Pain Is a Game We All Got to Play

By Trixie James

Trixie resides in the Island of Barbados, for many visitors to Barbados, the Island is beautiful, tranquil and peaceful, but beneath the surface of this paradise lies a class structure that is so tightly held in place that for many reaching the top of this structure is hard to accomplish, and only a few are able to penetrate enabling them to move up the ladder. Trixie is one of the few, who was able to penetrate and move up the ladder, but the journey wasn't easy, because Trixie from the beginning was set up to fail, with a mother who loved her but had difficulty putting Trixie's needs above her own, a father who constantly abandoned her because he was a dead beat, her mother's family except for two aunts who resented her because they felt she was given everything, and her father's family who except for an uncle and great uncle acted as if she didn't exist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Sep 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490765457

Trixie James

I reside in the Caribbean Island of Barbados with my daughter. I am a social worker. It is because of this that I mustered the courage to write this book. As a social worker, I am supposed to be a change agent to advocate on behalf of the disadvantaged and disempowered, but I was frustrated with a system and colleagues that treated clients as if the clients were the problems. I realized that based on my life, I had travelled the same road many clients had walked. Probably many of us have walked similar roads, but somewhere along the journey, our masks come on, creating the impression that we have it all together. The thing about the facade is that it is so brilliantly woven together that we think it is real. This book is my way of stripping away my facade and going on a journey to me.

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© Copyright 2015 Trixie James.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-6544-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-6545-7 (e)

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Trafford rev. 09/23/2015

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

To my Aunt Merle … gone but never forgotten. It is because of your belief in me, in my ability to accomplish anything I set my mind to, that the task of setting my mind to writing this book was easily accomplished. No one else but you can take credit for where I am today and for all that I have accomplished, and I thank you and I love you.

This book is also dedicated to my daughter, my little princess Kai, who, next to God, I cherish above and beyond anything else. Mummy loves you.

This book is also dedicated to my ex-husband, who was the first person to encourage me to put my thoughts down on paper. Always remember that it doesn’t matter what your past looks like; what matters is how you paint your future.

For my mother, the path we walked has not always been smooth; there have been many twists and turns along the way, many obstacles and humps, but I will always cherish you for giving me life, for loving me even when at times you didn’t know how. Life has not always treated you well; life has taught you all too well the meaning of loneliness, but what life will never take from you is a daughter’s love, for I will always love you, Mummy, and I will never forsake you or abandon you.

Chapter One

I walked into the district hospital. It was something I did every day. Today was no different. I went as I always did to see my mother; this was her home now. Alzheimer’s had claimed this once-proud woman at a very young age; she was only sixty-six. I looked at her sitting all forlorn in a chair. She was restrained as usual; my mother loved to walk around. She often got in the nurses’ way when they were trying to do their job … her job, or so she thought. She also used to be a nurse. Now she was a patient, but she sometimes forgot this. She remembered she was a nurse, and she made herself busy working, so she had to be restrained. I understood this; she was a safety risk for others like herself. The restraints did not cause her any pain. I had examined them myself, so I knew this.

She sat there, a ghost of her former self, waiting. She had spent her entire life waiting, waiting for a husband that never came. Maybe she still was waiting; I don’t know, but today I chose to think she was waiting for me to visit with her. Would she immediately recognize me today? Each day it was different. She remembers she has a daughter named Trixie, but some days she doesn’t remember that I am Trixie; she sometimes thinks I am someone else, so I also wait. I wait for her to remember me, and I wait for the time when she will completely forget me. It seems that all we do in life is wait.

I’ve been waiting my entire life thus far, waiting … on what? I don’t even know. I’ve been waiting so long for something or the other that at some point I have forgotten what I was waiting for in the first place, but still I wait. It’s a part of my routine, a ritual even.

My mother continued to sit, a faraway look in her eyes. She spoke to me, but I sensed she was travelling, maybe on a journey to the past, to a time when her life was filled with endless and exciting possibilities. This wasn’t the life she had planned to live; this wasn’t the end she had expected, spending the last remnants of her life in this place. This was not the path she had planned to take.

My mother was a beautiful lady in her younger days. I knew this because I had seen pictures. My mother was a fashionable lady. I had never known her to own flats; my mother always wore heels, the tallest she could find. My mother was a short woman; heels made her tall, and when she put them on, it made her feel tall, and she needed to feel tall because my mother was stupid, at least many of her brothers and sisters thought so and told her this. They said it in jest, but she knew better. I knew better, so her heels made her feel tall. They made her feel important; they made her feel as if she were somebody, because without them, she was nobody. I didn’t understand this. I was a child; even as an adult, I didn’t understand this. I never understood the importance of those heels to my mother, but now I do.

My mother was a dreamer; she was going to become an air hostess. She dreamt of flying the skies someday, but someday never came because she had me. My mother didn’t lack suitors, but only one caught her eye, my father.

He was twenty-one, but he had already gained quite a reputation with the ladies, and he was seen as a formidable police officer among his colleagues and criminals alike. Everyone knew his badge number; he was at the top of his game, and if he continued on this path, there was no mistaking that he would reach the top of the police hierarchy at a young age. Life was great, he had a bevy of women only too eager to be bedded by him, and he was no fool. Why saddle himself with just one when they were so many? Wasn’t variety the spice of life?

This is the father I knew; this is the father that I wanted desperately to be a dad. Dad, such a simple word with such deep meaning, a meaning that was lost on this man, my father—this man I called Dad, Daddy, Pops, even though he couldn’t comprehend what it meant. I was his firstborn, but others would follow, and he remained unchanged. I couldn’t understand him. I didn’t know him, yet still not only did I understand him, but I also knew him. My father was just a man who wanted to create his own story, not be a part of someone else’s story. To be a dad meant being a part of someone’s story. My mother had stopped being the main character in her story the day she became pregnant with me. My father still wanted his own story. I didn’t understand this then, but now I do.

My mother didn’t lack suitors, but she didn’t know the difference between love and lust. She loved my father. My father lusted for my mother; their relationship was doomed before it even began, but that’s life. We all have to deal with shit sometimes.

I have never kept a diary in my life. What’s the point of it? Get your ideas on paper, express your feelings, and then what? Wait for the change that is bound to come? Well, what if it doesn’t come? What are you supposed to do then? I am forty-one years old and realizing that, that change will never come, but I’m not yet ready to let the air out of the bubble as yet, because by letting the air out of the bubble, it means my illusions will be shattered, and how many of us really want to wake from the dream when it is so much better than the reality? Isn’t that the real reason why we encourage people to keep chasing their dreams? But the truth is, we need to stop chasing some dreams in order to find ourselves.

My mother was twenty-three years old when I was born; my father was twenty-two. And like all young women, she thought she had met the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with. She had not, but at that time, she did not know this. She was like any young girl in love, dreaming of the future to come, believing in the fairy tale that never would be, because my father would not be the one. He did not want to be the one, at least not the one for her. My mother just carried his child, but she would never wear his ring. Her pregnancy and her changing role to that of a parent would be one role she would assume without the presence of the man who fathered me. My mother and her family were the ones who provided all my needs—financial, educational, emotional, social, and spiritual.

I was a happy baby, or so I was told. My memories of my childhood begin when I was three years old. I remember my mother’s youngest sister taking me to school with her and sharing her school meals with me. It’s funny, but I was in school long before I could read and write. When I wasn’t in school with my aunt, I was at the market with my grandmother, a vendor in those days. I remember those days with fondness. I remember starting school at the age of five years and one of my