Maame

by Jessica George

When someone doesn’t understand you, how you are, why you are, you will find yourself fighting losing battles every day. They will seem small at first, but you will spend your life watching them grow, in size and importance.

It’s funny, really, because what my mum dislikes in my brother is what my brother dislikes in my mum, but neither of them can see they’re arguing with themselves.

“I don’t know why you’re offended. Gold-diggers are our nation’s hardest workers; do you know how much effort goes into pretending to give a shit about some guy for his money? A lot. Hoes are Britain’s unsung heroes.”

“Maddie, what you’ll come to learn is that not everyone is capable of dating a Black woman. Not that—” Shu coughs. “Or an Asian woman,” Nia adds, and Shu nods. “Not that men who do are somehow superior, but there’s a level of learning and understanding that goes into it. You don’t just date her but her history too. Too much is going on and revealing itself for you to think love will conquer all. Does he educate himself, follow the news, raise his voice in uncomfortable conversations? Does he ever question the system that works very well for him but does the opposite for you? He doesn’t have to do it with a megaphone, but he does have to do it. You don’t want a boyfriend who isn’t racist, Maddie. You need a boyfriend who is actively anti-racist. “Ben probably isn’t even aware he’s projecting these microaggressions,” Nia continues. “Hey, I’m sleeping with a Black girl and like it, I can’t be racist! In his head, he’s chosen Sophie because he’s known her longer or maybe they work in similar fields, whatever, but really, a man like that clearly exists in a certain environment and maybe telling his parents, or ‘explaining’ you to his friends, is just too much hassle.”

“Some things you’re not meant to be saved from,” Nia says. “Some things have to be lessons.”

It’s not your job to make your colleagues feel comfortable all of the time. That in itself is a burden too heavy to carry when grieving.

“Many assume love is straightforward,” Angelina continues, “when really it is the most complicated of things. There is a right way, a preferred way, for each individual, to love and be loved by someone—but there isn’t only one way. I believe the difficulty of life has much to do with understanding and then navigating how the people you love both express and receive love themselves. It cannot be your responsibility, your burden, to reshape people into someone you’d like them to be. Ultimately, you must either accept a person for who they are, how they behave, how they express themselves emotionally, and find a healthy way to live with them, or let them go entirely. Either way, you must release yourself from that responsibility.”

“Your father and I were just people with real problems, neither one of us was perfect. I loved your father in my own way and I did the best I could until I could not any longer.”

My parents are not special people, they’re ordinary, and one of my problems is that I’m expecting perfection from ordinary people. They are not saints or masters of knowledge, just people, people who have children, which, last time I checked, required no proficiency test. People who continue to make mistakes, attempt to learn from them and repeat, until death.

One day we’ll be orphans; one day I’ll be faced with the question of: who am I without my parents?

All the years I spent at home weren’t for nothing. I made Dad happy in a world that likely didn’t make much sense to him.