moment I really started to deal with the me ins
ide of me, the moment I threw in the towel on trying to do things out of my own strength. I was breaking myself daily, by hiding from the very things I needed to address to ultimately reach my healing. That moment, I told myself, “God has to step in and fix me because I can’t do it on my own.” I have to take myself back to that moment when I started to deal with myself, reminding myself what caused me to change so I will be conscious enough not to return to my mess. The moment when I threw my hands up and just couldn’t take life anymore, the moment that I got tired of crying, the moment I got tired of just plain ole being tired.

  As I sat on the bed, I pondered what I was going to fix for lunch. I could hear the screen door opening and closing as the kids were coming in. I thought of each of the kids, knowing how difficult it was to please every one of them at one time, outside of pizza, which was about the only thing I could get them to eat with no issues. Christina, didn’t get the memo that vegetables were good for her and not going to kill her, so I always tried to incorporate vegetables with a dish she loved. It never worked. As she ate, she picked out all the vegetables or anything that resembled a vegetable.

  Giggling to myself, I acknowledged that was exactly how I was. I didn’t know what was good for me, and anything that was good for me, I tossed out. It didn’t seem right or didn’t feel right. I remembered going through the process of changing from who I was into the mindset of who I needed to be. It most definitely was not a pleasant time in my life, having to give up everything and everyone I thought was good for me, but it is those times that are worth remembering and embracing. I looked back at some good times and smiled, and at times I cried. But in those hard times when I had to wonder, Is it worth the fight? Or if my change was ever going to come, is when I learned the most. It was during those times that I gained character; and I gained an awareness of who I truly was.