Nayla Kidd was an engineering student at Columbia University when reports that she had gone missing went viral. She was found perfectly healthy nearly two weeks later, only telling police she wanted to “start fresh.”
...I found out I was a missing person on May 14.
I had been ignoring the avalanche of calls and texts from friends and family asking where I was and if I was OK. But that night I caved, turned on my phone and decided to look.
Scrolling down the list of messages, I saw one from a friend that read: “Just Google yourself.”
I typed my name into the search bar and a huge list of news reports with photos of my face stared back at me.
That's when she found out the police were looking for her. Apparently, Nayla decided she didn't want to be an engineer, wanted to study art instead. Not having the courage to face her mother she decided to disappear instead.
And you know what? I don't blame her. I've lived with the kind of pressure she was experiencing. And being black likely magnifies it
Read More
A lot of people have commented about how selfish Nayla is. And that maybe so. However, there's a 50/50 chance that her mother is the problem.
We'll probably never know. And it's possible Nayla just became overwhelmed and responded selfishly. However,
as another blogger has suggested, if Nayla had gone to a police station and told them she was about to drop off the grid for a while and doesn't want to be found before she disappeared, then maybe that would have been okay.
Maybe.
I say maybe because some people have no idea what it's like to have a parent selfish enough to think it's their right to live through their child, that their child owes it to them to do what they want as parents.
Congratulations to those of you who cannot imagine a parent so selfish you have to run to get away and make your own decisions. Let me say I also hope you haven't become that parent yourself.
For those that don't know, let me explain this:
There are literally dozens and dozens of people who consider themselves "good parents" for which respect travels in one direction, toward themselves.
I do not have children. But I have been on the receiving end of this demand for respect from someone who gives none back. And I've met dozens and dozens of black girls now black women who have experienced very similar things.
I swear, nobody's voice disappears into a black hole without anybody hearing it like a girl's and especially a black girl's.
Some parents think they know what a child should do with his or her own life. And that parent will tell their child that the over-control is for his or her own good. A parent will manipulate a child, a young adult, by saying, "You have it so much better than I had it. If only I had the opportunities I'm giving you..."
I remember my father making me feel guilty because he was buying me a new winter coat every year. He said, "Your mother hasn't had a new coat in 3 years because we have to buy you a new one every year."
I believed him.
I believe it was selfish of me to be taking up so much of the family's money. I believed it until I was in my 30's and I was trying to decide if I WANTED a new coat. My old one, leather, had classic lines and looked practically new. That's when I realized I'd owne one of my coats for years because, as an adult, I wasn't out growing them anymore --- not because it was some sort of unselfish sacrifice to keep a winter coat for more than one season.
When a parent makes you feel like you ought to be grateful to be alive when you didn't ask to be born, it's easy to make a 19, 20, 21, or 22 year old feel like they owe you their life, like they don't have a right to any choices about what to do with it.
And if they've been taking you to a special school, and piano lessons, and ballet lessons, and special spanish tutors etc, in preparation for you to go to an Ivy League school and make 6 figures a year like they were unable to do because of racism, well....dropping off the grid might seem like a better idea. Anything might seem better than saying,
"Yeah, I know you've been planning this and helping me type reports at 1 AM since I was 12, but I don't want this."
We don't know what happened in Nayla's case. But what I am saying that there's at least a 50/50 chance that Nayla wasn't the selfish one.
I don't know what white parents are like, but black parents might seem a little more prone to "you owe me type" X "success" with "a smart child" --because the black parent probably really has been to hell and back trying to keep a child on track in the good ole white supremacy soaked U.S. of A.
But so what? Even black children don't ask to be born. Black children, black girls, don't owe anybody anything at 18. They have choices that people, including parents, will or won't like.
Some over-control comes from natural parental fear. Even I can understand that. But I can tell you from experience that some of it comes from extreme self-centeredness at the very same time. Once some parents decide they know best, there's no more talking to be done.
It never even occurred to me that I had a choice to deviate from my father's plan from the time I was 12. Even when a next door neighbor, a grad school student in her early 20s, tried to intervene on my behalf saying, "You're putting too much pressure on her!" Only 17, I didn't understand what she meant.
I just assumed I was supposed to check off all these boxes to have "a good life."
So I think it's ultra-excellent advice, that another blogger gave, telling teens and those in their early twenties who are trying to take control of their lives to contact the police before they feel like they have to drop out of he world for a while. I'd like to hope an adult child would have a truly adult mentor or minister or somebody that would really listen and intercede with a parent on their behalf.
But I don't hold out much hope for the interceding. Most people, it seems to me, think they own their children like luggage. Maybe that's changing. I hope so.
Yet since I tend to think that a would-be intercede-er would be likely to have children and maybe feel possessive of their own children, I'm willing to bet most adults will not help a 19 year old tell her parent(s) they need to back off.
In fact, I think that's why child abuse goes unchecked in so many situations. People with children do not want to interfere with other people raising their children unless they see blood flowing or broken bones because they don't want anybody to interfere with their own child raising.
I don't know what the answer to people owning children like luggage is, but I know that we are living in a society that is very much against,
"It's takes a village to raise a child"
And sometimes I think, "It takes a village to get a parent to listen to a child."
So if you can't get your parent to listen, and you don't have another adult to help you make a parent listen, well....I guess you gotta do what you gotta do. But if you decide to go the Nayla route, I say tell the police first.
Whether your parent deaf or is the best parent in the history of parenting, sometimes you need everybody else to shut up so you can think about what to do next. A life is a lot to plan sometimes. Maybe instead of going the Nayla route, some can be brave enough to leave a message saying, 'I'm going to gone for x weeks, I"ll contact you on a specific date.'
If I had a time machine, that's what I'd go back and do.
By the way, let the rest of us all keep in mind that some teenagers and early-twenties-ers choose suicide in order to not disappoint parents who can't back off, shut up, and listen.
It doesn't matter what a parent think he or she knows about a kid. It doesn't even matter if the parental units are right x years later about what path a kid should take. Everybody has to make their own way in this world. And parents have to respect that.
No comments:
Post a Comment