Amour propre

Do you ever have a word at the tip of your tongue when you wake up? Do you ever have your subconscious mind teach you a lesson whilst you sleep?

I do. So I woke up today with the words. “you know your problem Anna? Your problem is you have a great sense of Amour propre” and you wield it against others.

Amour-propre is a sense of self respect, or sense of self-worth.I have wielded it like a hammer to cleave in the heads of those who disappoint me.

All my life I have had a feeling of being short changed, what is done for me isn’t done for others, so now rather than go first. I prefer to go last, or at least see someone go before me, and see what standard treatment is.

Because I knew when my aunt Waltina sent me that “black and burgundy unsewn pillowcases” that it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right in my spirit.

I knew when my dad died not calling me was weird.

But I had to fight… fight to make others agree and apologise.

That fight changed me.

I actually don’t know if I want it anymore.

That thing that I fought for, what I fought for I will never receive, by definition of me fighting for it.

The thing I fought for was an ease, ease of blessing, ease of love, easy spontaneous thoughts of me.

If you’ve had to fight for ease, it is by definition not easy. You worked for it.

And that leaves me heartbroken, every time. Because I worked for that contact, and it makes me feel so unlovable.

Almost every time I think of this I want to cry. Why am I not worthy of an easy love? Why did I have to fight for every single thing I have now? Why couldn’t I just be cared for?

I came back on my shield not with it… Actually. I take that back. I didn’t come back. I was lost on the battlefield. All they brought back was my armour.

One things for certain I will never be the person from before that. Its so sad.

One of the few things in life I hold dear to.

Don’t be like your aunts. My aunt Priscilla and Aunt Annie.

Aunt Annie’s loose hips provided me with a plague upon the land. 3 kids 3 different types of trouble.

Aunt Priscilla’s bitterness was enough to destroy a family.

Her own sense of amour propre meant she too knew she’d been wronged and she too decided to fight people to the death for it.

She decided that everyone was going to hell because she’d opened her legs for the wrong man and he didn’t marry her.

This incredibly instructive lesson was a close call. I have, been beating my mother’s family with this particular stick for about 4 years now. I think its time to call it quits.

Not because what they did was less heinous, but because I don’t want to have “wronged woman” as a personality type.

I can’t get back the softness of the person who existed before her father’s passing.

I have spoken on gentleness for years now, been trying to bring that softness and luxury into my life for years.

I physically can’t get it back.

I am richer than I was when dad passed. I can’t get that sense of luxury back.

I do more soft things than when dad passed. 3 years of intense self care, whimsy and gentleness.

Has done precisely…nothing.

My throat is still raw from the screaming and these manicured hands are still tensed in claws from the crawling I had to do to right myself when the ship steered off course.

Dad is gone and I healed myself from that, but I can’t heal myself from the parts I had to cut out to get myself to where I am today.

Everything feels and tastes like ashes in my mouth, because I had to heal myself, advocate for myself, and protect myself.

I have long said if this had happened and I was the one paying Oreh’s school fees I’d have stopped. Because there’s no way in hell my kid is going to suffer and you leave my kid to suffer but when its your kid I should protect and love your kid. You want thousands of pounds? My kid wants a phone call a week.

The pain still burns me.

My aunt Waltina was the only one to send me a wedding gift the first time round.

Black and burgundy unsewn pillowcases…

FYI I gave her a 60th birthday gift. £60 (well 1,900 Leones, £60 is awkward in Leones)

Lets unpack that for a second.

When one gives a gift one tries to learn a little about the recipient.

My gift wasn’t random, she was doing a reception in church and giving food out, so I wanted to help, and it did, it went towards drinks.

FYI her 60th birthday gift had nothing to do with the gift she sent me. I didn’t forget, I chose to ignore.

Her gift.

I dislike the colour black. Actually my least favourite colour. And closely tied is burgundy mixed with black. I actually like the colour burgundy. But not with black.

I am British, so here, our pillowcases match our duvet covers, so even if the pillows weren’t ugly, the gift is incomplete because we don’t give one without the other.

My aunt Waltina has been to the UK and has seen British décor, so she knows we don’t do dark coloured bedclothes. We do neutral colours. I have other bedclothes from my wedding that also didn’t follow this rule and have never seen the light of day.

My favourite colour is green, my house to this day is green. If she’d gotten me green bedclothes I'd have at least tried to sew them up.

Other people have given my mum bedclothes from Sierra Leone, before. So I know that in Sierra Leone you also match your pillows to your duvet.

I wanted something that said “I at least tried to think of you”

What is my neice’s favourite colour?

What do British people put on their beds?

What would be a nice thing to remind her of her homeland?

None of those questions can be answered by “black and burgundy unsewn pillowcases”

I knew it was wrong from the jump.

It wasn’t a gift it was an insult.

My mother’s family negging me to see how badly they could treat me before my mum would say something.

This was what teed up my treatment when my dad passed.

As it stood I got 2 scrap pieces of fabric from the entire Grosvenor family. Rarely have I been so humiliated.

It was one of the defining moments of my life.

Me infront of my grandmother with this “trying to be grateful” grin having been given the worst of all wedding gifts.

I’d received no bad gifts, very few that I didn’t use.  Again bedclothes that didn’t follow the “neutral” rule. But other than that… nothing I could say a single word about.

Except this.

And my grandma’s plaque which didn’t make sense in English or Creole.

You have to decipher it, it’s a blessing over the house, carved from wood, but the person who wrote it clearly doesn’t know grammar too well so it’s a bit awkward.

I didn’t put it up.

I will in my forever home. Simply because it’s the only thing I have from my grandmother.

English and Creole be damned.

These things put up my sense of “amour propre” I knew they weren’t right.

My uncle Claudius taking it easy at my father’s 1 year anniversary.

Amour prorpre activated…

“I acknowledge receipt…” Amour propre…

I went to Freetown for 13 days… nothing… Amour propre…

So many slights, so much pain.

Years…

My sense of self worth is only ever activated when I am being mistreated.

Comparison, that thief of joy.

When Oreh got married and auntie Waltina sat up cutting chickens until 11pm the night before the church ceremony, cutting chicken in the dark because its her niece’s wedding… and I got unsewn pillowcases… We’re both her sisters children.

When Oreh went to Ukraine and she gave her niece $1,000 and I couldn’t even get a phone call when my dad died. We’re both her sister’s children.

When Lizzie got sick and they mobilised immediately to provide a fund for her. And my dad died and it took months for them to call me… once.

I want to have a sense of amour propre when I’m being treated right.

I want the spontaneous care and ease and it will never come because I already paid the blood price for it.

I actually don’t know if I want that anymore. I have no idea what I want. I want what I can’t have, which was to be treated right the first time.

I wonder if all this was done because they thought I wouldn’t find out? Or I wouldn’t care? That I don’t look to my elders for guidance?

It still saddens me and weakens me. Literally no family is better than constant slights and maladroit behaviour. Under the guise of “cultural differences”

I had an argument with my mum. Because after Lizzie got sick the family mobilised immediately.

I asked “am I loved” and she said yes.

But I have all these instances of not being loved.

Real love is incredibly hard to misunderstand.

So is real care.

Cultures dictate how we do these things but the feeling behind it will always shine through, or not.

And it didn’t to me.

I am still figuring out if I can’t have what I wanted (to be treated right the first time) what do I want as a compensatory prize?

More importantly, how do I rather than “get myself back” cope with the person I am now? How do I get a sense of amour propre without failure, neglect or comparison?

I went for a walk last week. A walk I used to take daily in lockdown. I will be doing that more often. Because it reminded me of who I once was.

Someone who could do a 7 mile loop, then because it was still beautiful outside I’d do a 10 mile loop and a 2.3 mile run… then go dance around my house… because the devil makes work for idle hands, or in this case… feet.

It wasn’t whimsical, it was just a core function.

I now have to optimise joy and peace, before those things were within me, I didn’t need to go seek them out. I was peaceful. I was joyful. I was gentle.

The anger that it took to fight for my rights has burned and burned and now there’s nothing left. If I have my rights or not I cannot even tell, but all I know is that’s why all I can taste is ashes.

Now I have to build myself back up. Very intentionally.

The person who gets up and writes, the person who walks for miles, the person who baked for her dad, the person who could read a book and always had one with her.

That person had peace, joy, gentleness.

I’m richer than I was when I was her. I live her dream life. And yet it is an unmitigated hell.

Because there’s no peace.

Pre-dad’s passing, I wasn’t being cared for and that didn’t matter because I didn’t need it, or at least I thought I didn’t. I probably did. Actually, scratch that. I definitely did.

Post dad’s passing… I acknowledge my need to be cared for.

I acknowledge my amour propre has been activated by my father’s passing. The anger stage of grief has passed. I was haughty. I went from numb and didn’t know I needed help, to “why didn’t you help me? Because if you’d have actually looked you’d have seen I needed help.”

Now its time to look at the life I have cultivated post death.

I am in the stage of my life when I can acknowledge I didn’t handle everything perfectly.

Those wounds came from somewhere and whilst yes, all the things that happened did happen, I am now in the stage of life where I can choose.

Choose the life my children have.

Having amour-propre isn’t a bad thing. But how I have used it in the past 4 years have been.

I have used it as a weapon to beat my mother’s family with. And yes, whilst they did do all the stuff I’m accusing them of. I didn’t need to punish them. I should have left or stayed and sucked it up. Complaining with neither.

Beating them over the head with this has done nothing.

This isn’t a letting go, or a surrender. My ego would never.

This is a decision to not use my words, or my energy for ill.

If I talk about it. And I will… it will not be with the intent of beating them over the head, why?

Because somewhere, somehow I don’t know how, but it will come back to my children. I will spend years beating them over the head with their sins too. And they’ll resent me. Or it’ll be their father, my husband.

So if I want them to have a lighter childhood than the one I experienced, I need to use my sense of amour propre to propel myself to be better.

Aunt bought you unsewn pillowcases instead of something you’d like? Use it for something.

Family left you for dead when your father passed away? Find a way of being the person you would admire.

Family use culture to not love you right? Use your culture to love your family.

Then your self worth would be based on someone you love. And not something so deeply intertwined with shame.

And you wouldn’t have your conscience needling you at 6am on a Saturday saying… “you know what the problem with you is???”

Grace and courage.

Annetta Mother Smith.