On My Mind…

I don’t have a particularly good relationship with my mother, and I don’t know my father. I know who he is, but I don’t know him. Growing up with my mother was rough…she spent most of my teenage years angry and on an emotional roller coaster that I couldn’t understand. I was confused and felt like she she hated me. Except for when it came time for her to stand up for me.

My mother was fiercely protective, and you didn’t bother her babies, AT ALL. No matter who you were, or what the issue was, our side she was always on. She would get us home, my brother and I, and deal with us if we were in the wrong, but never in front of anyone else would she choose their side over ours.

When I read the story of this fool who threw the 3-month-old out of a moving car, I wonder about the mother. I wonder what was in her mind. During an altercation with Richard McTear, Jr. at her home, Jasmine Bedwell watched as he picked up her child and threw him across the room. The child landed on the concrete floor, hitting his head. The story recounts that McTear then took the child and fled in his car, throwing him out of the car on the shoulder of I-275 (Florida). A news photographer passing by at 4:30 in the morning saw the body and called the authorities.

I wonder what was going through the mother’s mind.

Jasmine had filed an injunction for domestic violence against McTear the month prior, but the case was dismissed because she didn’t show up in court.

I wonder what was going through her mind.

She is 17-years-old, and was the brunt of constant attacks by McTear—physical and I’m sure, emotional. The baby that she carried inside her is now dead, at the hand’s of someone that she was scared of, who threatened her life, and yet…

I wonder what is going through her mind. What if she had shown up in court that day? Would her child still be alive? Would her life be different?

I am not putting the blame all on her, believe me. I just don’t believe in being a victim of circumstance. You choose your destiny. You either succumb to the environment you are in and decide that you are not worthy of anything better, or you decide the opposite. Hearing this man threaten you, while you have a life growing inside of you—that belongs to another, by the way—should send up red flags all over the place. Why do we ignore those? Why do we sacrifice everything we have for someone who doesn’t deserve us?

I am not even going to touch the fact that she is 17 with a baby, while just being a baby herself. Life is all about choices. And if you choose not to stand up for yourself, how are you going to stand up for anyone else?

There were several times that I questioned whether my mother cared for me, loved me. As I get older, and as I deal with my own child, I realize that love is shown in many different forms and it may not come in the form that you believe it should. I know for a fact that my mother would have given her life for me and my brother, and I would do the same for my child, under any circumstances, in any situation.

No one would ever have to ask what is going on in my mind.