Life Is Not a Fairy Tale

by Fantasia

  Even though much of my life has changed for the better, I continue to live with the consequences of my mistakes every day. One thing that the public will never know is how itfeels to have done the things that I have done, knowing the difference between right and wrong and choosing wrong even though I now know I could have done a lot better.

  The newspapers always go for the obvious: Fantasia had a baby; Fantasia grew up poor; Fantasia didn’t finish high school. You already know those things, and they are easy to judge and criticize because the people who have criticized me are nowhere near as harsh on me as I am on myself. If they think some of those things are terrible, imagine living it. I figure that I should talk about it openly and honestly and hope and pray that somebody who came from a place like me, with a family like mine, with the feelings of low self-esteem and curiosity and a need to be loved will read my story and make some better choices than I did. The other thing I want to do is dig deeper and tell you in my own words what the newspapers can’t or won’t say.

  As a child of God, I was raised to believe that God forgives as long as you give your life to Him—being “saved,” it’s called. I believe that because Jesus hung out with sinners and He restored them. He was able to do it for me.

  My first mistake was havin’ sex too early and getting pregnant. When I was sneaking out of the Wingate High School when no one was looking and running across town to meet my boyfriend at the back door of his house in the middle of the day, I thought it was fun and I felt like a grown-up. I was in charge of myself; I had people to see and things to do. When we were having sex in his childhood room on that twin bed that he had been sleeping on since he was a toddler, I just thought it was what young men do with their girlfriends.

  Now, I wish I had something special to give to my husband on the day I get married. I do want to get married someday and have a real family and a daddy for Zion.I should have waited. Maybe I should say I should have waited until I was married, but I should have at least waited until reallove. That love that I was feeling for B. was just “kiddie” love, as my mama always calls it. Of course, she was right. What I realized is that you can’t even feel real love until you have love for yourself. What I went though with B. was far far from real love. It was realstupid.

  Having sex when you’re not an adult is not just about choosing between right and wrong. It’s deeper than that. The reason I chose to allow B. to talk me into sex is because I hated myself and desperately needed to feel like someone could love me, despite my big lips and skinny body. I was willing to be talked into something that I knew was wrong—but my hunger for love and my need to bury my own hate for myself won out over sense. That’s the mistake that I made, hating myself and letting those feelings of weakness rule my choices.

  Having sex is not something that you do to tell your girlfriends about or to compare notes with other girls. Sex is not an activity that makes boredom go away. It’s not one of those things that you could consider an accomplishment, like graduating from high school or winning a track meet. It’s nothing that you should be tellin’ other people. The only ones who talk about it are other girls who are doing the same wrong thing. Because I couldn’t talk about it with everyone, that should have made me recognize the shame in it. Not understanding those small things was the foundation for my sexual habits. It was far deeper than bein’ a church girl with nothing else to do.

  I regret putting my love into B. It was a mistake, but it is one that I will never be able to reverse. He wasn’t the person who was worth the valuable gift of my body. The mistake of loving B. was because I didn’t love myself. Maybe if I hadn’t grown up convinced that I was ugly, that my big lips were bad, and that my dark skin was a curse, I wouldn’t have been chasing B. around when he was hurtin’ me with every look. If I had grown up without those insecurities, perhaps I would have been able to recognize his meanness. I was so deeply insecure that I couldn’t see his all-out disrespect for me.

  I remember getting all dressed up to go to the mall on a Wednesday, the day that B. was always at the mall. It took me two hours to pick out the right outfit. I wanted to be sexy. I fantasized all the way to the mall that when he saw me, he would leave all his friends and go with me. That’s what I wished.

  When I arrived at the mall, B. had his arm around another girl with a long ghetto name that I can’t remember and long wavy hair, light skin, and thin pink lips. He looked at me from the corner of his eye as if to say,Please keep walkin’. He turned his head the other way and put his hand on that girl’s butt. My insides were crushed. I felt sick and as if I was dyin’. I turned around and left the mall crying, blinded by the blur of my tears. All I could think was that he liked that girl better because she didn’t look likeme.

  If God was punishing me for something, it was for hating myself. As children of God, how dare any of us hate ourselves.

  Choosing the people that we put our love into is really important. All of the men I grew up around loved music, loved to perform, and loved to look good. They treated their women badly and they didn’t respect them. And they were always looking for the next woman that they could conquer—including my daddy. Not knowin’ what a good man really looks like made me choose the wrong man to love. I was wrong to think that just because B.’s father was a preacher, he would have a good heart and have respect for me. I blame myself for making a poor choice of a man and that one poor choice resulted in a lot of heartache. All I can tell you is you better find out what makes a good man. Once you know about it, you can start looking for it. The ones that look good or are “cool” may not be the ones you want. Take it from me.

  As far as the sex thing goes, it was a big mistake to not listen to Mama. It is simple: we shouldn’t be havin’ sex without bein’ married. The reason God and our mamas say that is not to deny us somethin’, but to make sure that we have sex only after we have all the other things that we needafter the sex—like havin’ a man who is committed to taking care of a baby with you. Like havin’ the proper education so you can make sure that the child is healthy and growin’. Like havin’ a proper home that you can raise your child in. Like bein’ able to show your child what a real relationship looks like between a man and a woman. These are the things that God wants for us and for our kids. Even God must be sick of seeing single mothers raise their kids without fathers, without resources, without money.

  Don’t get me wrong—all of my closest friends are baby mamas, so this is comin’ from my heart and with no judgment. I don’t want the baby mamas to continue the generational curse that my family is finally coming out of. Don’t forget that my brother Rico has six children and never had a wife and he is only twenty-five. He has two baby mamas. My other brother, Tiny, is twenty-four and has two children and has never even considered marryin’ his baby mama.

  I understand baby mamas because I am one myself. I know you love your kids but that you usually don’t love the situation you find yourself in. Havin’ a baby too young without real financial, emotional, or psychological support is hard—it is thehardest thing that a young woman can do. My daughter, Zion, was not a mistake; she is a blessing. But I still should have waited to have sex, because when she was born, I would have been a bigger blessingto her. I didn’t have anything to give her and because I didn’t have anything to give her, my guilt makes me give her everything she wants now and that will probably make her spoiled. It is now my guilt that is feeding her along with my love. That’s the truth.

  My second mistake was not listening to my mama. It’s a little strange to say, but in a way, I feel I was lucky to have a mother who made her own mistakes. But I still didn’t listen to her. Most girls hear what they “should do” from their mothers, although their mothers sometimes have never gone through the things that they are telling them to avoid. For a young girl who thinks she’s grown, it’s a little hard to accept that, I know, because that’s what I thought. Truth is, my mama was speakin’ from her own experience with three kids and no education and a man who wasn’t actin
’ right, and I still ignored her.

  That’s a mistake that I regret to this day. Think of the hardship I could have saved both my mother and me. My mother has always been open and honest with me. She told me all about sex and protection and what happens if you are raising your kids on your own. She told it all and I still wouldn’t hear her. If I could tell the women and young girls just one thing, it would be this: Listen to your mamas. Listen to them for one reason only: it isdisrespectful not to listen to them. Your mama is the person who gave you life. Your mama may not have gone through the same things that you’re experiencing, but she’s going to have a better idea of whatcan happen and what to avoid. If your mama hasn’t gone through it herself she probably knows someone who has. A man leaving a woman to fend for herself and take care of a child is a common thing that has been happening to women for many centuries. It’s not new. We didn’t start it.

  I am more ashamed of not listening to my mother’ssilence.

  My mama has been through a lot. She has been disappointed and hurt so many times in her life. Mama wanted to be a strong person and a successful singer. She had dreams too, none of which happened for her. The fact that my mother didn’t even notice that I dropped out of school; the fact that she let me go live with and run around with my thirty-year-old friends; the fact that she sensed that I was having sex and didn’t say anything about it tells me that Mama had gone into a deep depression. She wasn’t herself and I should have noticed, mainly because she was not really noticing me. I was watching my mother’s spirit slowly dying, and I was too selfish to see and too focused on myself to say anything. I couldn’t pull her out of her hole because I was too busy diggin’ my own. Looking back on it, I could have been as much help to her as she tried to be to me before depression sucked her away from mothering.

  When I think of all my girls in the projects who have two and three babies, often from different men, it worries me. That is a lot of unprotected sex goin’ on in the projects, and the fact that the fathers have left means that my girls and those guys never had much of a relationship in the first place. Their mistake is not their pregnancies; it was their forgetting that if they caught a disease, they wouldn’t be there for their children anyway. Tears fill my eyes just thinkin’ about what would happen to Zion if I got sick because of being careless with a man who was careless with me. All those times that me and my friends were together, puttin’ on makeup, strapping up our high heels, and squeezing into our too-tight shorts to walk the projects, we never once mentioned diseases or death and the impact they would have on our children.

  It’s pretty simple, but it seems like it’s really hard for us. What is so hard about sayin’ no when your life is at stake? Not just your being alive, but thequality of your life. When you have children that you aren’t ready for, all of your dreams just melt away. It’s not easy being a mama who never lived her dreams, and it’s not easy looking at one.

  But I don’t blame myself anymore, because in those days, I thought my life was nothing to protect. It seemed that death was something that happened often enough that everyone around me had almost lost the fear of it. The aftermath of death was something that we got used to. Being from the ghetto changes your feelings about life and death. Death is just something that happens to people when they’re not lookin’. The news of death is just something new to do when the boredom gets to be too much. The news of murders, car accidents caused by drunk drivers, gangs and drug overdoses travels around town fast like the news of how big the lottery was that week. Funeral arrangements and telling the whole town are all “somethin’ to do” for people who never have nothin’ to do. When the funeral is over and the excitement of death has died down again, everyone returns to what they were doing before. At least for that short period, life around death was exciting. With that as a backdrop for my life and for so many young bored people in America, life is not such a big deal. Being careless with life just seemed like what everyone did.

  My third mistake was dropping out of school. That was my biggest mistake ever, and I pay for it every day. You see, I’m what I would call a functionin’ illiterate. That means that I “get by” in life, but my readin’ isn’t what it should be.I am workin’ on it. I am still not confident enough with words or letters. If I see a word that I’m not familiar with, I still getscared. Sometimes I don’t even know how to begin to pronounce them or even how to sound the letters out. Not a day goes by that I’m not ashamed about my situation. If you hand me a newspaper, I just look at the pictures and try to figure out what happened. I do recognize the common words like “death” and “money,” “taxes,” “president,” “baby,” “marriage,” and “rich,” but most big words or too many words together just scare me. I know that this is a shock. This is one of those private mistakes that will no longer be private once this hits the news. That is why when I sign my autograph I draw my lips. When people ask me to write a special message, I have trouble forming words right on the spot, so I write something short like “Be Blessed” or something like that, something that I already know how to write. Whatever I write, I mean it from my heart.

  Although I got to ninth grade, I forgot a lot of things. I had never made good grades except for that one time in Charlotte, when I actually sat and listened to what the teachers were saying, but that was a long time ago. It was the only time that I wasn’t distracted with dreams of B. cloudin’ my brain. I know that I’m smart. I’m just noteducated. I used to say that I was never blessed with “smarts.” But I feel differently now. I’m blessed with “smarts” because I haven’t given up and I will learn to read all of the words there are to read someday soon. That is my promise to myself.

  You must think I’m crazy to put my business out here like this, but the reason I’m doing this is to go behind the gossip and let you know that this is one mistake thatno one should ever make.Ever. In those days, when I was thinkin’ I was being cool by not going to school, I didn’t realize that the coolest part of my life should have been spending my days at Montlieu Elementary School. A Laurin Welborn Middle School, and T. Wingate Andrews High School. The coolest part of my nights should have been struggling with math homework and writing papers. Most of my friends were actually going to school and learnin’ somethin’, and I was at home lookin’ stupid—watchin’ TV, not being able to read, not being able to count. In those days, I didn’t even feel comfortable counting.

  Truthfully, I never applied for many jobs, because I couldn’t fill out the application. Whenever I tried, I left so many questions blank because I couldn’t read them that the applications always ended up in the garbage. That is dumb,plain out dumb. This is how you see that one big mistake just creates another one. It’s a chain reaction.

  I was embarrassed and ashamed and I still am, despite theIdol competition, despite the pictures in magazines, despite my improved self-esteem. I was stupid for not stayin’ in school. And the private part of my shame is that I want to be as smart as everyone else. I want to be wise about my own money, I want to be able to understand a contract that’s presented to me and not have to ask someone else what it means. I want to be able to read a script and take it home and think about it on my own time instead of needing someone to go through it with me. I want to be able to think for myself and not have to walk around with people all the time, helping me get through the simplest things. My public mistake is that I didn’t finish school. My private mistake is that, although I’m talking about it now for the first time, I’m ashamed and hating myself for my choices. I’m angry that my life brought me to this place. I’m angry that my parents couldn’t control me better. I’m angry that I have already missed opportunities in my life. Although my readin’ thing makes a good story, the real story is how I have managed to fool the world into thinking that I could read. The real story is how Hollywood and show business wouldn’t want the world to know that illiteracy is a real thing that affects a lot of young people, like me. It is one of those ugly things that no one wants to talk about, yet keeping
a secret just makes a new generation of illiterates. This why so many young kids don’t have jobs—they can’t read a job application. They are not lazy and ghetto, which is what everyone says about us. Is that what they are saying about me? Or are they not saying that because I’m a singer? Is the public image more important than what is really goin’ on with me? Instead of getting a free car, what I could have used was a tutor—but that would have meant that choosing me as the American Idol was their mistake.

  I don’t want anyone to lose faith in me, but I decided to be honest so that all of the other young people like me will know in advance what droppin’ out of school really turns into. My life looks like a fairy tale in many ways, but you have to remember that life is not a fairy tale. I’m the American Idol, which seems like a fairy tale, but I can’t even read a fairy tale to my four-year-old daughter.

  While I’m tellin’ the truth and admittin’ things, I should tell you that I don’t even have a driver’s license. J.B. was trying to help me get one, but the real work of learning how to drive and knowing the rules of driving, I had to do for myself. I didn’t even know where to start. When I won the car onIdol, they handed me the keys as soon as I stepped off the stage. I was filled with mixed emotions of joy, pride, and the fear of someone finding out that I couldn’t drive. I was afraid that they would take the car away. I was also filled with dread because holding those keys in my hand meant that it was really time for me to learn to read in order to get the driver’s license and to be able to live this new life that was right before me, that I was holding in my hand. I knew right then that I would have learn to read before I could really enjoy this blessing of having my own car.

  In the midst of all of the excitement and rush of being the American Idol (like having to complete an album right away), I still have not had the time to learn all that I need to learn in order to get my driver’s license. I gave the Ford Focus to my mother, who had never had her own car. I bought myself another car, which I let everyone else in my family drive for me. If you can imagine that—I didn’t even get to test-drive my own car, because I didn’t have a license. My cousin, Angelica (we call her “Boo Boo” because her mother was called “Boo” and so she came to be known as “Boo Boo”), test-drove the car, with me in the passenger’s seat. I asked her, “Does it ride well?” Boo Boo said, “It’s a smooth ride.” I said to the salesperson who was in the backseat, “I’ll take it.” If I had stayed in school I would be test-drivin’ my own car. I would be arguin’ with the press when they misquote me. I would have been able to say somethin’ “smart” to Simon Cowell when he said somethin’ “smart” to me. I am missin’ out on that stuff.