Life Is Not a Fairy Tale by Fantasia (books for students to read .TXT) 📗

like me, with a family like mine, with the feelings of low self-esteem and curiosity and a need to be loved will read my story and make some better choices than I did. The other thing I want to do is dig deeper and tell you in my own words what the newspapers can’t or won’t say.

As a child of God, I was raised to believe that God forgives as long as you give your life to Him—being “saved,” it’s called. I believe that because Jesus hung out with sinners and He restored them. He was able to do it for me.

My first mistake was havin’ sex too early and getting pregnant. When I was sneaking out of the Wingate High School when no one was looking and running across town to meet my boyfriend at the back door of his house in the middle of the day, I thought it was fun and I felt like a grown-up. I was in charge of myself; I had people to see and things to do. When we were having sex in his childhood room on that twin bed that he had been sleeping on since he was a toddler, I just thought it was what young men do with their girlfriends.

Now, I wish I had something special to give to my husband on the day I get married. I do want to get married someday and have a real family and a daddy for Zion.I should have waited. Maybe I should say I should have waited until I was married, but I should have at least waited until reallove. That love that I was feeling for B. was just “kiddie” love, as my mama always calls it. Of course, she was right. What I realized is that you can’t even feel real love until you have love for yourself. What I went though with B. was far far from real love. It was realstupid.

Having sex when you’re not an adult is not just about choosing between right and wrong. It’s deeper than that. The reason I chose to allow B. to talk me into sex is because I hated myself and desperately needed to feel like someone could love me, despite my big lips and skinny body. I was willing to be talked into something that I knew was wrong—but my hunger for love and my need to bury my own hate for myself won out over sense. That’s the mistake that I made, hating myself and letting those feelings of weakness rule my choices.

Having sex is not something that you do to tell your girlfriends about or to compare notes with other girls. Sex is not an activity that makes boredom go away. It’s not one of those things that you could consider an accomplishment, like graduating from high school or winning a track meet. It’s nothing that you should be tellin’ other people. The only ones who talk about it are other girls who are doing the same wrong thing. Because I couldn’t talk about it with everyone, that should have made me recognize the shame in it. Not understanding those small things was the foundation for my sexual habits. It was far deeper than bein’ a church girl with nothing else to do.

I regret putting my love into B. It was a mistake, but it is one that I will never be able to reverse. He wasn’t the person who was worth the valuable gift of my body. The mistake of loving B. was because I didn’t love myself. Maybe if I hadn’t grown up convinced that I was ugly, that my big lips were bad, and that my dark skin was a curse, I wouldn’t have been chasing B. around when he was hurtin’ me with every look. If I had grown up without those insecurities, perhaps I would have been able to recognize his meanness. I was so deeply insecure that I couldn’t see his all-out disrespect for me.

I remember getting all dressed up to go to the mall on a Wednesday, the day that B. was always at the mall. It took me two hours to pick out the right outfit. I wanted to be sexy. I fantasized all the way to the mall that when he saw me, he would leave all his friends and go with me. That’s what I wished.

When I arrived at the mall, B. had his arm around another girl with a long ghetto name that I can’t remember and long wavy hair, light skin, and thin pink lips. He looked at me from the corner of his eye as if to say,Please keep walkin’. He turned his head the other way and put his hand on that girl’s butt. My insides were crushed. I felt sick and as if I was dyin’. I turned around and left the mall crying, blinded by the blur of my tears. All I could think was that he liked that girl better because she didn’t look likeme.

If God was punishing me for something, it was for hating myself. As children of God, how dare any of us hate ourselves.

Choosing the people that we put our love into is really important. All of the men I grew up around loved music, loved to perform, and loved to look good. They treated their women badly and they didn’t respect them. And they were always looking for the next woman that they could conquer—including my daddy. Not knowin’ what a good man really looks like made me choose the wrong man to love. I was wrong to think that just because B.’s father was a preacher, he would have a good heart and have respect for me. I blame myself for making a poor choice of a man and that one poor choice resulted in a lot of heartache. All I can tell you is you better find out what makes a good man. Once you know about it, you can start looking for it. The