“We’s in the west”: a look back at my 2016 escape from slavery, 350 days in by Pamela Francis

My mother has an arsenal of platitudes that she has picked up, mostly from the Bible, and many from Dr. Phil, I was dismayed to come to realize recently. Not that I have anything against Dr. Phil. I think he’s a pretty smart and compassionate guy, from what I’ve observed. I just hate the implication of how much television my mom must watch if she’s spouting phrases like “the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior” and “people don’t do what you EXpect, they do what you INspect.” SMH

In any event, one of the things she’d come to repeat a lot goes something like “you become a slave to your choices”. This she uses to let you know that any unpleasant predicament you find yourself strapped to began as a choice you made. My mom skews towards the self-righteous, if ya haven’t figured it out yet.

One of the choices I’d become a slave to – leaving my promising and delightful California life and moving to Atlanta, GA in 2013 to lend actual and moral support to “my husband” because he thought there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that he’d be able to create a fulfilling life in Los Angeles given what all he had experienced and observed when we lived there from 2009 to 2013 – I managed to emancipate myself from at the top of this year. On January 6, 2016, my two sons and I flew west out of Atlanta into the uncharacteristically rainy arms of Los Angeles to begin our new lives without dad.

Here I was to become free at last, free at last as I removed the chains of 1. being a wife, 2. being a stay-at-home mom, and 3. being a California spirit living an unfulfilling drudgery of an existence in Everybodythinksthisplacehasbecomecoolbutitreallysucksjustasmuchasitalwaysdid, Georgia (a.k.a. didn’t we burn you to the ground back in the Civil War, Georgia).

How goes this new freedom…? Let’s have a look.

• Freedom from being a wife: this one went great as I spent very little time if any lending actual and moral support to dad. Unless you count letting him claim the kids on his taxes and absconding with the $3,000 return that could have been mine. Or allowing him to keep the gas on in my name and run it up to some number that will be sure to go on my credit as a ding.

• Freedom from being a stay-at-home mom: this one went smashingly as I dove headfirst into servicing my old west coast clients with a vengeance! I saw my income skyrocket, my days explode with out-of-the-house activities, people, places and things, and my youngest son especially discover the joys of 6yr old socialization among other kids without mom coptering around!

• Freedom from being an Atlantan: well… as one of my clients likes to say… “see below”