Sunday evening I sat at my dining room table with my ex, we’d spent the day at the zoo with our two children and I told him I wanted to watch Lemonade. He has an HBO Go account so he obliged, neither of us knowing what we were about to experience. In the recent weeks, we’d discussed therapy for co parenting and I was considering reconciliation if all went well. The day at the zoo was amazing, I witnessed my children’s faces light up in person as they watched the zoo animals instead of pictures because I personally don’t agree with the idea of zoos, so it is not something that I’d ever done with them.
After the zoo trip, he and I sat at the table that was once in our home, eating american Chinese food making jokes and him openly adoring me, after nearly 3 years of a heated and hurtful separation. Lemonade came on, the opening song was so stirring that it was clear that this was not just another Beyonce video. I watched her tell the story of so many women. It was one of betrayal. One of reconciliation. One of love. One of healing. It was my story, the one I’d chose to end as friends, as co parents. Last year, I wrote a poetry book Channeling Shug which chronicles my marriage and separation where I likened myself to Shug Avery from The Color Purple, difficult and unruly and woman. There is a poem in it that played in my head over and over as I watched Lemonade:
My momma always told me
Don’t let no nigga change you
I had done just that. I had let this man change me. I was unrecognizable within 60 days of our interaction. At the time, I was 32 and ready to have what was mine. That was kids and a husband. I hadn’t thought much past those ideas and that was what unraveled me more than his demands or ideals of who I had to be to be his wife.
That was what resonated most for me in Lemonade: How I as a Black woman thought that leaving all of the me that got me to that point in my life, to that fabulous-ness called me was the key to getting and maintaining my marriage.
I was an artist, a poet and writer. I was a healer. I was fun, and loving and adventurous! I was brash, insolent and crude!
I was all of these things and so much more and I threw them away for my husband, for my family. This is what I told myself, this is for my family. Every time I packed a piece of me away that I thought was offensive or that came under scrutiny from my husband or the outside world. I folded all of the bright pieces of me around the edges of my feet where no one could see them. I walked on them. I heel-toed them. I muddied them. At some point, I looked down and they were ragged and no more me than the mask that I’d taken up. I hadn’t painted or written anything during our marriage. I tried a couple of times but not much happened. I tried to be the good wife and mother but it was so exhausting. I began to think that I was a bad mother because I didn’t enjoy motherhood like some other women did. He often reminded me that his friends had good Muslin wives, who home schooled their kids and wore their abayas and prayed 5 times a day and didn’t question the Qua ran.
I became angry, I could never be like these women, I didn’t want to be like those women. I rebelled, I fought back, I became unmanageable. I broke up our family, I asked for a divorce. I asked him to leave our home. I was a terrible woman. The kind he feared. I was happy he feared me, I finally had power. I wielded that power like an unsteady machete, not caring if I cut myself because my need to aim for him was so great.
fast forward….
Something happened a few weeks ago, I forgave myself. I became tired of carrying my anger for him around. I got tired of using it to harm him, myself, our children. It had been years, it was unnecessary. I no longer needed my anger to feel safe. I’d taken the time to refill my cup. I now lived in a world where I owned an abundance of love for myself. I was so relieved and surprised at the same time at my release of emotion that I spit out one last poem in anger and it was like dust in the wind; scattered and rootless.
As we watched Beyonce sing, I could feel my ex getting uncomfortable. I could feel him wanting to retreat. I had been every women that Beyonce channeled in Lemonade. I knew he knew, so I asked him, ” How do you feel about reconciliation now?” He laughed and then he cried. He’d gotten it, he said.
Now, I don’t credit Beyonce and Lemonade as the key to him understanding me. It took nearly 3 years of me standing my ground, leaving and filing for divorce for him to see that I was in too much pain to continue as we were. This might seem extreme, as I’m sure Lemonade seemed extreme to many who viewed it; however love is extreme. I am open to what time has in store. We have time and that might mean reunion or it might mean a great understanding . Either way, love is always worth it.
As a person who loves more openly than most, I welcome the tides of love. Because I know one day I’ll end up on the shore watching those tides, letting the gentle waves swim up to my ankles, remembering how I nearly drowned learning to love myself.
As for Lemonade, I’ve drank my share.
zohameanslight 