Get Off My Line

"Don't Take It Personal" by Monica

... it's just one of them days / that a girl goes through / when i'm angry inside / don't wanna take it out on you / it's just one of them days / don't take it personal / i just wanna be all alone...

I have a confession.  I created a twitter account...and I love it.  I am not sure what twitter's appeal is, even though I am using it, but I am a little addicted.

I even configured my phone to be able to text twitter an update that will show up online without actually having to go online using my phone, although I can if I want to.  Dope, huh?

Twitter is interesting to me because I like reading the random thoughts people have.  What one says on twitter is without parameter so people "tweet" random existential questions, observations, opinions, wishes, etc.  It is quite interesting.

And then there is the feature of tweeting "@" particular users or commenting on #trending topics within the twitter community.

I follow CNN and NPRnews on twitter which is great.  I get little snipbits of information about particular issues or occurrences with links to a more explanatory site.

Tweeting is very much of a guilty pleasure for me.  I have been complaining of late how technology is taking over my life and making me anxious.  Between texting, email, and phone calls coming through my phone, I feel tied down to something.  Every time I move, my phone must be accounted for so as not to miss anyone trying to reach me.  I am a slave to the thing.

I have to be 100% available 100% of the time.  If you don't answer a person in a timely manner, you must be dying.

But really, I just don't want to be that available.  When the phone goes off, I almost always check it of course, as some situations are more pressing than others.  When a friend is having less than satisfactory day, we converse and I provide encouragement.

However, of late, when the phone rings, I am immediately anxious.  I have so many people and things I participate in my life that seem to be constantly reaching out to me, constantly needing me.

And I feel so bad.  I feel obligated to answer and respond all the time, so as not to offend anyone or neglect anyone or skip out on my responsibilities.

I almost want to get another phone number and only give it to the people that I don't mind texting, emailing, talking to...the people who don't make me nervous...so that I can turn the other phone off and enjoy silence and peace of mind.

I can't wait to visit Sierra Leone and leave all electronics behind and live in the quiet we have disrupted with technology. 

...a simple kind of life...

Tear Asunder Your Illusions

 "Off The Wall" by Michael Jackson

...you can shout out all you want to / 'cause there ain't no sin in folks all gettin' loud / if you take a chance and do it / then they're ain't no one who's gonna put you down...


I took my braids out yesterday and washed it to reveal my natural little afro.  I was quite excited.  I can't really explain how I felt other than liberated.

I felt free of a lot of toxins, free of a lot of expectations, and free of a lot of nuisance.

I am sure that people will respond to me differently.  There is something considered to be intimidating or even haughty about natural haired women.  Women with natural hair are typically "conscious" and consciousness can sometimes connotate a haughtiness.

But I don't think haughtiness is accurate.  Something happens in you when realize how much the institutions of this civilizations lie to you, how impossible they try to make it for the common man, how they distract you so as not to allow you to notice the emptiness of this life and try to fight against it.  So you may be angered, irritated, underwhelmed with your life, frustrated with the blind people around you.  Maybe it is haughtiness.  Whatever.

Nonetheless, I felt electrified.  I know some people won't find me as attractive.  I know that certain type of men won't approach me (Hallelujah).  It's amazing, really.

I do feel a little self conscious.  I have lost the lustrous curly stands and other Caucasian knock off styles that people admired.  I miss the hair on my shoulders in some moments.  However, as I transition into this person who doesn't give a shit about what people think of her, who is doing it for Africa (everyday), who wants to let go of this materialistic, disillusioned, inauthentic, convoluted way of living to return to complex simplicity, who is preparing for daughters and the story of beauty I will be and teach them, I also gain confidence.  I'm happy to be natural and know what I know and to have realized what I have realized.

Lastly, it's just hair.  It is just a protein filament that grows out of our heads.  Civilization and culture happened and it became a way of expressing something, which is fine.  However, as usual, we have taken it too far.  It is a mode of expression but it is not our only mode of expression.


So Zainab, do what you do with this new do.  You are beautiful.


Zainab --> doing it for Africa since 1987.

Roll Up My Sleeves and Fight for You Girl

 "Backtight" by Jaheim

...ain’t nothing stopping me from getting backtight with you / go head and trip you got the right to / if I gotta roll up my sleeves and fight for you / i’ll stand outside in the rain all night for you

School is out.  The semester is over.  I took my last exam on Wednesday afternoon and it was a stellar performance, as usual.  I earned more B's that I would like but I did work hard most of the time.  I found it difficult to balance my extra-curricular activities, that arouse so much of my passion in helping to fix the world, and doing schoolwork.

I recognized that my academics were important, as I have been taught my whole life, but I am recognizing that my service to the community is much more important.  The issue, however, is that my academic work, achievement, and licensure will give me more tools to serve my community on a larger level than my current volunteering and action allow.

Therefore, I persevere.


I am so proud of myself.  I think that so much has occurred and so much growing took place.  I hate cliches and I hate to sound cliche, but...


I am quite different from who I was four months ago.  And it was only four months ago.


My family and I reconnecting, apologizing, spending time together, supporting each other definitely made a huge difference in my psyche.

It didn't cure anything, but it made it possible to bear some of the ills of my life and my mind.  My Mommy validated much I had been feeling and hypothesizing about the points of contention between us.  Because we never sat and discussed anything without arguing and attacking each other, we lost the details of the issue.

We argued about stupid and irrelevant things all to communicate our dissatisfaction with each other.  All we had to do was say we were dissatisfied, but communication has always been really difficult for us.


The war between the Dr. and Mrs. versus me is over and that has lifted such a heavy, heavy weight.


Then the beautiful Black womyn I met this semester and reconnecting with the beautiful Black womyn I already know was a nourishment like no other.


Afrikana Student Organization and OMSA's Womyn of Color Discussion group have been my church on campus and through it I met Charity.Velma.Ariel.Valerie.Brittany.Amanda and they have literally changed my life...they way my Christina.Brittany.Ravi.Gwenny did and continue to do.



Although age carries me closer and closer to the center of my "Africanness" (as Shahedah has dubbed it), spending time with people who are also being carried closer has made my carriage that much sweeter.  We all recognize answers in Africa.  Not that problems are not rampant, corruption is not real, poverty is fictional because all of those things exists...

But that Africa has resources...and we are a few.  And we want to encourage other Black people, all the people of the Diaspora to be resources for Africa, on the continent and off.


Thirdly, I started therapy.  Going to therapy is like putting on corrective glasses and seeing what you have been missing all along.  Taking what I learn in therapy seriously, improving my life by improving how I think of myself is like getting lasic surgery to improve my sight permanently.  I will do that.


And then I actually got glasses because I am near-sighted and have astigmatism in some eye...and I've been walking around missing all the details of the scene.


Lastly, I am working on my self-esteem.  It is hard to do because it is such an abstract concept that is developed without one's awareness.  How do you catch or gauge when you are growing up that [this], whatever it is that you are experiencing or enduring, will cause damage to your self-concept?  Self-esteem seems to develop in us, without us, informed by the people around us, most of whom are old enough to know the events of now nourish or deplete my self-esteem later.  But somehow, they overlook it too, and you are left, an adult, maybe self-loathing, and inept at thinking in any other way.


But I am working on it.  It sounds strange [mainly because I am strange], but I think of "self-esteem" as myself as a little girl.  When I am talking to myself, thinking to myself, I try to be careful what I say to myself by imagining that I am talking to a child.  I love children like I love God.  My service to the community will always be predicated on what I am leaving and providing for the children of the world, who don't ask to be born and are expected to assume all the pathologies of the world they are born into.


So I talk to [me] as (me - 17 years = selfesteem).  When I make a mistake or do something I am unhappy with, I reprimand myself appropriately, recognizing that the [little girl: self-esteem] wants to be a good person and is trying her best.  She is young and unwise, willing to learn, but always human and imperfect.  She lives, she learns, she does it better next time as long as it doesn't kill her this time.  And it usually doesn't.

Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have NO time to criticize others.

 And I have to be willing to do that for myself too.

Undulating

My Mom apologized to me. She asked me to come over to their house, sat in the living room with my father and I, and apologized for being overly critical, for not loving me unconditionally, for expelling me when I got to difficult to handle, and not creating the home that every child deserves.

She said such poetic things like "No matter what happens in the world: what you go out and do or what is done to you, you should always have a place to come to, where you will be accepted."

This falls right in line with African style. There is no place to throw a child, no place to give away a child, no matter how "bad" they may be. She said she realized that she had not created a home for me just because she bought a nice house.

She said it all so poetically. She said everything I resented her for not realizing. She made congruent everything between her treatment of me and what our culture says to do that was previously congruent.

She showed me her emotions too. I always complain that she talks about me to her sisters, reveals her sadness or her frustration or her regret to them, but presents this stone cold, infallible persona to me.

And I try to explain that it would help if she showed me those emotions. It would humanize her. I always thought she was just heartless. I felt like she didn't even have feelings and that allowed me to be so hurtful to her. I wanted her to show me that she feels things. Instead, I would try to hurt her and she would hurt me worse.

And then she rebuked my Daddy, which I thought was funny because I had always suspected that I was a divisive issue in my parents' marriage but I had no proof.

Mom rebuked Dad for going behind her back and talking to me on the phone when they had decided that they, as a couple, as a unit, would not talk to me (I think it's funny that they had conversations, as parents, about not talking to one of their children...like I was too much to deal with so they were just going to stop talking to me).

Then, Daddy would fold and he would always call me. He has always been the one to break the silence that sometimes becomes our relationship.

This past summer, when there was some mix up about my tuition balance at the university, the university was sending letters to my permanent address: the parentals' house.

They flipped out and were trying to figure out what was going on and blah blah blah. Mom made a fight out of it when 1) it isn't any of her business because she doesn't subsidize my life in any capacity 2) I am perfectly capable of handling my own situations now. They cut me off financially and socially, I am sure in hopes to incapacitate me, force me to return home and do what they ask to regain their support.

I did not. I decided to do it on my own than live in this limbo of expulsion at any moment. My parents were constantly threatening me with removing their support. So I called their bluff and when they did, I didn't give up on my life. My friends wouldn't give up on my life and kept me afloat until I made it out of the flood altogether.

Then I started school this semester, meaning I obviously resolved the tuition situation (which I kept telling them not to worry about and I don't know why they were worried because they don't pay for anything for me and they didn't really offer to pay anything so why are you trippin?).

My Dad started calling me and checking on me and cracking jokes for me and laughing with me...and pretending that everything was fine.

Meanwhile, my Mom wasn't talking to me, which I still don't understand. I just told her not to worry. I just want her to be my mom. She doesn't need to worry about those things anymore.

So my mother told my father that she was upset that he would talk to me after they had decided that I was contraband. She said that it made her angry that he was somehow immune from the drama. Here he was, on the phone, laughing and bonding with me when she wanted to have a relationship with me too but was upset.

Even if she was being unreasonable, it made her look even worse. She said she wondered what I must have thought of her. If my Dad can talk to me and we can have a relationship despite our conflicts, then what is wrong with my Mom? Which is exactly what I would think!

My father never seemed any less frustrated, less disappointed, less angry with me than my Mom did but he was able to return to his role as father. He never made me "pay" for my behavior by withholding his love (even though at a point he was behaving just as unreasonably as her).

So I wondered why she was so obstinate, why she was so mad.

The things is, they are both people and the are different people. My Dad would continue communication just in case there was "a chance to save my daughter".

And it was a genius plan. If he hadn't have been talking to me, my mother wouldn't even have had the opportunity to call me and ask me to come over and talk, because I wouldn't have accepted their phone calls and I wouldn't have returned them either.

She was jealous. I thought that was so cute. But again, it was her sharing how she felt, which I have never been privy to. I literally thought that my mother just didn't like me. And relatives would say that such a thing was absurd. But even though she didn't say that she didn't like me, her anti-emotional stance, the way she would mock me when I became emotional, and the choice to punish me with silence rather than discuss issues made me think she didn't like me.

That was all I could use to explain it. I am 22 years old. The relationship I have with my parents at this age, given that I am financially independent, is completely optional. So I was always confused about the way she chose to handle her anger. She chose not to talk to me, which is painful of course, but is also stupid. Being estranged from my parents is not the devastating thing at 22 that is may be at 15 and 16.

But, we all have our burdens. Her burdens, her inadequacies, her idiosyncracies, her life experience guided her to act and treat me in a certain way, something very incongruent with what I expected and vice versa. I think we both operated under the premise that our relationship, as mother and daughter should just work. Neither of us considered (or showed the other) our humanity and the work it takes for any two human beings to have a healthy and functional interpersonal relationship.

I am going to forgive her just as I hope she will forgive me. And we will replace statements like "Ugh" with revolutionary cries.

Ball & Chain

"Since I Seen't You" by Anthony Hamilton

On the blog Shahedah and I share ownership of, I wrote an entry about a horrible dream I had of the most important and remarkable woman in the world to me. The dream felt like One Cup of Fear in an otherwise slow day.

Since that dream, I have felt a spirit that wants to at least entertain the idea of forgiveness. The dream made my anger and frustration seem so pointless. If I try to hate her, what will it turn into when she dies?

So resentment and anger loosed their grips on my heart and I wrote an email to my mother explaining that our bickering is quite stupid and it means nothing in the grand scheme. I told her I don't know why she isn't talking to me and I don't know what I did, but I don't care. I just wanted her to know that I wasn't mad. I also pointed out some faultiness in some things she thinks I am doing (like drugs). There's no way in hell I'm doing drugs. But I guess she can't see me on campus and how much I have to do and how little time I have for drugs if I were doing them. And remember my GPA last semester. Don't nobody on the pipe pull those kinds of grades.

I digress. I just wanted her to know that I wasn't mad. Sometimes, we retain and nourish our anger in defense of someone else's anger. She may think I am mad at her and think it unfair or dumb that I am mad at her so then she will be mad at me and vice versa. I know. How ridiculous.

She replied in a brief message that she just needed to think things out. I thought I wasn't going to get a response at all so I was elated to see that and gladly began to wait for her to"think things out".

And here I am, 2 and a half weeks later, still waiting for her reply. What I know is, she is not going to reply, which really irritates me. I have written letters to her before. One was incredibly poetic but very genuine and I was desperate to talk to her. She said some things happened and she forgot about it. This has happened a few other times.

She just doesn't want to talk about it. She just wants me to "get my act together" and move on. I don't think she thinks there is anything to discuss. Why do we refuse to get along? Why are we both so stubborn? Why do we have to be right? How are we hurting each other? What can we do to stop?

These are good questions. We should address them, talk about it. But we don't. For her, the problem lies with me. I am not "behaving". I'm almost 23 years old. I'm far past "misbehaving". I hate when they say that. That is what adolescents do, "misbehave". We just don't get along quite plainly and if it were up to the lovely Marie Umarr-Kamara, BSN, MSN, we would just stick in this cycle forever.

Recovering from all the mess that we have endured in the last 3 years will require some honest, serious, maybe hurtful conversation and she doesn't want to do it. The problem has nothing to do with the sometimes mean and manipulative behaviors my parents sometimes employed to "reign me in". The problem is all me. I don't listen. I do this. I do that. I don't do this. I don't do that.

Fine. I messed up. I should have listened in some instances and I'm glad I didn't in others. But the problem can't even be fixed. Me and moms are like 2 highly skilled, stubborn doctors with two very different diagnoses.

She is still ignoring me now, even though I really need her to give me that stethoscope...5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

And we are back to Square 1. Welcome back. FML.

A God Who Eats Sausages

"Welcome to Heartbreak" by Kanye West

...and my keeps spinnin' / can't stop havin' these visions / gotta get with it...

This wonderful week was spent with my wonderful family. My two cousins, Mankappr and Shahedah came to visit Richmond for this last leg of the summer before we all return to school and work. Mankappr came down from Delaware and Shahedah came up from North Carolina.

Our family is very, very dramatic. The pair of parents in the network are demanding, unforgiving, emotionally unavailable, but expect a genuine, strong relationship.

Little do they know, all the kids they have raised feel no real connection to them. They are ready to pack and leave as soon as they have the financial means to do so.

I have written a journal entry about this and expressed that I think it is so sad. We actually have such a wonderful culture that teaches us to be selfless, self-motivated, self-reliant, responsible, considerate, and encourages unending generosity and helpfulness to one another. We have such funny and fun times together and it is amazing to see us in action when there is a crisis to handle.

However, the judgmental, gossipy, irrational characteristic is overbearing. It negates an emotional relationship between parent and child. The child resents the parents' harshness, a harshness that is a little out of place in this American bubble they are raising the culturally hybridized child. It sucks.

So, Mankappr, Shahedah, and I have been bouncing from aunt's house to aunt's house, visiting and having a good time. One of our aunt's made a stink about me sleeping at her house. I told you my mom talks shit about me to anyone that is familiar with me and will listen.

For that reason, my aunt just doesn't want me to spend the night with her children, although while she was in school and her kids could not drive, I would keep them on weekends and chauffer them around anywhere they needed to go. I catered to them like they were my own children because I have paid attention to our culture and that is what is accepted as appropriate.

You think it would end there right? My aunt is being a little annoying. I won't go over there anymore. Situation over. Nope.

She calls and complains to Shahedah's mom (yikes, that is a mean, scary lady) that we have all left and gone to our Auntie Oumie's house. Now they are all wound up. Auntie Aminata (the disgruntled aunt who said I shouldn't sleep at her house) talks more shit about me that is not true, but what can I do?

It becomes such a situation that Shahedah is screamed on during a phone call from her mother and told to come home the next day.

Then God explained to me that they are all like this. The whole family is suffering from the same disease of ridiculousness, konzosah (gossip), and dramatics. They don't mean to. They are trying to protect us. But there is no need to suffer under such hurt feelings at the hands of parents with good intentions and bad decisions.

But I have left them all behind. I have found a place, a purpose, a use in this world that is all my own, not contingent upon the approval of the family that is most inconsistent.

Now I am just waiting on the love of my life, with the wonder of lavender, to be all mine and make a family of my own.

Barnyard

"Closer to Love" by Matt Kearney

...oh, it's your light / oh, it's your way / pull me out of the dark / just to show me the way...

In the third grade, Ms. Miriello assigned us a project that required us to look at the moon every evening at the same time. We were supposed to record our findings in order to incorporate it into our lessons about weather, climate, weather and climate patterns, etc.

I always forgot to look at the moon at the same time each night and some nights I would just forget totally. I basically had to forge the information because I had no clue what the moon looked like that night. I forgot to look! I was 8 years old in 1995. The internet had not debuted in my life so I could not look it up and write it in on the calendar we were provided.

I cannot remember if my parents knew about my project and my delinquent reporting. I do remember, however, one night, my mother waking me out of my sleep to show me the moon. She gently held my hand and dragged my sleepy body to our back porch in our house in Raleigh, NC.

I could barely open my eyes and I was paranoid that I was in some kind of trouble so I was very disoriented. She stood behind me, held my shoulders, and rested her chin on the spot where my neck and shoulder met. She whispered in my ear while pointing up, "Look at the moon."

I looked up to a huge, blue glowing full moon, the only one of the cycle we were recording in school. I remember thinking how gorgeous it looked, that light cobalt blue against that almost black sky with sprinklings of small white stars.

I cannot remember if I recorded it or what, but that memory has always stuck with me. It was my little moment with my mom. I didn't have to share her with Sheikh or Lima. It was our little moment where my mother paid attention to the details of my life, woke her daughter up to look at the spectacle that was the moon.

I remember what she smelled like, the light pink pajama outfit she wore, the brand of her whisper. That is the woman I remember. I am angry with her. I am frustrated with her. But I remember that moment and I remember the woman that I love, the woman that I want to learn from, the woman I want to be like.

Since then, full moons have always meant my mother is watching, thinking of her daughter somewhere, with her hands on my shoulder and her whisper in my hair.

Goodnight Mommy.

Signature Architect

"RoboCop" by Kanye West

...just looking at your history / you're like the girl from Misery...

Yesterday, I took my little sister to dinner at this highly rated sushi place called Kyoto Sushi. She has been wanting to try it but wanted to go with someone who is familiar with sushi. I LOVE sushi. Sushi first debuted in my life a week before college. My high school best friend Ravi dragged me to lunch at Osaka's before we were all to leave for our respective dorm rooms. I couldn't bring myself to try it. I did eat the shrimp tempura though.

But the introduction did something to my curiosity. When I moved into the dorms, my roommates and I went to the magnificent dining hall. In the center of the sprawling hall was the sushi station. I thought of Ravi, our pact to be really cool, cultured people, and decided I had to try the sushi. It was step one in turning into a cool, cultured adult.

Since then I have been uncommonly obsessed with sushi. I spent all my dining dollars and meal swipes on sushi my first semester of college. My mom scolded me and said that's why my guts are all remedial. Really though, I just have irritable bowel syndrome and my GI tract is lazy. And I have the curse of having a tongue that likes the taste of all that is foreign and unusual. I am the least picky eater ever.

Back to yesterday...after the dinner, my little sister and I sat and had cocktails all night. We drank into absurdity, laughed at everything, told sad, serious stories to each other that were still funny. After punishing a nice bottle of spirits, we let go of the world and went to sleep.

We awoke this morning, hurt, dehydrated, hungry, and nauseous. But the Sex & the City movie was on. I quickly recovered. She kept asking to die.

As I watched these obscenely wealthy White women prance around New York on free sidewalks and rent sized stilettos, my superficial ocean was stirred. I can't wait to do that...pile my car with Prada bags and not be too sure of how much I spent even. Then go to Ravi's house and eat fish roe for brunch. I always imagine Ravi in my rich life because we are complicated and awesome and shallow and dull all at the same time. Love that kid.

The other thing the movie did was remind me of potential. Life is bad. It isn't fun sometimes. It's hard to get through. It's boring. It's stifling. It is rank. It is tedious and heartbreaking. It is hard.

The adjectives don't stop. Life can be anything. I do believe that there are some lots in life that are hard to change. But it is always possible to change. I think my problem was, although I was aware of this, I wondered why some had to fight and work so much harder than others to change. That was my frustration. I did not and do not think I should have to fight so hard, try so hard for the basics.

However, I am guessing that happiness and stability are not basics. No one is just handed a sensible life. You are just handed a life and how much sense it makes is halfway up to you. I say halfway because of course we are all born into circumstances that we most definitely cannot control. When you get some sense and some power to make decisions in your life, the onus is on you to make it what you want.

That said, I still understand why some people don't want to try, don't want to change, and maybe just don't care. Even if the onus is on all of us, sometimes the burden of the onus is enough to remain stationary or sink.

I haven't really decided what it is I want to do, or maybe can do. I could reply to the onus and make my life sensible. Or I could live maybe below mediocrity so as to avoid fighting. I sway back and forth between these options.

In reality, I am fighting. I am fighting really hard. I probably don't feel like it because I am not seeing the change I am fighting for quite yet, but somewhere, I know I am fighting. I ain't gon' lie, this depression is a stunner but I'm still in love with my life.

Home Alone, Part Who Freakin' Knows

"Nikki" by The Dream

...now your heart is broken / go on 'head and pick it up...

So Will texted me. I was nice and patient even though I just wanted to say all kinds of nasty insults that I rehearsed when the ship sunk but never got a chance to say. We stopped talking (I'm still not totally sure how he has my new number because I didn't give it to him!). But he decides to randomly contact me. It was obvious that he was intoxicated or altered in some fashion, otherwise he wouldn't have had the nerve, as he admitted himself. So I couldn't be that mad. He wasn't totally in control of himself.

However, I cannot understand why he would think I want to have contact with him. He said that when he checked on me on my birthday this year, I said I forgave him. I was probably altered. I was in Miami and you know what happened in Miami! I want to forgive him and in those moments in which the details of my life and pain are fuzzy, I can forgive anyone, at least for a while.

And honestly, I know that as a child of God I should have forgiven him by now. There are a litany of people who I should have forgiven by now but I find it wholly impossible. I'm weak for pain. I feel it so deeply, it's so paralyzing, I cannot figure out how to let it go. And it is not as though I haven't done wrong to others.

But I still hate him. I still do. I have stopped wishing for bad things for him. I only did that for a very short while. But given the continued decrepit condition of my life, as much as I want to "let go of the past", I don't know how.

And I don't know that I want to. These experiences are the kinds of things that teach me how to be less naive and less trusting, which is what gets me in so much trouble. I should know better but when I love someone, I trust them. I didn't think it would be a problem if he knew my master password. Stupid.

I just believe people will be just as good to me as I am to them or try to be to them. In the end, it wasn't even what he had done but more what he said. I know he was angry. But as time has passed, I wonder why that is the emotion he had. You don't know what I'm talking about but if I had a friend in the shape that I was in, anger would have been my least likely expressed emotion.

When I was "loco", Gwenny and Christina were willing to put our friendship on the line to ensure my health and safety. They knew it was possible that I would not want to be their friend anymore after they brought my situation to light, but it was worth it to save my life.

For that reason, I have always been confused by his reaction. I have remained furious about it. When all was said and done, the ego I fear in every man spoke up for him instead of the caring, loving person I knew, a person who seemed to really love me unconditionally.

The situation between Will and I has dulled the light I used to see in people. I am afraid now, most of the time, around new people. And I don't want to introduce new people into my life. It seems more trouble than it is worth.

There is a solid circle of people who have never swayed, never left, never really disappointed. I have resolved that they are all I need.

I still love people. I am still outgoing. But I am guarded. Sometimes I am sad because I wonder about the interesting and good people I am missing out on. Will was interesting and good to me, at least for a while. I miss (sometimes) the thrill of new personalities but it spares me of much pain. The trade-off is fair.

Onion Skin

"The Battle is Not Yours" by Yolanda Adams

I wrote this long, long, long entry on Magic Woman. My mother is a problem. I feel like an idiot, a loser, and useless for still being in this predicament with her. But I shouldn't. She is my family. Family demands so much of a person in so many ways. So of course, I am still heavily involved and disturbed by the interactions with my family.
But now I feel like I'm free. Despite all the crying, the shaking, and the fear of breaking with reality, I felt something else, something pleasant. It is difficult to describe but I literally felt something turn off in my chest, my soul, my mind, somewhere. I just felt something turn off, I stopped crying, I stopped shaking, the fever died down, and I felt lifted.

I am sad. I am frustrated. I am angry. I want to hate her but I don't love anyone else in the world like I do her. I want to call and yell at her. I want to call and tell her it is okay. It's fine.

And I feel free. Somehow, it doesn't matter anymore. It's like I quit a really horrible job and I'm not too worried about finding another one. I guess I was trying to make a relationship with her. I was trying to get to the point where I could tell her my grievances about some of the things she did and explain some of the things I did.

Now there is nothing to maintain, fix, develop, or renew with her. She cut me loose and I'm going to fly like paper. I don't weigh anything. I can look in the mirror and be fine. There will be no crying or lamenting. Not in my mirror at least.

Soft Circles

"Pretty Wings" by Maxwell

...your pretty wings / pretty wings / pretty wings...

I spent a week out of town. I needed a break from this monolithic flavored life I live here in the City of the Rich. My mother didn't seem any type of happy about it but it seems as though she doesn't have anymore guilt tactics to employ in order to make me do what she wants me to.

So I left. It was an interesting little vacation. It reminded me about how bad I want to move away from the Commonwealth State. I forget how restricted and anti-cultured this state can be sometimes. It could also just be that I have spent my formative years here, had my fill, and need to move on. Actually, it's both.

My best friend Gwendo had a graduation cookout yesterday. I returned on Friday to spend the night at her mom's house to cook and prepare. Gwen and her mom Novita picked me up from the train station (I love the train). I haven't told my mother that I am in town. That is probably really bad but I just don't want to see her or talk to her right now. She hurt my feelings so bad. Ever since that argument, I have been itching to get away.

The cookout went well. The food was delectable, although it is hard for food to be gross to me. Gwenny's family and friends are so wonderful. Everyone is a colorful character.

I thought I would be sad at the cookout. Being around families can be hard sometimes. I miss my family often. Of late, I see them often but I don't feel apart of the family anymore. They love me and they are all so excited to see me when we do hang out, but I don't feel like a part of them anymore. Ever since all the mess of my life unfolded, I have felt thoroughly alienated from the people I love the most and need the most. To sleep in my mother's house is comparable to staying in a nice jail. An emotional jail. She hasn't any pictures of me up in her house, as if to inform me that is not my home. If home is where the heart is...girl, I don't even know about my heart. That sh*t is broke, blackened, weak, and wandering all about my body.

Anyway, this is my formal proclamation of love for family. I love my family, my good old Sierra Leonean family. I love our selfless culture. And I love my American family. I love our selfless culture and our emotional availability. I think that I am learning that family is not just the people to whom you are related. People who show and know true, good love are eligible to be family too.

Thank you God for more family than I have time to thank you for.

Enough Vitamins, Eat This

I have low self-esteem and very little self-respect, but I do think that I am beautiful. I think I know my qualities and my flaws and I think I know them pretty well. Therapy made me consider myself in a manner that people typically cannot.

It is hard, if not impossible, to be objective about your behaviors, habits, flaws, or anything about yourself. I, however, have had to subject myself to some radioactive scrutiny that allowed me to expand the protective image we all create for ourselves. We are not as good as we imagine. This could be evidenced by the shocking/hurtful/mean/bad things we do under different stress, although we woul like to imagine that we would do right by other people. We don't.

And my conclusion was I don't like myself. I understand that some of my personality is genetic. I am what I am. And I understand some of the person that I am as having been formed by environment and experience.

I still don't like myself. But I can NEVER, NEVER EVER resist a glance in the mirror. I do love my face and nobody can tell me it isn't beautiful. Dig?

Color Me Bad as Hell

"Stronger" by Kanye West

...i know i got to be right now / cuz i can't get much wronger...

I'm following a young lady's blog. She's Black, she's a woman, and she's a lesbian, my three favorite minority statuses.

But she is remarkably brilliant, open-minded, and eloquent. I of course do not know this young lady, but her blog reveals her to be the aforementioned adjectives.

I just read an entry about her depression and her embarking on therapy. She is kind of upset about being in therapy, which I think is an interesting thing about people in therapy. I remember that I knew I needed (and currently need) to be in it but there is something shameful, disheartening, and annoying about being in therapy.

Especially when you are smart and understand psychology, you feel as though you should be able to treat yourself, handle yourself. It can be demoralizing. I am aware of the life circumstances and history that make me who I am, I am aware of who I am in a way that I don't think most people are, and I know what I need to do and the thinking that I need to change/implement.

However, I am unable to make the connection between what is wrong and how to rectify it. Emotions, especially those of childhood that have been allowed to develop just as one has physically, and those of resentment and anger, do not give a damn about intellect. I try to give myself therapy, but I don't listen.

That is the magic of therapy. There is a professionally trained person objective enough to make you aware of the reality you choose to deny by remaining "sick", burdened, guilted or whatever emotion you punish yourself with.

Anyway, after I read her entry, I realized that I say nothing about my depression, although if one reads these blogs in their entirety, it is painfully obvious. But I don't think I have ever said "I have depression". I just tell my blog how pointless I think life is.

Well I have depression. And I don't want to be ashamed of it. A lot of unfortunate things happened to me and I made a lot of bad decisions for my life. But I am/was just living my life like everyone else was doing. These (take a look at my current life) are the results. There are no directions to living. Each person does what they want, what they know. I ended up with depression (although I am genetically predisposed to depression because there are a gang of people who seem to suffer from depression in this African family).

I even cried today over the frustration I feel about my life, although the thunderstorm outside made me quite vulnerable to my own dormant sadness (not even that dormant).

I say all that to say this: I am not ashamed. I couldn't really help it but I can help myself out of it. I have been telling my depressed friends and family (a bunch of us are heading to therapy, need therapy, or in therapy in my circle right now) that they deserve to be happy. I may even believe that I deserve to be happy.

I will go back to therapy soon and I will unabashedly describe my thoughts and progress.

Ejecting You

"Tell Him" by Lauryn Hill

...let me be patient / let me be kind / make me unselfish / without being blind / though I may suffer / I'll envy it not / and endure what comes...

I haven't had a real fight with my mother for a long time, partly because we don't talk and partly because we talk about superficial, non-controversial things.

However, under the surface, their is bubbling hot anger we both feel for what we perceive the other put us through.

Today, it kind of reared its ugly head...the anger.

She thinks I'm selfish. I think she (and a coerced husband) deserted me.

And these are the things tha pollute our lives. These different views of the same situation, varied opinions of the circumstances, personal assessments for whose fault it is are what haunt this house.

In the argument, the same frustration, the same screaming, the same non-listening business was going on that directed our arguments when I was in high school.

She said such hurtful things to me. Just plainly mean things that I hope she doesn't mean but know she said out of anger. She has such a nasty temper.

Apparently, she has been generally frustrated with me since I came home. Additionally, my mother is very defensive about her parenthood. I pointed out that I was very melancholic today and she just nagged me and didn't ask me anything. She flatly said that I am 22 years old and I can talk if I want to. She is not a psychic nor does she study me. This was just absurd. I couldn't even rebuttle.

And then she asked me to leave. She can't stand my attitude. I don't know why, but today, it was too much for me. I cried all day. I couldn't control it. Even as we argued, water washed my face uncontrollably. She even said, "Could you stop with the emotion and listen to me?", totally unmoved. Which is fine, I guess.

I think something is wrong with my mother. She has many burdens. Coming to a new country with small children, living overseas helpless as war ravages her home country, her youngest son suffering from fairly severe Autism at a time when little was known about it, losing her mother when she couldn't see her for over 15 years.

She has been through a lot and I don't think she dealt with it well, if at all. That is why I only swell marginally with anger because she is a human being too.

She is not a bad mother. She is just emotionally inept and I am far too thin skinned to be here with her.

I don't know why her opinion matters to me so much. I wish I didn't need her approval. It is kind of a stupid thing because even if she really approved of me, she isn't the kind of person to express such. She means well, I hope. But the issues have not been resolved. We are still angry and bitter and frustrated and confused. I'm going to go to therapy, that way, no matter what she says, it won't matter.

Until then, I bow out.

Hey Mama

"Hey Mama" by Kanye West

...I wanna scream so loud for you / cuz I'm so proud of you...

My Auntie Aminata had a cookout at her house today in celebration of Mother's Day and in honor of little Mohamed Fornah's 2nd birthday, one of the youngest of our clan.

Yesterday night my cousins Hawa and Fatima and I went to Shockoe Bottom for a night out. Hawa is only 20 but the lounge we had decided to go to had an African night (or something like that) and it is typically 18 and older.

Well, the African night is every other Saturday and we had showed up on the wrong Saturday. So as not to call the whole night a waste, we went to a pizza place on the corner of Main and 18th (I believe) that sells these beef patties that I am addicted to. I bought some beef patties for Fatima and I and the three of us took a seat in the first booth. We began to kongosah about the people walking in and out of the joint, about family members, about each other, and more.

A conversation erupted about female genital mutilation. Back home in Sierra Leone, there is a tradition called the Bondo Society. It is a secret society of sorts whose notoriety comes from the cutting of the clitoris. It sounds so heinous and so inhumane and so disgusting, however, it is so common, all over Africa. It is a testament to the hardship that is being a female in this world. Can you imagine if men were forced to endure a "beheading" of their penis? Yeah. Would not happen.

Both of my cousins have gone through it. As they were describing the details, I felt lightheaded and as if goosebumps were appearing underneath my skin (yeah). I was so disgusted and so angry. I remember my mother and some of her sisters having a conversation about Bondo Society a long time ago, at my kitchen table. A lot was discussed but what I distinctly remember being said by my mother was, "Me! I nor go put mi pikin inside dey. I nor go do am (Me! I would not put my child inside [that society]. I would not do it).

My mama is awesome. I have never had the courage to ask my mother if she was in the Bondo Society, but the fact that she objects to it is good enough for me. Had I grown up in Sierra Leone, while my peers may have been forced to join the Bondo Society, I wouldn't have because my mother is a genius.

Hearing my sisters talk about their experiences in the society, from being told about a "party" they would be going to, walking into a room with the floor decorated in the blood of other girls who have already been mutilitated, the pressure to keep the secret society a secret, the fear of dying from bleeding uncontrollably (there have been girls who DIED because of this tradition), to the brainwashing of women to think that this is an acceptable tradition, made me hot with anger and cold with fear for the future of African women.

The tradition is based on the ideologies of some idiot man who decided women should not enjoy sex so their clitorises must be removed. It is also to prevent promiscuity among women (while the men go out and sleep with anyone and keep the rates of HIV/AIDS high as all hell in the continent of Africa). And we African women are somehow brainwashed and continue to subject our daughters to this, kill our daughters, destroy our daughters sense of self and body, participate in our subordination to men, maintain the control about the conversation of sexuality on the side of the men, and remain at risk for everything that is a consequence of sexual behavior.

It is disgusting. And it is further evidence that it is so hard to be a women in this world culture. It is so, so hard to be able to give life but have our lives valued so little.

So, hey Mama. Thank you for teaching me about being an African woman. My Mommy and I have never had any real conversations about sex or sexuality, feminism or feminity, etc., but she has always been (in the midst of all our mother/daughter tumult) a brilliant example of a powerful African woman.

She is a wonderful wife to my father. Their marriage demonstrates a wonderful sense of balance in power, authority, respect, influence, and compromise. I know that I will be just like my mother in my marriage. For one, my personality is a carbon copy of hers. For two, she compromises her dominating, aggressive personality with respecting my father's authority and understanding that they must make a life together and has taught me that is how a marriage works. No matter how much trash I might talk about my parent's individually, together, they are the most perfect and cutest couple ever. Really.

She is a wonderful, selfless, kind, compassionate sister, aunt, daughter, and mother. She works so hard not to gather fine things for herself but to give us all better than the basics.

Lastly, despite our lack of an emotional relationship, observing her with my Daddy all of my life, learning of hardships with my younger brother's illness (Autism), recalling her hardships being the mother of me (the most extra child ever), she has shown me to integrate pride and selflessness into my identity as an African, as a Black person, and as a woman.

She was the first feminist I ever knew. She probably wouldn't classify herself as such, she didn't burn her bras in the 1960s, she is a traditional African woman in many senses, and she is too African to give a damn about 'feminism' as we understand it in a Western context, but she makes me so proud and excited to be a woman, an African woman.

My identity as a Black African and as a woman account for almost all the details of my way of thinking and my life. What I am studying in college, why I am studying it, what I want to do for a living, what causes I choose to volunteer under, the global political issues I follow, the opinions I have about issues, etc. are all influenced by my identity.

I identify first as an African, second as a woman, and third as a human being. That may sound a little harsh, but we must protect the portion of our identity most vulnerable to marginalization.

I gets that from my Mommy. And when I woke this morning, and sat across from her in her sister's living room, I really couldn't remember why I should be mad at her. I'm sure life will remind me later, as she always does, but for now, I love my Mommy.

...hey Mama, I know I act a fool but, I promise you I'm goin back to school / I appreciate what you allowed for me / I just want you to be proud of me...

I Used to Rule the World

"13th Period: On My Own Time " by Gym Class Heroes

...I wish I could unzip my skin and take it off / just to take a walk / but I can't do it...

I watched Kung Fu Panda and Game Plan with my roommates Brittany and Stevara today, even though I (all of us) definitely should have been studying for finals. But, we didn't. The movies were really good and it was a really good ambience ... couches, rainy day, pajamas, snacks, and two movies.

I don't know why I thought I was going to get work done.

Not long after, I decided to come to the library. Good movies keep coming on. When I had finally resolved to start doing work, Paid in Full came on. There is no way I can sit there and not watch that movie which means I won't do my work. The Color Purple was on too.

So I left and have arrived in the library.

It could be this suck @$$ weather, but I am type depressed. I just feel so worthless and pointless...again.

I cannot understand my importance or my utility in the world. I just feel like it's time to be out. I am studying and doing all this work for a degree that will qualify me for a master's program or whatever graduate studies which will give me higher earning potential to co-support my husband and children who I will send to school and have them do the same thing.

Pointlessness. But I used to see a point in this.

I used to tell my Mom that I didn't want my life to be like hers. I felt as though all she did was work, come home, watch tv, talk to her husband, and go to sleep. I told her I thought her life was boring. I didn't realize until I was older (like, within the last 2 years) that I was 1.) being really insulting to this very hardworking, selfless woman and 2.) missing the reality that people are different and my mother was doing what it she felt she had to do/wanted to do. So who the hell was I to tell her that her life was boring? It isn't my life. She was working 7 days a week for unmentionable hours so I would have the luxury of sitting in a very expensive house, going to a very expensive school, having very expensive things and complain about how bored I was.

Isn't childhood interesting? But now I am not bored as much as I am aimless. I almost feel robotic, manufactured, and generic. Life, even the most mundane details, were so interesting to me. Now it is all just mundane details sucking the life out of me.

Hopefully, after this last exam, I'll feel better. It's looking like a 3.8 GPA kind of semester which I'm sad about. I got a B in World Literature: Dante's Comedy. And I love literature. Damn antiquity.

The Etiology of Being Lost

"Whenever You Call" by Mariah Carey

...i'll be the one to catch your fall / whenever you call...

I used to listen to this song in high school. I used to listen to many songs with a similar theme because I didn't feel I had anyone who understood so the music was the witness to hidden loneliness.

I'm an extreme extrovert and not the least bit shy. I talk to anyone about anything. I have been told that I have a charming, captivating personality, but I never describe myself as such.

Nonetheless, as an adolescent, I was angry and irritated and lonely most of my time. I fought with my parents, especially my mom, ALL the time. I can't really remember why, but I didn't like to be at home or spend time with them. I liked to hang out with my friends, which I think is natural. In Sierra Leonean terms, I was a "strit pikin", or I liked to hang out in the streets. It doesn't mean a literal street with stree lights. But the street refers to any place that is not the residence of a relative.

I was annoyed by that. I never understood why it was such a bad thing to want to hang out with my friends. Additionally, I was not close to my mother. She is not the talkative, indulging kind of mother, which is okay, I guess.

Honestly, I don't know what the hell the problem was between the ages of 13 and 18. But I know what

happened following those ages. There were particular events that dampened my soul and infected my worldview. Some of them I caused with bad decision making. Some of them...life just happened to me.

And my parents so easily set me aside. I talk about this a lot, I know, but that is the truth to me. I feel so disposed of and again, this night, I cry under the burden of my resentment.

I just don't think I deserve what happened. I think over and over and over again about how I could have handled the situation better. I know I had alternatives. However, I don't feel like I should have been tossed aside at my most vulnerable moment.

It made me feel inconsequential. I feel as though I don't matter sometimes. I am jealous at the pace at which everyone else seems to travel while I am almost totally stationary.

I want to believe that I am charming, funny, intelligent, generous, considerate, think of others first, polite, honest, etc. I want to work at perfecting those qualities. But sometimes I feel worthless, all because the people I value most in the world seem to not value me at all. And if they only knew that I am just waiting to be important to them again.

God, I want my life back.

I'm Nothing, but I'm Big

"I'ma Put it On Her" by Day 26

...she got that swagger / the way she move it like a pro...

I know that Day 26 is a manufactured music team put together by the most pompous, sambo idiot ever, but I love this song. Whatever is going on in my life, play that song and see if I don't put a pep in that step.

Dinner is being served rather late today. The Mister and I were out all day, shopping for items for the house. Moving is a complicated business.

I made a hodge podgey soup about a week ago or so that Brittany and I t-t-t-tore up. It was chicken, onions, bacon, potatoes, avocados, mushrooms, and eaten with plain Basmati rice (which Brittany's fatness can't get enough of).

I am going to make a similar hodge podge without the bacon or potatoes and with cous cous instead of Basmati rice. The Mister is making pasta too. And yes, I'm going to eat it all.

Diaper:repaiD

"First Love" by Adele

...forgive me first love / I am too tired...

I am really tired. I am not sleepy. My mind is tired of thinking. My eyes are tired of reading. My right hand is tired of writing. My left is tired of holding my papers as I write, motionless and unattended to.

My wrists are tired of typing. My legs and hips are tired of walking. My back is tired of toting around the textbook makings of a bachelors degree. My mind is tired of thinking.

And I am tired of myself. I am working really hard, diligently, around the clock. I am reading, comprehending, deducing connecting, from no light in the morning to no light at night.

I look tired too. And I'm getting sad because I'm lost; like I'm not here.

When I went home to the parentals this weekend, everything seemed so real, so normal. We laugh like nothing ever happened but returning to my not home is evidence that a lot happened. But I go, happily, eat heartily, study, and play with Lima only to return to this hell as if there is no heaven to validate its existence. And the keep sending me back. They keep dropping me off.

I don't expect to go home. I don't think I could live there anymore. There are no pictures of me where there used to be, which I think means that there isn't hope that I'll return so they'd just as soon take down the pictures so as not to be reminded of who is absent.

It hurts only because when I'm in the library for hours, alone, reading and taking notes, I have time to pause time and wonder why I am doing this. I don't know what I am doing or why I am doing it, sometimes.

This would be a good time to tell a Mom or a Dad that I feel a little overwhelmed. But I don't think I can ever trust them with my head or my heart again. Even with this light load (just a little academic melancholy), I fear that if I asked them to hold it, they would just drop me off somewhere again. Because Africans believe that there is no child that you can just throw away, except for one: me.

Special shoutout to Starbucks and 5 Hour Energy Drink for slyly stealing $30 of my money every week.

The Truth is Dead...

...murdered by the art of conversation

"She Needs My Love" by The Dream

...she said I'm like the air / and without me she'll die...

I landed in Miami on Thursday afternoon. Shatara and Stevara picked me up and commenced an adventure.

First, let me say that I love those girls. There isn't enough time to explain to you what they have done for me and how much I love them.

So when you have time, take an eternity and think about how much a person could love another and that is about half of what it truly is.

We partied that night, awaiting midnight so I could officially turn 22. I know. 22.

I have no idea what happened but I apparently was a funny obstinate patron of firewater and they took such good care of me.

I even reunited with some old friends for the night and chilled with them at the beach the following day (although the jocular tone of the reunion was hella shortlived and reminded me why we aren't really friends anymore).

For the actual day of my birthday, I was at the beach, lifted and it was hilarious. Patrice and I laughed at each other breathing. It gets no better than that. We were surrounded by the wonderful ladies of 804's prestigious Virginia Commonwealth University including Stevara, Shatara, Stephanie, Shemone, and Melanie.

I just loved my life for those couple of days. I spent time with the best friend of my childhood, Patrice Ward, which is representative of return to normalcy in my life I believe. I love Patrice. I love her in that ethereal, pure way that isn't actual possible of human beings, but I feel like I have it for her. She was there in the beginning of the turmoil of my mother. She was my earliest distraction and getaway when the fan was tossing sh*t around in my life.

This birthday, this 22nd year, is another new year celebration. This is the year of the lover.