Love the Way You Lie II - Eminem Series
I grew up in fear of my father.
Although his abuse stopped long before it could get to me, the threat of his violence to my mother and older sister remained.
I remember the moment I realized that it wasn't normal to have your first memory being your father giving your sister a black eye. Yet, the image of him mounting on top of his first daughter while my mother watched is seared into my brain.
My father didn't seem like an evil man. He was a protector. He cared about keeping his loved ones safe from the dangers of the world. Almost too much at times.
Although he sold us with a bright future, as time went on and the mistreatment continued, that bright future became soiled with evil. Year after year, my family held onto the hope that we could be different. Less dysfunctional.
To the outside world, we seemed to be a picture-perfect family. But, behind closed doors, there was never a moment of peace.
Rihanna’s lyrics in "Love the Way You Lie, Pt. II" strikes a deep chord within me. While the song is often interpreted as a continuation of the toxic relationship explored in Part I (more on that later in the series), for me, it serves as a poignant reflection on my own complex relationship with my father.
The line,
“Even angels have their wicked schemes, and you take that to new extremes.”
perfectly explains how while he's not a bad man, my father had a bad way of viewing his role as a girl dad. His unpredictable behavior, his penchant for empty threats, and his unwavering belief in his own superiority mirrors the toxic dynamics described in the song.
Like Rihanna's character, despite an acute self-awareness of this man's destructive behavior, nothing could pull me away from him. As a constant in my life, I found myself drawn to this man, despite his flaws.
“But, you’ll always be my hero. Even though, you lost your mind.”
Despite his destructive tendencies, I couldn't shake the feeling that he was my hero, my protector, even when he was at his most harmful.
You see, I grew up in a household that normalized screaming matches and encouraged you to let your anger get the best of you. As a result of this, my father and his three daughters inherited the same tendencies:
Needing to be heard over needing to listen
Becoming aggravated when others don't agree
Using brute force and threats to get your way
Believing that anger justifies having no filter
No gathering, no get-together, no holiday, ended without a fight. No heightened emotions simmered down without pouring that trauma onto someone else to carry.
“Now, there’s gravel in our voices. Glasses shattered from the fight.”
This became my norm every time I went back home. After being away from this environment for so long, I no longer felt safe here.
The chorus from both Love the Way You Lies describes an image of the toxic man standing aside while watching the one he loves burn. She claims it's fine because his lies are what keeps her going.
This imagery of helplessness and resignation explains how I've been made to feel. After going away for college, I started to become more aware of the toxic cycles my family ran on.
Following this realization, I embarked on a mission to heal my family and bring us back to the bright future we've always dreamed of. For years, I have been telling them my side; expressing how the way we treat each other is deteriorating my mind and keeping me from living in the real world.
Though my parents pretended to listen, it gradually became clear that they enjoyed watching me burn, keeping me controllable. What's worse is that I let them. Because at least that meant I had my parents in my life.
Three years ago, I did it. I escaped. I moved across state lines, all the way to Philly and built myself a new life. It wasn't even a year before I couldn't take it anymore.
You might think that it's the financial burden of being on my own that I couldn't survive. Or that I decided to come back home because I simply wasn't ready to be independent. If you followed along my journey, you may even assume that I was unhappy with running away because I struggled to make genuine friends.
The truth of the matter is, I decided to go back to my own House of Horrors because I couldn't imagine living the rest of my life without it.
If I had stayed out in Philly or continued building my life away from my parents elsewhere, I would have eventually lost them all together. That much became starkly clear in our less than a year apart.
By choosing to build my own life, I was sacrificing my narrative with my own family. So, I went back home. And there is a part of me that regretted it ever since.
“So maybe I’m a masochist. I try to run, but I don’t want to ever leave.”
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Taz, a Bengali, Muslim, first-generation, college-educated woman who was raised by immigrant parents, grew up struggling with her sense of identity. Caught between the person she was meant to be and the woman she knew lived within her, she founded The Hustle Legacy as an Ecosystem of Self Discovery to empower people with the courage, tools, and knowledge, to live true to themselves.
The Eminem Series serves as an Act of Defiance against the assumed narrative Taz’s bubbly personality and optimistic outlook on life gives her about her past experiences and traumas. Through the series, she reveals the childhood heartbreaks, identity confusions, and exposure to the dark side of humanity that has shaped her outlook on life and character as a whole. Through her vulnerability, she hopes to inspire you to look within and use music to connect to your inner child.
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