Crabs don’t give birth to birds.
My father is and has always been the most charismatic guy in any room. Endless jokes, an extremely loud voice, an even more boisterous laugh, and on top of it all, he has friends everywhere, and a guy for everything. It was tradition on all those sundays I was dragged to church that after the sermon, all the African folk would stand around for an hour or more socializing, and of course, without fail, taking as agonizingly long as he possibly could, my father always had a crowd gathered around him listening to him tell jokes and stories. One of them I distinctly remember, has the punchline (roughly translated to english) “after all, a crab doesn’t give birth to a bird!”
I think the humor lies in the obviousness and absurdity of the statement. It’s like “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!” but injected with a lot more color. The culture from the home I forsook is full of things like this. I don’t know why I remember that particular one so well, perhaps because I feel like it applies to me the most. I don’t have the best relationship with my father, he left my mother and I behind when I was one year old to come to America to try to craft a better life for us, and he did. The problem is that since he was absent for all my formative years, there was no sort of bond between us when I met him, and suddenly this very loud stranger was beating me frequently, trying to teach me his life lessons, and forcing me to sit down while he very aggressively shaved my head every few weeks.
I always hated getting my hair cut, I wanted to grow it out as long as I could! My mother didn’t like the idea, it may have something to do with the fact that (according to her) throughout my entire childhood, people always assumed, or thought I was a girl because of the way I looked. Long hair wouldn’t have helped with that. Strict gender roles are very important to my mother especially, it’s very funny to me now that I take pills and injections to make me look like something even closer to a woman than I did naturally. I hated my father for all these reasons and more when I was growing up, then one day, at the end of my teenage years, I saw a particularly striking picture of him. He was much younger, he stood on the shore as a wave crashed over his legs, his arms were stretched out as wide as he could make them, and he had the biggest smile on his face. I realized I had never once seen him smile like that in person. From then on instead of hating him, I pitied my father. He gave up so much of himself to create and support this family, only to come home from his 16 hour shifts to a deeply troubled son with much anger towards him, a teenage daughter whom he desperately clings to for her love and affection (sometimes she has a really shitty attitude and a terribly sharp tongue towards him sadly), and a wife that has the potential to be (and often is) extremely vitriolic.
I think most family men suffer in this way, it’s made me not want to be a family man at all, or at least it’s one of the reasons. The other big reason is that I couldn’t bear to hurt my own children the way my parents have. It’s not that they’re bad people, even putting the culture of corporal punishment and generational trauma aside, there’s so much that they’ve said and done accidentally, that I still lie awake seething from to this day. I'm already so damaged and fragile, I don’t think I could bear the weight on my shoulders if my child felt the same way about me as I did, and sometimes still do about my father.I have these violent proclivities and tendencies that often consume my thoughts, and in the past, some of my behaviors but truly, at the core of my being, I don’t want to hurt anything at all. However,I'm sure I would accidentally of course,, and I’m sure my child would feel the same way towards me as I did, and still do towards my father. After all, crabs don’t give birth to birds and I am a crab through and through, I am just like him. When I want to be, I am the most charismatic person in any given room, there are always people surrounding me, people like you, reading this emotionally mastubatory journal are perpetually in my orbit, and of course, I always have so many jokes and stories to tell, particularly on my streams. My own version of a Sunday after service.
My father is currently on vacation back home in Africa, he’s overseeing construction on a house he’s building. He visits his home country frequently these days. He has so many friends and a massive family! I’m envious of all the food I wish I could taste again, but can’t. I’ll never be free from my exile.I’d die before I could take the first bite of my jollof. He seems like he’s having a lot of fun. My own personal lamentations aside,I'm genuinely happy for him. I don’t know that I’m genuinely and truly capable of real,authentic,selfless love. As edgy as I always am, truly, with as much earnestness as possible, I don’t know what it feels like, but, I think I love him, despite all my anger towards him, or as close as I can get to loving him anyway.
postscript-
I penned today's entry because I’ve noticed that despite not posting anything here for a few weeks(?) days(?) (I can’t keep anything straight in my head) plenty of you still frequently check in to see if there’s a new entry. Thank you for that. Writing these is often immensely cathartic for me, I worry about their often melancholy tone, unfortunately I’m only a good writer when I’m sad!
I got the job I moved to the city for! I met some new people, and I've eaten lots of good food! Two nights ago I went to the theater with my roommate and their girlfriend. We saw John Wick4 ! It was a very fun 3 hours, I want to see it again!
I’m doing my best to keep myself busy. I've tried going on dates and those apps talking to new people, but it’s just never enough,or at the very least I don’t have it in me to chase them when they play the little game that permeates all these interactions. That’s just a fancy way of saying I don’t have the energy or desire to message them first or text them after a night or two without contact I suppose! It’s a shame! So many of them seem so wonderful! I’m throwing away so many potential good things with them by wallowing in this. One of them in particular, she's so clever!! She’s done this thing where she’s flipped my own personality back on to me, this FUCKING AGITATING endless coyness with infinite innuendo and subtext oh my GOD I must be infuriating to be infatuated with!
