Priceless Inspirations (10 page)

Was that the problem? I wondered. Was that what kept me and Dream from being together? Was it because he was living this interesting life, using his talent, doing things and meeting new people, and I was just stuck?

It worried me, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I was afraid to stay where I was, but I was just as afraid to move on, knowing that Dream might come back and we might have our chance to be happy together again.

He did come back.

In 2003, when Reginae was five, he came back, claiming he’d had enough of fame and the life he’d been living. He swore he was done playing and that he wanted his family. He said those other girls meant nothing to him and that I was always the one that he’d planned to spend the rest of his life with.

He proposed to me
again
, I got another ring (the third one) and six months later on Valentine’s Day, 2004 we got married in big wedding with lots of family and friends.

I wasn’t expecting happily ever after, but I did hope that we would both try. I hoped that we would work together on the relationship and support each other in our goals and dreams. I had already taught Dream that I’d be there waiting for him, no matter what he did, and he’d learned that lesson well. After only about two months, he was gone again. He wanted to move to Houston, alone, to go to college. He didn’t talk with me about any of it. He just did it. No, that’s not right. He talked it over with his friends, his boys, and
then
he did it. I wasn’t in the picture at all.

When we talked on the phone, he sounded strange. Distant.

Soon enough, I knew why.

I started hearing all these stories about girls there and that was why he was acting strange.

It seemed like the wedding had been just a show, a publicity stunt and an excuse to throw a party. People were asking me “How’s married life?” and I couldn’t even answer. I hadn’t even visited him in Houston.

Then, it got worse. He started getting more and public about dating other women, even though everyone knew we were married. For the first time, I felt as angry with him as I did at the other women. Things between us started to completely fall apart. I wondered what had happened to that sweet, funny guy I’d fallen in love with years before. He’d changed, and I finally realized that I had, too. I knew it was time to stop crying, to stop beating myself up about why he wasn’t interested in me anymore and to stop hating the women he chose to be with.

I knew it was over. I knew I finally had to let him go.

It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Letting go of Dream meant letting go of my girlhood dream that the three of us would be a
family
--him, me and our daughter.

As hard as it was, it was the best thing I could have done. It took packing up and leaving New Orleans and all the people there who knew me as “Dream’s baby mama” or “Dream’s wife”, and setting off on my own to create a new life in a strange city for me to really leave it all behind me. It was worth it.

The Mistake I Made That You Shouldn’t

Holding on to a dead relationship is always a big mistake. I should have let go a long, long time before I actually did.

Looking back, I know I should have moved on after the first broken engagement. Or even sooner, when Dream cheated on me the first time and didn’t seem interested in really trying to make any real commitment to me. At that time, I just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get over him. It made me act foolish, begging him to love me, begging him to be a family. That’s what I wanted, but it’s clear to me now that it wasn’t what
he
wanted. The signs were everywhere. God dropped me hints all the time in the forms of those other girls, in the form of my troubled heart, in the feeling that I needed to do something for myself and by myself, but I refused to take those hints seriously until there was just nothing left.

It wasn’t until after the marriage failed that I finally got over it. When I had to pick up and leave New Orleans, I started to get over him. When I had stand on my own two feet somewhere new where no one knew anything about me, I finally felt like I was over Dream. Moving to Atlanta was the best thing that ever happened to me. I finally grew up, and by growing up, I think I became a better mother and a better friend.

Toya’s Priceless Gem: When a relationship is dead, it’s dead and no amount of wishing will bring it back. The best thing you can do for yourself is move on, both emotionally and physically. Doing something new will help you forget the past and introduce you to some fresh experiences, and some different kinds of people
.

Forgiving My Dad

After I tried to live with my father, and his then-wife put me out, I didn’t have much to do with him for many years. In addition to that whole mess, I had other reasons to be angry with him.

Over the years, he had 19 kids with about ten different women. I felt like he’d been more interested in chasing women than in getting to know any of us. It was a choice I didn’t respect. I’d even taken on the responsibility of raising one of my little brothers when I was seventeen and he was nine. Our mom couldn’t take care of him, and my father couldn’t either, so he’s had a room with me in every home I’ve ever had. I’ve been the one to make sure he went to school and I’ve tried to encourage him in every way I could. He’s eighteen now, and will make his own choices, but the point is, my father wasn’t there for me or for him.

I have so many half-brothers and sisters out there that I don’t even know them all. If I went back to New Orleans and started dating, I could be dating one of my own siblings and not even know it! I just feel that’s wrong. I feel like my dad should have done more to get us all together at least. I feel like we should
know
each other, if we’re family.

The biggest reason for my anger towards him is the impact he had on my mother’s life. He was the person who introduced her to crack cocaine. If he’d never encouraged her to try it, I can’t help but believe that her life, and mine, would have been completely different. Over the years, I’ve held a lot of anger against him for that one action, until finally I learned to accept that, “it was what it was, and it is what it is”. All my anger with him and that situation ever did was hurt
me
, leaving me stuck in the past.

My dad and I finally talked it through. We did some of it on
Tiny and Toya
and talked about it some more when there weren’t any cameras watching us. I just had to tell him, “this wasn’t cool” and “that really hurt me.”

He listened and he apologized. He didn’t have a lot to say about what happened, but he understood why I was upset. For me, it was just about saying it all one time, right out loud and right to his face, before letting the whole thing go. I needed to let go of the past and my ideas about what he should have done and what he shouldn’t have done, and try to accept that he had no way of knowing that things would turn out the way they did. He had no way of knowing that what he thought would be just an experiment for my mother would turn out being a life-long addiction.

I also had to let go of my expectations for what I kind of father I thought he “should” be or what I thought he “should” be doing right now. I can’t tell him he should be a different person than he is. No one has that right. It doesn’t matter what I think. He makes his own choices and nothing I say will change that. I’ve had to accept him for who he is and hope that he’ll be able to be a better grandfather than he was a father.

The Mistake I Made That You Shouldn’t

I spent a lot of years thinking that I could change people into what I thought they should be or get them to act the way I wanted them to act. This is just wrong.

I’m not saying that you have to be cool with everything the other person does. You don’t. You might even have to lay down some hard rules and limits on when and how the person is around you. At other times, you may have to say “no” and just walk away until the situation changes or the person makes better choices. That’s not the same thing as trying to change them, judging them or being mad because they’re not who you want them to be.

People aren’t perfect, and trying to make them act the way you want them to act just drives a wedge between them and you. My father and I might have had a better relationship if I had been able to see him for who he was, accept what he couldn’t be for me, and move on without anger.

Toya’s Priceless Gem: Don’t waste energy and time thinking you can change people. The only person you can change is yourself
.

Forgiving My Mom

If you’ve seen my show, you know that my mom and I are still working hard on our relationship. My mom is still battling with her addiction, and it’s important for me to support her in that effort. Addicts are very fragile and it doesn’t help her any for me to beat her up for failing me when I was younger.

I’m working hard to let all of that go, just as I worked to let my father and Dream go, so we can all move forward.

Still, it’s hard.

It’s hard because every day that I’m with my own daughter, I wish for what might have been. I still want my mother in my life and I still want her in her granddaughter’s life. I’m proud of her when she’s on the right track and getting help, but I have to be strict and cut her out when she’s not.

When she first got out of jail 12 years ago, all six of her kids were in different homes, most of them unhappy, and most of them doing things they shouldn’t have been doing and getting in trouble. I couldn’t understand it. Why wasn’t that enough for her to want to get herself together?

The answer hurt. At that time she loved drugs more than us. We weren’t enough to help her stare drugs in the face and say “no.” It made me sad. It made me start wishing again, wishing things could be different. As long as I had Aunt Edwina, I had someone who stood in the place of a mother for me and I was able to go on without really taking the time to find out more about my mother and her life.

Until Auntie Edwina died, I didn’t know about the things that had caused my mother to use drugs. I didn’t know that she was escaping the trauma of being raped. I didn’t know she was avoiding her own pain. I was just embarrassed about her and, for the most part, tried not to have much dealings with her.

Every now and then, just like when I was ten and I started to visit her apartment, I’d try to connect with her. Once, when Reginae was a tiny baby and I was between places to stay, I tried to live with her.

She was in the process of getting off drugs, so I thought she wanted to be a good mom and grandmother. I hoped it would a new start for us, so we got a house and Dream helped us furnish it.

The house was designed shotgun-style--one floor with rooms going in a straight line from the front of the house to the kitchen at the back. My mother’s room was near the living room, and mine was near the kitchen. Within days of us moving in, it started. There were men in the house, cooking and smoking. I was scared to death that something was going to happen to me or to Reginae. A month later, I left. It hurt me to my heart to leave because I really wanted for it all to work. I had really hoped that things had changed for my mom and me. She was older and wiser, and I had a new baby to take care of. I needed her. I wanted that mother-daughter relationship I had dreamed of for both myself and for my little girl.

Realizing that, once again, it wasn’t going to happen, hurt me to my heart. However, I knew I couldn’t stay. Even if I was willing to put myself in that situation, I couldn’t expose my daughter to it. I just couldn’t do it. I went back to stay with Dream’s mom and eventually, when I finished school, got my own place.

I avoided my mom for a long time after that. When Aunt Edwina died, I really began to realize how much I needed her in my life.

It was 2005 and I had just moved to Atlanta when Aunt Edwina passed. She’d been sick for a long time and in the hospital for weeks. I had gone back to New Orleans to visit and be near her and to pray for her recovery. She’d been getting a little better, but then took a turn for the worse. Finally, we all prayed and then they disconnected the machines that had been helping her to breathe, and essentially to live. She died.

I was heartsick over her loss. She was a huge part of my life, and I just couldn’t stand it. Through all the turbulence and craziness, Aunt Edwina had always been there. She’d never judged me or called me names. She was always sweet, encouraging and gentle. She was the first to call me at midnight on my birthday. She was the one who prayed with me when times were so hard I didn’t think I could make it.

She always loved me exactly like she did when I was a very little girl and she and Uncle Frank said, “We’re gonna take that pretty little baby and bring her up safe, here with us.”

At the funeral, I just lost it. She looked beautiful and at peace laying in the casket and it was just too much for me. I’m not one for funerals and I’d never touched a dead person before in my life, but I hugged and kissed her body. I just couldn’t let her go without hugging her goodbye. She was my angel. I know she’s still watching over me. I feel it. I’ll see her again in heaven.