A Change of Heart

I am officially a drop out, and I’m in love and proud of it! The day I walked out of Morgan State University was one of the best days of my life. Followed by many, many, many bad days that I had no idea would come. The sun was shining so bright. It was a hot June day back in 2007, and I was in love. Oh, the lies love tells us. The lies love had told me. I stood outside the electrical engineering building full of hope and relief. No more homework assignments to do. No more late nights. No more early mornings, and that was alright with me. I began walking across the steaming parking lot to my red SUV. As I lightly skipped there a classmate called my name. It was Ifeanyi, my dear college friend. He approached me with a smile on his face. “What up Ify?”, I said playfully. “Nothing much, where you are going, don’t we have class?” “You sure do”, I replied. He cut his eye at me and walked past. “Skipping class again Dawn?”. “I sure am, see you at the party!”. I watched him go in the building as I made my way to my vehicle. I never saw Ifeanyi again.

There would be many times in my life that people would disappear. Our last days would be our last days together and we would not know it. Funny how life works that way. As humans we can never make plans to be together. If you want to make God laugh, then make a plan. I left college because I was in love. Love was everything to me. I lacked it as a child, and in my adult life I yearned for it like the body yearns for food. I was in love. In love with this tall brown skinned man. He had a deep voice when he was serious but sounded like a little girl when he laughed. His smile could light up a back country road with no streetlights in the middle of a dark winter’s night. He was so original and told the best jokes. He loved to dance and even though he cannot carry a tune he serenades me quite often. He is so romantic. LaVar quite often would show up at my job with flowers. Quite often in that restaurant the girls would swoon and talk about him after. Saying he was a real grown man. He is six years my senior and so I suppose he appeared much more man that I am woman at the age of 22. LaVar was a drug dealer, he didn’t have a GED, he couldn’t hold a job, and he drank heavily. It didn’t matter to me. He was good at caring for me emotionally and sexually. Pretty much a master of it, and so I could ignore all the red flags. One day we moved to North Carolina. We were broke and had nothing to our names but dogs and clothes, but we moved anyway. The house was run down. There was no running water, no electricity, no food, no furniture. With a call to a family member and some long agonizing nights we made it work. All we had was each other. We were two broken people trying to hold each other together like the pieces of a puzzle sitting on a table that is off balance because the floor was not level.

Thanksgiving came around and we didn’t go home to Maryland. We cooked a turkey, turned on some music and drank wine. We laughed and danced and sought peace and healing in each other’s arms. He smelled so good to me. I was sitting in a chair watching him two-step around the dimly lit living room when suddenly he grabbed my arm. He lifted me out of the chair and begged me to dance with him. I laughed and fell into his wide chest. He kissed me and we danced and danced until the dance became the deepest of dances that two lovers could share on this earth.

Nine months later Sahara entered our lives. I had wanted a boy, but she was so perfect to me. I held her all the time. When she was not with me, I was at work. We had been living in North Carolina for over a year at this point. He started looking for a job and found one at this warehouse called Anne’s House of Nuts. They packaged trail mix nationwide. We welcomed a son right before Sahara’s first birthday. Right after that, LaVar and I walked into a courthouse and got married. Friends took pictures and sent them around to others like a wildfire burning in a dried-out forest. I lost my job. I asked LaVar if he could work a part time job temporarily while I looked for another. He refused. The shortage of money and loss of time spent together meant my great boyfriend lost interest in me. He drank more and stayed away from home. I had caught him cheating multiple times. One night he came home drunk and fell asleep. His phone rang and I ignored it. It rang again. Still, I ignored it. Finally, on the third ring I picked it up. A woman answered the phone. Her name was Sherri and she explained to me that she had been seeing LaVar for the better of two years and was horrified that he had went off and gotten married. If you want to make God laugh, make plans.

Tired, I went back to Maryland. I went back to school at the age of 34. I pursued a career in healthcare. After three years of therapy. Multiple attempts of starting school and dropping out. Being homeless and having two more children. I have finally figured it out. Love is not what I should have searched for. I should have searched for myself. I finally got a degree and am pursuing an advanced one. My passion was never love. My passion was resilience and strength. This is just one story of two failures. I have had many more, but failures teach us to still persevere. To survive. To go on. That’s alright with me.

P.S. LaVar and I are still married, we are happy, we survived too.