Anger Management

I wanted to write… I have a pen and paper, a laptop, a tablet and a phone. But I wanted to upload this to my blog so I ditched the pen and paper option. The only one that wouldn’t give me problems…

Laptop? Needs a restart. 10 minutes… guess how many minutes I get to write for?  Yep. 10. If I’m lucky.

Tablet? Need to sign into my account. Do I know the password? Do I look like a password bank? I own the tablet, I own the license for the year why do I need to sign in?

So phone it is… and after much frustration I turn to a topic that has been on my heart for a number of days.

I have anger management issues.

There you go. Step one.

How did I realise it?

I was speaking to my cousin last weekend about her height, she is insecure about it. (She’s 6ft) and so of course I went to bat… I was ready to cuss out the entire nation of Sierra Leone which includes myself as I am a citizen… for her.

Immediately. Without hearing anyone else’s side of the story, I was ready for all of them. And I am quick on my feet when it comes to cussing people. So I highly recommend you don’t play games with me you can’t win…

I remember some of my legendary cussing such as my cousin Sa once irritated me in primary school around the time Sean Paul was massive with his hit “just give me the light”

So I told him his teeth were so yellow every time he smiles a choir starts singing “ just give me the light”

I used a similar burn for a song in our year 6 play… “shine out”

He never played in my face again. Still hates me.

This girl used to be in the debate society and debate club of Haberdashers Askes. And when she didn’t have anywhere to put her ferocity she set up “Current Issues” her own debate club so she could destroy people socially. I debated in Model United Nations and convinced the entire of Hampshire schools represented to the cause of MAD mutually assured destruction. By voting to give every nation nuclear weapons instead of my teammates cause of complete nuclear disarmament. That girl cried all the way home.

I started my own “big issue” not my own homeless magazine but a legit newspaper complete with crossword so you could know my opinions on… everything. I was under 8 or 9. The Devils Apprentice? My book where I get to give my very strong opinions on historical figures (Justice for my boy Marcus Camelius why don’t we have cities named after him???) and Jefferson Davis (first and only confederate president) can burn in hell even if he’d bow to me. I love putting my own stamp on people.

Romulus? First King of Rome? “Street fighting thug” think “the rape of the Sabine women”  where they literally said “1,2,3 go!” And grabbed the first woman closest to them. Ran off to marry them and essentially held them hostage forever as a response to the Roman version of the male loneliness crisis…Numa second King of Rome? “Prayer warrior” because he’d pretend to have communion with the Gods just to have some peace. Everyone gets nicknames. Just spent 100 pages of my life with “my Loquacious Brother in Christ” Charles Sumner.

Then we have you. Sweet Grace and Courage. 4 years old last Sunday. I have poured my love, my rage and my issues into you for 4 years…

I have my own autobiography… “the best kind of African… the diary of a Creole’s child” when I give my own take on what has been an extraordinary life. I support black girls rights…. And wrongs…

There was a very long time that that book was called “a child rejected by the village” after the old adage. “ a child rejected by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth” and I have since then spoken repeatedly and fervently about my willingness to commit arson against those who have wronged me. Especially when it comes to my children.

God forbid, a single Sierra Leonean disappoints my children in 5% of the way they disappointed me… I have made this promise before and I stand by it… I will burn Freetown to the ground.

You have been warned.

You had 34 years to act right. Do not play with a lionesses cubs.

We will see if I am willing to actually go and buy a plane ticket in order to commit arson in a foreign country…

Or will I do what my father would do and cuss you out until I have burned all my bridges and I no longer have a family to call on even if the worst did happen.

More likely the latter.

I am not just protecting my children from the potential disappointment that my mother’s family will inevitably give them. I am protecting them from me… because I will 100% take it too far and be the bad guy.

It’s better this way.

I am like this because I grew up in a home of completely unhinged people.

I love my parents and actually my mum is only low level crazy.

She only for the most part uses her crazy for bringing up exes, interior decorations and wild business ventures…

She has mellowed in her older years to take only the new crazy Griffin in town… Me.

My father’s death unhinged me.

But my father was no saint either. I am who I am not because I am my mother’s daughter. But because I am my fathers.

My dad used to say to my mother “how does it feel to argue with your mirror”

Sir??? I’m your mirror? Not hers.

My dad. God rest his soul. Was the high key crazy one.

Leo in birth sign and a lion in nature. He doesn’t attack you… but if you cross his path. Only God can help you because he won’t.

I have anger issues because I spent 25 years watching my father yelling down the phone at his sons…nephews…his sister.

And don’t get me wrong. They did deserve it.

Just like my mother’s family 100% screwed up.

That part isn’t in doubt.

The part that I become the bad guy is how I handled it.

I lashed out. Regularly.

I have never in my life passed up an opportunity to tell them that they are a failure.

And remember I am good at cussing.

Hundreds of hours. More time has been spent cussing them for failing than all of them combined have ever spent with me.

And my mother has 7 siblings… 9 nieces and nephews. One of whom lived with her.

So yeah. Damn.

And don’t get me wrong. They have failed. Repeatedly, spectacularly. To the point where I coined the phrase after my grandmother’s passing.

“Whenever failure is not an option… a Sierra Leonean will make it one”

I often use it on myself because no matter what I say about being British, my black ass is still a Sierra Leonean whenever I fail.

But I am tired. My cousin made a comment she didn’t understand and that set me off… and yeah I could have MADE her understand. I chose not to. Because the only difference between myself and my parents is I am not life changingly cruel.

My parents have proven time and time again they are completely okay with inflicting life changing damage just to get their way on some of the smallest things

The wording of the order of service in my first marriage? Life changing cuss out. My ex wanted his late mother there. I backed him. God help us… people would get less approbation for snorting cocaine at the coronation.

The day before my first marriage, dad was told not to put the ribbons away because we needed them… cussed me so hard I was crying until 5am on the wedding day… to my ex fiancé saying I don’t want to get married… what an inauspicious way to get married.

Finances? God help you. There were so many times I could have and should have disowned my parents for the things they said to me. That was a solid decade and a decade off my life force from stress.

My father’s ministry? Constant state of coercion and emotional violence. I had no business there and yet…  “I was an integral part of his ministry” (read “a weapon, formed against his enemies and against his own daughter”)

My ex was emotionally violent too. Coercion and manipulation were the way we lived and because I was so used to it. I didn’t see anything wrong. Until I did. Until I wanted peace and he came with more problems than I could imagine

November 8th 2018. Enough said.

But that was then.

My dad died in 2021. Retired from the ministry in 2015.

My ex hasn’t been in the picture with his crazy since 2023.

What have I done since?

Cuss out my mothers’ side of the family…

Don’t get me wrong I also gave my ex and my fathers side the appropriate amount of smoke… and then disregarded them completely.

Thankfully my mum now no longer bothers me about my fathers’ potential grandchildren. Dad is dead so you can’t prove Arnold is his son and Arnold is dead so you can’t prove those children are his. Both things need to be true for them to be related to me.

I set myself free from that particular shackle the second my “brother” took his last breath.

I then set myself free from my mothers family last November. When I gave my cousin £100, to celebrate the birth of her son, and to release myself from the pride of my 16 year old self. October 2024 I saw a picture of my grandmother I didn’t like. She looked too frail for my liking. I swore to make a concerted effort. I swore never to pass up an opportunity to (explicitly) send her money. Implicitly, it was to show her I care. Then she died last year, our relationship was as good as it was going to get. So, when she died, I acted like a granddaughter and not a stranger. God forbid I hold my mother’s relatives to a reading standard expected of a 9 year old…. I am the problem. I knew they would fail me… what I didn’t expect was that they would fail her.

 They don’t love me. That much is certain. But they do love her. And so when I realised that their lackadaisical attitude extended to those, they actually do love and that there is no plumbing the depths they are willing to fall to… I lost it. Why, for once can you not act like a loved one? Someone who loves and was loved back?

“Sweet mother, I will not forget you… for the suffer that you suffered for me…” So the song goes… apparently my grandmother didn’t suffer sufficiently for their education because they forgot the phrase is RIP.  Rest In Peace not Peace in Rest. They forgot basic arithmetic because they got her age wrong several times and they forgot about aesthetics and beauty because my grandmother, a famed beauty woke up in her 80’s. Not one picture from even her 70’s. Even I have seen a picture of her as a young woman. Then let us not forget “wig-gate” a picture of her without her wig which to God I will hold a vendetta against the perpetrators until I die. Nothing. And I mean nothing about any of her mourning stationary was up to standards. I couldn’t show any of my friends my grandmother because I was so ashamed of what they’d done. I only had the pictures I have of my grandmother and as someone who didn’t grow up I had painfully few.

The crux of why I am such an angry person is because I am also a prideful person. I know how I deserve to be treated. Both as a child and a child of God. Both things afford me certain rights. Rights which were repeatedly violated.

Why was I impoverished because my male relatives cannot keep their unmarried penises where the good Lord ordained them to be?

Why didn’t my father’s passing warrant a single phone call out of almost 20 people? Who were they expecting to take care of me? That’s the thing. They weren’t. They were expecting me to be by myself because I was “kept away” read (I was too poor to fit the criteria that they’d put on me in order to receive love)

Why did my parents and ex think what couldn’t be charmed out of their daughter had to be water boarded?

The answer to all those questions is ease.

It was easier to impoverish a child who was easily contented than to say no to relatives

It was easier to leave your niece to the dogs than to pick up the phone:

It was easier to waterboard your daughter than contemplate a world where you didn’t get your way or had to live with the consequences of your own actions.

Don’t worry. I have smoke for myself too.

It’s easier to burn Freetown to the ground than to admit how much I was hurt by my mother’s family.

It’s easier to disown my father’s potential grandchildren than admit to being related to yet another failure. Before people think failure is genetic.

It’s also easier to cuss out my mother’s family for 4 years than to admit you have anger problems.

Thank you for reading my soliloquy…

That was me. But let’s talk about her.

She’s slower. She’s typified by a slowness to anger.

She. Unlike her father before her will not be yelling down the phone about the problematic nonsense her relatives have pulled.

She will give up the past 4 years so her children will not see the same destructive behaviour and it doesn’t matter how much her mother’s family deserves it. It ends with her.

I’m still me though. I am a firm believer in karma and if what you did was so cute. I want you to suffer the same thing then we can have a discussion about your behaviour on even terms.

I learnt a long time ago not to argue with a person who doesn’t suffer the same consequences as you. I can protest against the government in London and the police can do nothing but watch me. You can protest in the USA and get shot or in Iran and be executed, I have no right to open my mouth about why people in the USA or Iran don’t protest.

“Vengeance is mine said the Lord and I surely will repay”

I’m incredibly comfortable paying my fathers debts. Earthly and heavenly. Come try me.

But on a serious note, she it isn’t that she isn’t proud or angry. She just uses it differently.

Ego says forgiveness is for God. I am not God. When he forgives you maybe he’ll take it up with me. Until then, mind your business.

Elizabeth the first said she doesn’t open windows into men’s souls and I agree.

Different means no more conversations with people who have belied by actions the pretty lies their mouths say. Fundamentally my mothers family are unwilling to do the work to make this relationship work.

And more importantly, so am I. I said I am unwilling to go back to Freetown to spend time with them. So, I am unwilling to do anymore work towards the relationship, I will not spend money on it. And I value money. They are unwilling to actually care for me so we are at an impasse. Why all this rage for an impasse?

Sometimes you need to take accountability and see where you are the problem in the relationship

For 4 years the only thing keeping me warm was holding my enemies’ feet to the fire.

Time to find a new heat source.

Grace and Courage

Annetta Mother Smit