My Culture.

Nobody will believe me when I say that I saw culture from somebody else’s eyes, I lived a life so different that I was envied for being loved. When I say culture, I don’t mean the village or tradition; I mean our way of life, the way we live. We lived in a twisted society, but that was the only society we knew. It may sound weird to you because you may not be able to fathom why culture could be something so complex — the kind of so-called culture that we grew up around.

Funny enough, for the first 14 years of my life, I did not know of this so-called culture that I was supposed to be familiar with — one in which fathers don’t love, kids don’t grow, and love is not a thing worthy enough of mention. A culture where responsibility trumps love, and as long as your father has sent you to school, that was all that was required of him. Forget all the hugs, the talks, the kisses because in this culture, that didn’t exist; responsibility trumped love.

In this culture, a child was a child, and an adult was also a child. Do you know when you leave childhood? Well, neither do I; it was a never-ending cycle. In this culture, men lead with their fists; women don’t speak unless they are spoken to. Submission is key — well, not submission but SUBMISSION — the kind of submission that came with hits and fits and anything but…

In this culture, your worth is dependent on the number of children you successfully brought into this world, even though a lot of the time, it is half that number that truly cares enough to be there to take you out of it

My culture was different. I have a father who loved, who loves, who talks and hugs and kisses on the forehead — a father who never once leads with his fists and does not measure worth with the number of children he has to carry his name. In my culture, love worked with responsibility, and I never once had to question his love or his dedication to me. In my culture, I have grown, I have learned, and I am still learning. In my culture, we are birds; we fly, we leave, we grow. I have a father who wishes for independence rather than stifled growth. I have a mother with a voice, a mother who loves, I have a mother who I can trust. Fear: I have a culture without fear. I have a culture that allows me to speak without fear and stand on my own two feet. I have a culture that brings up strong, independent, God-fearing women. I have a culture built on love. But lastly, I have a culture so rare that it’s envied.