The Struggle to fall in Love with Myself

By Lynette Noel Cavalier

When a fall from grace, catapults you to your higher inner power, self-love.

A detailed accounting of a black woman's experience growing up in South Central Los Angeles. A memoir depicting a serious emotional and comedic journey which chronicles a life dealing with Christianity, racism, addictions, single parenting, and toxic relationships. Through a multitude of wrong choices, by the grace of God, she learned how to love herself enough to release herself from destructive behavior and finally budded into a perfect rose that doesn't need water to blossom.

These personal words were written to reveal an honest truth of a life of ups and downs and yet shows the beauty of falling and coming back stronger after every fallthe beauty of finding the moral compass to finally center her world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649525628

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Year was 1972

The church was packed, as usual, for our annual youth choir concert. Our church was well-known throughout California for our dynamic choirs. People were standing outside of the church, which was a very large church, waiting for available standing room inside. The spirit was high, and people were shouting and running all around the church as a nine-year-old girl stood behind the microphone, wailing out the lead of a song in first soprano. That nine-year-old little girl was me. Although I was only nine years old, I could hit notes that the first soprano women in the church couldn’t hit. I hated the idea of getting up in front of crowds just until it was my time to sing. I was one of many talented singers at this church.

This church was full of awesome singers; in fact, my godmother was the state soloist who sang with the Crouches, Shirley Caesars, the Hawkins, the Winanns, Reverend Cleveland, and many others. There was a lead singer in the group LTD, Pharcyde, and many other secular groups. People would come from all over just to attend any of our church choir concerts. It’s a shame, but they used to say that people would come to our church because of the choirs we had and not for the Word of God. This was a Pentecostal church, a religion that primarily taught condemnation and not love at that time. The older I got, the more hypocrisy I saw among these saints. I saw a lot of saved on Sunday and a lot of hell-raising for the rest of the week. Growing up in this faith made you believe that everything you did was a sin. You were hell bound for the smallest of things. We were restricted from wearing pants and makeup and listening to any music other than gospel. It’s funny because the majority of the people who, with a puff of smoke, would ascend into the heavens were the main ones in the church who were raising the most hell every chance they got and the main ones with the true dirty sins.

My name is Lynn; I was a smart, talented child and the youngest of three children. I have a sister three years older and a brother that was six years older. My brother was my father’s son from a previous elementary relationship. Anthony was considered a bad seed, and he only came to live with us when he got in trouble or whenever he needed some new clothes. He had constant conflicts with my father, and I believe my father was frustrated because he really wanted to have that father-and-son relationship with my brother, but he was a constant screwup. My mother was a devout Christian, and both of my parents were Los Angeles County sheriff deputies; therefore, they tend to be strict and overprotective in rearing us. This is one of the reasons my brother would come and go as he did. He would have rules and accountability at our house while his mother was an alcoholic and he could do whatever he wanted at her house. He would beat up his mother whenever he felt like it, as well as his other siblings.

At our house, coming in when the streetlights came on did not apply to us because we could rarely go outside to play, and when we did go outside, we played hard. We spent most days looking out of the window and watching our friends play. Sometimes our friends would come and stand on the porch and talk and play with us on the porch or talk to us through the window until our mother came home from work. Our housework, homework, and dinner had to be cooked by the time my mother got home from work or it was curtains. We were too busy most of the time to go outside to play. If we were caught doing something wrong, we would get a disobedient beating like Kunta Kinte. I, on the other, hand got the most beatings because I was very curious while my sister rarely stepped out of the box. I was very active as a child; I ran track since the age of nine and was extremely competitive, competing in track meets throughout Southern California.

By this time, I had already began taking voice lessons, singing opera at the age of nine to ten. I later sang in a sextuplet gospel acapella group that originated the (gospel group) Take 6 sound. We performed all over Southern California from the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles Convention Center, and amusement parks, and we got our first big break singing in shopping malls throughout California. When I wasn’t singing and running, I was at church at least two to three times a week and all day on Sunday. Watching the minister beg the parishioners for money and requesting something soft and tangible was a part of the norm at this church. They would host three to four offering calls at the same time—one for the church, one for the visiting minister, and, of course, the infamous church-building fund. Now the first offering that you give is usually from your heart; this one you will get a blessing for. The second and third offering is usually not from the heart; it’s just to shut them up from begging in the house of God. At this church, they would beg week after week, service after service, hour after hour.

Although I was in church all the time, something was really weird about me. As a very young child, I used to experience some very strange behaviors. I used to get a real kick out of fires, and I loved matches or just fires in general. I once tried to smother myself by pulling a pot of grease over my head. I electrocuted myself by sticking a bobby pin in an electrical outlet. One day, while we were leaving the house, my mom noticed that I had left the bedroom light on and told me to go and turn it off. While walking down the hallway to my bedroom, the light switch turned off by itself before I could even reach the room. Things like these would happen often during my childhood.

While visiting my grandmother one summer in Richmond, California, I was taking a bath when, all of a sudden, I saw a ball of fire coming toward me in the tub. I stood there screaming in a bloodcurdling scream as my grandmother began to pray for me. It was then that my grandmother told my mother that there was something really wrong with me. In the middle of the night, while I was sleeping, there was an electric socket that was underneath the bed that hadn’t worked in years; apparently some plastic had gotten in the socket, and it caught on fire, causing the bed to catch on fire. I stood there surrounded by the fire, and I had become paralyzed and stayed in the bed until my father ran in to rescue me.

For years every night, before I would go to sleep, I would have what I would call outer-space visitors. They were little men, barely six inches tall, wearing an all-black cape and a wide-brim hat like Zorro wore. They had no face, just a cape and a hat. They would enter from the heater and come next to my bed, and I would talk to them every night until I went to sleep. I did not understand the significance of them at the time, and I had only told my sister about them. I was a really strange little girl, so I thought. One evening at church, during the last night of a revival, I was play praising the Lord at the altar with some of my friends. I was about eleven years old at the time. I kept throwing my hands up in the air, pretending to have caught the Holy Spirit (I used to do that a lot) with my friends.

When the visiting minister laid his hands on my head and began to pray for me, my mind started to do some strange things, and shortly after that, I remembered some sort of metamorphosis taking over my body. I was told that I had begun foaming at the mouth and speaking in a man’s voice. I had the strength of several men; it was then the church realized that I was demon possessed. I don’t remember much after that, only coming to completely almost two days later. My mother later told me that I had begun some sort of exorcism state. She stated I began throwing men who were tarring over me all over the place. It took seven men to hold me down and hours and hours of prayer before my body became limp and lifeless. She said you could actually see when the demon was released from my body. I was a skinny kid; I was tall for my age and strong but certainly not strong enough to fight off seven men by no means.

Needless to say, that was the last time I saw the little men from the heater and the last time I had strange behavior of that kind. It was also the time that I truly understood God and what praising him really meant. All the songs that I had sung about over the years had finally begun to mean something now and praising the Lord was real. Over the years, my mother had been chasing my father to become a Christian because my father was a cold piece of work. Although he was an officer of the law, he was an alcoholic, chain-smoker, and gambler. My demonic episode helped bring him into the Christianity fold. Once my father had become saved, he was a new person. This was when I can truly say that I had begun to love my father. He stopped drinking, smoking, and gambling. But this would, however, only make our house a little stricter. My sister was a Christian seems like from infancy, but my parents constantly put her down because she was never really good at anything.

Although she was three years older, I could read better and do most things better than she. They used to compare me to her and vice versa, creating dissention between the two of us. She was the good one and I was the bad one. I was the smart one and she was the stupid one. Don’t get me wrong; a person could not have asked for better parents because we were truly blessed with the world’s best parents. My parents would give and have given their hearts and lives to the world. My parents were known to take in any child that was living in bad situations. Their hearts are bigger than their lives. It’s just like that saying the sins of the fathers; they just had not broken the chain of abuse they went through as children. So as you get older, you realize that you can’t blame your parents for things they didn’t know. These were pre-Oprah and Dr. Phil years, pre-self-help reading years.

My mother was poor as a child, so she tried to give us everything—a common mistake that many parents make. My father, on the other hand, believed in making us work for what we wanted—a philosophy that I grew to appreciate later on in life. It made us appreciate the value of a dollar and gave us an amount of independence at a very early age. So it actually turned out to be an even balance. My father was the last of a real man. He was a stern disciplinarian and very capable provider for his family. Even through all his gambling, he managed to always provide for us. My mother didn’t know what a utility bill looked like, and she still doesn’t as of today. She never had to concern herself with finances although she did work; he took care of his family. This is something that is rare in our present society. This is the way it is supposed to be—a man taking care of his family; but unfortunately, women of today have become such great doormats for men that they do not care to give us women, especially the black women, what we so rightfully deserve.

My dad’s generation is truly the last of a dying breed. I thought we were rich, but it turns out we were upper-middle class. My mother was a Neiman Marcus kind of girl while my father was a K-Mart type of guy. Although we had more than the average kids, we were taught to be humble for the things we had. We had just as many raggedy clothes as we had fine garments. My mother used to tell us all the time you don’t have to brag or boast about what you have people will already know if it’s something of value when they see it. She used to say people that have to do that are people that don’t have anything or came from nothing and they have to brag to make themselves look better. I guess I would think of it today as some sort of self-esteem issues. We used to shop and have lunch at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills often.

This was in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and this used to annoy the Caucasian people in the store. They didn’t like the fact that we could come into their store and get service too. Sometimes, if a salesperson was helping us, they would get mad if that salesperson wouldn’t stop helping us to help them. They would stare and whisper to themselves, and some of them would even go to complain to management. My mother would put on her mink coat and my sister would put on her fox coat and I would wear the rabbit. I know what you are saying, but rabbit was the bomb back then. Sometimes we used to go just to ruffle their feathers; it was funny to us even though the majority of our purchases were from the sales and clearance racks.

As time went by, I continued to sing and run track. I made somewhat of a name for myself in both. Various high schools were looking at me to come and run track for their schools.

Chapter 2

High School High

My ninth-grade year was somewhat insignificant, to say the least. I did a year stint at St. Mary’s Academy in Inglewood, California, a Catholic all-girls high school where you had to be light skinned with long hair to be considered somebody. Therefore, I was nobody because I was brown skinned, with short nappy hair, 5'10" with a skinny frame. I only went there because my best friend from elementary school was going there, and I wanted to be with her. These girls were too fake and phony for me to deal with, and I had no patience for that crap. I ran track there and I was the fastest one at this school, but the coach was a lesbian, and because I wasn’t, she wouldn’t run me. She would run the girls that let her give special leg rubdowns, and I wasn’t having any part of that. That is, until my father went completely off on her, and then all of a sudden, I started running in races. The girls at this school were either whores or lesbians, and I did not fit unto any of these categories, so I got out. I begged my parents to put me into another school, and they did.

My final years were spent at Pius X High School in Downey, California. This is the time when I met the people who would change my life in various ways. I was taller, muscular, but skinny. I was one of the few black people who intermingled with people of all races, sexualities, and personalities. I had friends of all kind. I believed in no color lines at a very early age, and this annoyed some of my black friends. I befriended everyone, and for some reason, people migrated toward me. I was pretty funny, and people would come around just to see what I would have to say. I was one of the fastest sprinters at the school.

Although I had a hectic schedule, I still managed to sing with the group and render solos at weddings, performing my rendition of We’ve Only Just Begun and Close to You by the Carpenters. I always managed to keep decent grades although I could have been an A student, but that would have required some effort. Unfortunately, when you are a star athlete, you don’t have to do much to sail on through without much effort, and I learned this at a young age.

I was probably the only popular girl in school who did not have a boyfriend. As I said earlier, I was not a real looker. By the beginning of the eleventh grade, I woke up one morning and I had a full C cup and hips and a behind shaped like an apple. My measurements were 36-24-36, and I was 5'10"—no lie. My classmates began calling me an Amazon and Wonder Woman, and I had no idea what I had. But I did notice that guys would make comments in reference to my body now. I grew to like the attention that I received from the boys because, up until now, I was just one of them. This was the time when I wanted to venture out to go to the parties and dances that my best friends Crystel, LaTisha, and Kerri would go to. But I knew I would not be allowed to go due to partying being a sin and all, and not only that, my mother didn’t like us to go the house parties because of the dangers. Sometimes I would just cry in my room. I felt so deprived. I did not want to be caged. I didn’t want to go to church; I wanted to live and do the things that my friends were doing. I was so sheltered. I began pacing inside like a caged animal.

The end of the eleventh grade, I was a debutante for the Maranatha Society, and I was crowned queen at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Debutante balls used to be a big thing back in the day for high-society black folk. My mother worked like a beaver to see that I would win. The one who sells the most in tickets and souvenir ads wins the pageant. In other words, I guess you could call it big pimpin’. My sister was crowned queen the year prior to my coming-out. Everyone was jealous because we won two years in a row. Debutante balls were coming out events for virtuous young ladies. Yes, in case you were wondering, I was still virtuous in 1980. I deserved it. I was yet virtuous. This organization taught us charm, how to set a table, how to dress, walk, eat at a table, and basically all the things that we would only use in the presence of royalty.

Soon after, I would forget everything they taught us. Shortly after this, my mother put my sister and me in modeling. We had already been modeling at many church fashions shows, but now we were modeling for one of Los Angeles’s top choreographers. Everybody who was anybody in the fashion world wanted to model for this man, and out of all of the models, he chose my sister and me. My sister modeled for him first in a model-of-the-year pageant, and then I auditioned a year after that and made it as one of his regular models. This man was about 5'2" and kind of reminded me of an older version of Prince. Unlike Ms. J on America’s Next Top Model, he was a pleasure to look at, and he could walk better than any female model that I had ever seen. He also had a wife. I don’t know why, but he had one. My mother was right there every step of the way. Beginning modeling was the best thing for me. The self-esteem I earned from modeling was worth all the pressure and backstabbing this industry brought.

Modeling was a trip because, the day of a fashion show, the designers would just bring the clothes and, like it or not, you wore what they brought. They didn’t bring sizes 10s, 9s, 14s, etc. They brought all one size, and if your behind was too fat, you didn’t walk; it was just that simple. Therefore, everyone had to be the same skinny. The designer would look at your body and find the model they wanted to represent their garments. Your only job as a runway model was to make the audience believe that you absolutely love everything that you had on. From the hat to the shoes, didn’t nobody give a damn if you didn’t like the outfit, shut up, strut, and sell. I had done several shows where clothes were literally bought off my back. The only thing I really hated in the beginning was we had to dress in an open room with men and women together. The women were always butt naked because we couldn’t wear underwear.

Now I was a little squeamish at first because I was only coming out of the eleventh grade, but I quickly learned that the male models weren’t looking at us at all; they were concentrating their efforts on other men. After modeling in just my very first show, I began to feel attractive and confident. I knew I wasn’t considered a pretty girl, but I would at least be worth a second glance or a third take. I began walking with confidence, airing myself as the finest thing walking.

By the beginning of my senior year, I had a brand-new attitude as well as a new boyfriend. This would be my first true love. He was the star football player at the school—so good, in fact, that when he graduated from high school, he obtained a full scholarship to USC and played first-string defensive lineman as a freshman. His name was Joe; he was 6'3", approximately 240 lbs., and was very good-looking, but he was considered a country boy until we got together. I changed him and made him hip. I talked him into getting a Jerri Curl (hot back then), a shag cut, and I helped him update his wardrobe. Joe’s parents were rich, but they did not live like it. They lived in this small farm-like home that sat on acres and acres of land in Compton, California. He was so fierce in football he was given the nickname Killman.

I was so fierce in track I was given the name Killwoman. We were a perfect couple—two passionate Scorpios who would later come to know the power of our deadly sting. On our very first date, my brother, who was high on sherm, decided to come to the house to visit. I opened the door to let Joe in, and he was met by my brother who was inquiring (in his slurred voice) what he wanted with me. Joe just told him that we were going to a haunted house. Anthony then began doing karate kicks into the air, showing Joe what he was going to do to him if he did something to me. I was so humiliated I just wanted to die while Joe just sat on the couch, laughing at my ignorant brother. Anthony looked like David and Joe looked like Goliath. I was hoping that this wouldn’t ruin his opinion of me, and it didn’t. We dated for several months when he began to pressure me to take our relationship to the next level. You know what level that was. I was so scared of sex. I was comfortable with a little fingering, touching, and sucking, but I was totally afraid of penetration. My mother’s teaching on sex was that it hurts really badly and your vagina will bleed.

So my thoughts on penetration were slightly askew. It was Christmas night, and we had been planning this special night all month. Can you believe it was on Jesus’s birthday? Now how crass was that? I remembered this so well because my mother had just gotten out of the hospital, and I felt guilty leaving her at home while I went to do the nasty with Joe. They say you always remember your first. He rented a room at the El Dorado Motel across the street from the El Dorado Casino in Gardena, California (currently the Hustler Casino). When we got into the room, he immediately began to completely disrobe; he even took off his watch. Boy, he was ready! Although he had seen every part of my body at this point, this was the ultimate—the penetration phase. The ultimate sin I was going to make. Will God forgive me? Will I get pregnant? Even greater, will my parents find out?

After he pulled off everything, he jumped into the bed. This is when it dawned on me that he was serious. I positioned myself on my knees, kneeling in prayer at the end of the bed. He assured me he was going to be gentle. All I could envision was the excruciating pain and the bleeding my mother told me about. I eventually lay on the bed, vagina exposed; all I would allow him to do is touch me with it. Every time he would try to put it in, I would let out a bloodcurdling scream. The truth be told, he barely even touched me with it. He begged for about an hour, then he proceeded to curse me as he put his clothes on to go home. I looked sad on the outside, but I was smiling on the inside. He drove me home without saying a word. The second I got of the car, he burned rubber and left me on the curb in front of my house. He later apologized for his rude behavior, and we kissed and made up.

Chapter 3

The Destruction Begins

The year was 1981. I don’t remember the date, but my destruction began in January almost immediately. I began smoking cigarettes and marijuana, and I drank a thermos of vodka and OJ almost every day. My brother was killed on January 11, and this began a great state of depression for me. Stunned that a person could be killed with a sawed-off shotgun, left for dead in an alley, and no one knew who did it. In fact, no one even seemed to care who did it. A life so insignificant they have not found his killer to date. My brother was no saint; he was a gangbanger, a drug addict, a womanizer, an abuser, and a baby maker. Eventually, his sins caught up with him and someone killed him. This would also be the month that I would finally lose my virginity. How could I not have lost it with all my daily drinking and doping?

As a matter of fact, Joe and I began screwing like rabbits. I found out two things immediately: