My Annecdote Part 2- The Storm: By Anne Dorothée Constant

         Have you ever asked yourself what's your purpose in life, why your strength is constantly being tested? And why the rain comes with thunders, or if you will ever come out of the hurricane alive?
   
         Life is a classroom, the people that surround you are your classmate, your daily adventures and misadventures are the lessons that you're being thought, you can choose whether or not to learn something from them. It's your choice, but you also have to be aware of the consequences of your decisions. People say everything happens for a reason. But do you think there's a reason for everything? Or an answer for every question asked? Do you not think that sometimes you can prevent something from happening? You can't always say that "it was bound to happen." if you get arrested for selling drugs, are you going to say that it happened for a reason, that it was an eye openner, or are you just facing the consequences of your action? There's always a reaction to an action. Whatever a human being does, says, or thinks is on his or her free will, and there will always be a result at the end, whether it's good or bad. But if its something coming from nature, something that you have no control over, only then you can say that "it happened for a reason". But that's what life is all about right? You get knocked over, you get wiped out, it HAPPENS FOR A REASON, you have the right to decide if you want to get back up or lay flat defeated on the ground. You will surely face the prize of your choice.

            I always was treated as a reject. I always felt the need of being accepted by other people, which pushed me to go to the wrong crowds and tried to fit in. When I entered my teenage years, my father was already living in the United States, I didn't have a grown up to talk to me about life, about the basics of being a young teenage girl. I knew what I should and shouldn't do, but do you honestly think that what I learned in church, school, and in my younger years were enough to teach me about the long road that I had ahead of me?

          If you do not get lost, how are you ever going to know about alternate routes? If you do not make a mistake how do you intend of learning? Some of you might say you can learn without making any mistakes. To each his own, but are you really sure of that? You can learn by observing, but at some point you're going to mess up, and from there you might come up with a different tactic. Why? Because you learned from your mistake, nobody is perfect.

         I moved in New York in 2007. I was more than happy to see my father again and to actually get to live with him once more. Everything was going great but I had unfortunately lost any type of daughter-father vibe. The connection had to be re-established, and I was more than happy to welcome the thought of it. I had to also build a relationship with my step-mother and her daughter as well, which did take a lot of effort from me. Don't get me wrong I was happy about meeting them but I was perplex as well. I had no type of social skills, since I was always by myself playing. I didn't know if I would have been rejected or accepted.

           Time passed, I can't tell you how much of it passed but it did. I started to realize that the father that I knew in my younger years wasn't the same. Something about him was different. I stepped back and started closing in again. I didn't have the courage to talk to him about my needs and wants, I was afraid of hearing the few things he could have known about teenagers. I didn't feel the love that he once wrapped me with. I started listening to friends, doing what they were doing, talking like them. Then like the majority of teenage girl in America I started feeling the urge of experiencing new stuff, like drinking, hanging out, coming home late, lying, and so on. At the time I thought it was cool, thought I needed to do these stuffs, and for once I felt accepted, I felt wanted. These people I surrounded myself with became like a family to me, I related to them, they listened, and always came up with a solutions, that back then I considered good.

             I started wanting to have a boyfriend, to be hugged and reassured, to be told that I was beautiful, since I was deprived of all of that at home. I wanted to feel the love that I once experienced, a love that my big brother never gave me, a love that my mother took with her, a love that my father stop sharing. I wanted someone older to love me, to make me happy again. I thought that I'd had found it. My need has been abused. What a deception! Why couldn't I have the one thing I've ever asked for? I started feeling depressed in 2009. I felt useless, dirty, ashamed. I felt that even my own father was embarrassed by me. I had acted stupid a lot of time and he would always throw in my face how ridiculous I always made him look. At the time I thought he started to hate me, but now I see that he was doing it out of love. Because he knew his daughter deserved better and could do better. But what did I know? I was a teenager seeking for acceptance and love.
                I remember being so depressed and beat up by shame that I attempted to open the back door of my dad's car while he was driving on a highway, and throw myself out. I wanted to die. Something, a supernatural force held my hand and kept me seated. Every night I would pray for God to take my breath away, I would cry and wish I were dead, would not want to wake up and face life. I felt useless. There was no point of living for me anymore. I started drinking a lot. I became an alcoholic, I would drink to pass out. I remember almost dying once from intoxication, but my cousins rescued me. I started cutting myself. I was so tired emotionally that being physically hurt would ease my pain. My pain and sadness turned into anger. I became angry at God for allowing my mother to die, I became angry at my dad for taking me away from the house I grew up in, and not showing me his love, angry at my surrounding for introducing me to pain, angry at the guy who abused me, angry at whoever tried to lecture me, angry at the world. I was full of anger.
                 I was misunderstood by a lot, looked down to by those who were supposed to provide me with unconditional love. What really was there for me to live for?


                   If you want to know more about my bad lucks why don't you wait until next Thursday and see what happened on the last part of my Annecdote? Hope I keep you all interested.

My Annecdote Part 1 (Intro):by Anne Dorothée Constant

    I grew up in the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. At the age of 15 I came reside here with my father, my brothers, my step mother and her daughter. Now you might ask yourself where my genetic mother is, right? Well let's get back 8 years before my coming to America, when my life went from good to bad, and from bad to good at the same time. What the heck right?

    Well if you keep reading, your question will be answered.

    My name is Anne Dorothée Constant, I'm the cadet of a family of four. Like every other little girls I used to enjoy playing with dolls and having tea parties. The first 7 years of my life were the best, I had two parents that loved me and brought me gifts every time I didn't get myself in trouble. I loved playing with my siblings at home, in school, everywhere. It was good but at the end there would always be some cryings.

     My nightmare has begun in 2000, when my mother passed. I don't feel too comfortable talking about how this incident occured, so I will go a little bit further than that. Besides this is MY annecdote. After my mother's death I became lost, lonely. I know people always say a girl's best friend is her father, and I agree with that, but not having a mother is like a chair with a missing leg, or a house without heat during winter time, or a stove without gas. Useless I would say. I found myself with no one to confine in, no shoulders to cry on, no arms to welcome my broken spirit. My dad was as crushed as all of us were, I would catch him cry when he would thought that we were all asleep. I never went up to him and spoke about this matter until now. I knew it hurt him to lose his wife and the mother of his children. We lived with my mother's parents when my dad decided to go to the United States.

     I excluded myself from everyone, I stopped playing with my siblings, I kept all my feelings in. Was not a good idea. I started reading and writing a lot, and to tell you the truth, doing so would always get my mind off the harsh reality that I was facing at a young age.

    When I entered 7th grade which in Haiti supposed to be your first year in high school, I had only one friend. I had to find out how things worked on my own. I didn't have my older brother to guide me, he was too busy hanging out with his classmates. Boy was it a harsh experiment!

     I didn't have a person to look up to, a person to do my hair every morning anymore, a person to tell me I was beautiful. Indeed I still had my maids to wash and iron my clothes, make my breakfast, but what about my parental support. My grandpa, who was a tailor, would always be ready to go to his boutique since sunrise, and my grandma, who was a house wife, would stay home with the maids.

    Everyday in school, I would get teased and bullied because of my skin color. I grew up knowing that my black was refined and beautiful, I had nice long curls to die for, but it seemed like my mother went underground with my beauty. No one would ever look past my dark skin, students would call me ugly all the times, I would always go cry my eyes out in a corner, or in the bathroom.

    Being bullied is not a fun game to do, so I vowed to always protect my younger brother, who happens to be a bit darker with much more nice hair than I.

Did you enjoy reading my article?

Are you interested in finding out what happened next? Stay tuned for the second part of my Annecdote which will be blogged on Thursday, January 10