Priceless Inspirations by Antonia Carter Read Free Book Online

“forever.” I used my money to have our names airbrushed all over t-shirts, printed on my book sack, and later had them tattooed on my body, not once, but twice. I did the first tattoo when I still lived with Uncle Nat and I had to hide it from him for the longest time. When he finally saw it, he was so mad.
    “Are you crazy?” he said. “Why you wanna go and do something like that? Don’t you know that one day y’all gonna break up and you’ll wish you didn’t have that boy’s name all over you like that?”
    I never thought of being old or of breaking up and having to look at my ex’s name tattooed on my skin. I couldn’t imagine a future like that. Of course, that’s exactly what did happen, but I was young, crazy in love and no one could tell me anything.
    I know there are some young girls out there, feeling that same crazy-in-love feeling and all I can tell you is, I know exactly what you’re dealing with. I know nothing I say, nothing anyone says, would make you believe that this love might die one day. I won’t bother to try to tell you that. I do ask that you at least try to avoid one of the mistakes I made-Don’t get his name tattooed on your body.
    I’m telling you from first-hand experience that having a tattoo removed hurts worse than getting the tattoo. You have to keep going back, and keep going back while they burn your skin with lasers until it’s gone. Trust me, it’s awful and it’s expensive. From where I’m standing, I would say do everything else to express your love, make t-shirts, write his name all over your notebooks, put it on the license plate of your car, whatever, but no tattoo. I got a lot of tattoos when I was in that relationship because he liked them, but most of them I wish I hadn’t done. The last thing you want when you go into a corporate environment or when you have to put on a fancy dress, is to have marks all over you that make you seem like a straight up thug. I don’t hate tattoos, but I just think they should be things you really, really like and believe in. If I had it do over again, I wouldn’t do any of them, except maybe my daughter’s name and the “I love me” that I put on my finger to remind myself to have confidence in myself when I need it.
    I don’t know if my younger self would have even listened to that advice. When I tell you I was crazy in love, I mean it. Crazy . And crazy people don’t have the best judgment.
    Not listening and not having good judgment were causing me other problems as well.
    Dream was grieving his stepfather, but he had his mother and they were tight. My situation, though, was really messed up. I had been living with my Uncle Nat again after Aunt Lisa got mad with me for going to Houston with Dream. Uncle Nat didn’t like me spending so much time with my boyfriend. Like I said, he was strict. He probably knew me and Dream were going to have sex, and he didn’t approve. I didn’t think anything would be wrong with it, and once we did it, I wanted to be with Dream all the time. I moved out of Uncle Nat’s house again and in with another relative who lived in Bunker Hill, just to avoid living under Uncle Nat’s rules. After a while, I wasn’t living there either. I was staying at Dream’s house almost every night as we got closer and closer.
    With Dream in my life, everything was different. Dream was different. He wasn’t like most of the boys I knew. The more I got to know him, the real him, not the performer he was becoming, the more I saw what a sweetheart he was. He was the kind of guy who’d do anything for the people he loved and he genuinely loved me back then.
    After we had sex, I started feeling different. I couldn’t believe that I had finally broken my virginity. I kept thinking about it all night next to him that first night. I remember thinking it was something special. I remember feeling more grown up.
    I was also thinking about my aunties’ warnings. They had been discouraging me from having sex by