Priceless Inspirations by Antonia Carter

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