Life Is Not a Fairy Tale by Fantasia (e book reader free TXT) 📕

As far as the sex thing goes, it was a big mistake to not listen to Mama. It is simple: we shouldn’t be havin’ sex without bein’ married. The reason God and our mamas say that is not to deny us somethin’, but to make sure that we have sex only after we have all the other things that we needafter the sex—like havin’ a man who is committed to taking care of a baby with you. Like havin’ the proper education so you can make sure that the child is healthy and growin’. Like havin’ a proper home that you can raise your child in. Like bein’ able to show your child what a real relationship looks like between a man and a woman. These are the things that God wants for us and for our kids. Even God must be sick of seeing single mothers raise their kids without fathers, without resources, without money.

Don’t get me wrong—all of my closest friends are baby mamas, so this is comin’ from my heart and with no judgment. I don’t want the baby mamas to continue the generational curse that my family is finally coming out of. Don’t forget that my brother Rico has six children and never had a wife and he is only twenty-five. He has two baby mamas. My other brother, Tiny, is twenty-four and has two children and has never even considered marryin’ his baby mama.

I understand baby mamas because I am one myself. I know you love your kids but that you usually don’t love the situation you find yourself in. Havin’ a baby too young without real financial, emotional, or psychological support is hard—it is thehardest thing that a young woman can do. My daughter, Zion, was not a mistake; she is a blessing. But I still should have waited to have sex, because when she was born, I would have been a bigger blessingto her. I didn’t have anything to give her and because I didn’t have anything to give her, my guilt makes me give her everything she wants now and that will probably make her spoiled. It is now my guilt that is feeding her along with my love. That’s the truth.

My second mistake was not listening to my mama. It’s a little strange to say, but in a way, I feel I was lucky to have a mother who made her own mistakes. But I still didn’t listen to her. Most girls hear what they “should do” from their mothers, although their mothers sometimes have never gone through the things that they are telling them to avoid. For a young girl who thinks she’s grown, it’s a little hard to accept that, I know, because that’s what I thought. Truth is, my mama was speakin’ from her own experience with three kids and no education and a man who wasn’t actin’ right, and I still ignored her.

That’s a mistake that I regret to this day. Think of the hardship I could have saved both my mother and me. My mother has always been open and honest with me. She told me all about sex and protection and what happens if you are raising your kids on your own. She told it all and I still wouldn’t hear her. If I could tell the women and young girls just one thing, it would be this: Listen to your mamas. Listen to them for one reason only: it isdisrespectful not to listen to them. Your mama is the person who gave you life. Your mama may not have gone through the same things that you’re experiencing, but she’s going to have a better idea of whatcan happen and what to avoid. If your mama hasn’t gone through it herself she probably knows someone who has. A man leaving a woman to fend for herself and take care of a child is a common thing that has been happening to women for many centuries. It’s not new. We didn’t start it.

I am more ashamed of not listening to my mother’ssilence.

My mama has been through a lot. She has been disappointed and hurt so many times in her life. Mama wanted to be a strong person and a successful singer. She had dreams too, none of which happened for her. The fact that my mother didn’t even notice that I dropped out of school; the fact that she let me go live with and run around with my thirty-year-old friends; the fact that she sensed that I was having sex and didn’t say anything about it tells me that Mama had gone into a deep depression. She wasn’t herself and I should have noticed, mainly because she was not really noticing me. I was watching my mother’s spirit slowly dying, and I was too selfish to see and too focused on myself to say anything. I couldn’t pull her out of her hole because I was too busy diggin’ my own. Looking back on it, I could have been as much help to her as she tried to be to me before depression sucked her away from mothering.

When I think of all my girls in the projects who have two and three babies, often from different men, it worries me. That is a lot of unprotected sex goin’ on in the projects, and the fact that the fathers have left means that my girls and those guys never had much of a relationship in the first place. Their mistake is not their pregnancies; it was their forgetting that if they caught a disease, they wouldn’t be there for their children anyway. Tears fill my eyes just thinkin’ about what would happen to Zion if I got sick because of being careless with a man who was careless with me. All those times that me and my friends were together, puttin’ on makeup, strapping up our high heels, and