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.

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.

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?

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.

Sometimes Love Takes a Long Time

"I Cry" by Anthony Hamilton

...oh girl I cry / these tears that I shed are the trails to bring you home...

I have taken to calling the House. I check on Lima Bean, mostly, and have interesting conversation with my Pops. My Daddy and I have always had the most interesting, stimulating, informative conversations for as long as I can remember.

The man is remarkably genius. Can't nobody tell me nothin' about my Daddy. He instilled in my this love of learning; this understanding that all the subjects (math, science, liberal arts) are all connected. They are not as rigidly compartmentalized as we would like to think.

Knowledge comes full circle. He also taught me that literally, the more you learn, the more you realize you know very little. Knowledge just doesn't make you knowledgeable, but sophisticates you enough to see how much there is in the world and how short your time is to learn it. That is what supposed to make you excited about life. Scurry, mice, for the nourishing cheese that is knowledge.

Switch Lanes

"All I Want for Christmas" by Mariah Carey

...I won't ask for much this Christmas / I won't even ask for snow / I'm just gonna keep on waiting / underneath the mistletoe...make my wish come true / baby all I want for Christmas is yooouuu...

Merry Christmas. Or Happy Holidays.

I am having a wonderful time with family in Northern Virginia. I've been here visiting for the break for almost two weeks now. There is a lot of life here. My cousins and my aunt are so energetic and funny.

We talk loud, eat a lot, make a mess, insult each other jokingly, and sleep late everyday.

The house is warm and the televisions and game systems are plenty. And the merriment makes the walls all glow and we're all brighter for it.

Yesterday night we had a Christmas Eve dinner and had a pseudo-party as we cooked. We brought a CD player down and acted a fool to old and new dance songs from back Home. I haven't been able to have such moments with family and it felt so nice. I felt kind of human...and loved maybe.

We have been wrapping gifts for the past couple of days and have stuffed them under our small tree. There were 13 of us in the house for Christmas and about three times as many gifts under the tree. Although I argued that we would be ruining tradition if we didn't wait until we woke up to open our gifts, they were definitely unwrapping at 12:01am.

It's a wonderful Christmas. My younger cousins aren't so young anymore and they all have jobs and bought gifts this year. They are all such sweet, generous, considerate people, very different from the children I had to wait on hand and foot a few years ago.

We're all just happy, even if it's just for these few days. And I don't know if Christmas does really have magic about it, if it's all the food and drink, or if it's the media telling us to be happy during this season, but whatever it is, I love this season.

I love how kind people are to each other, how considerate, how selfless people are. This is how I wish the world could be all year round.

I don't think highly of my fellow human being to be honest. I think that we are a selfish bunch. We care about ourselves and possibly the few around us. We let party lines, religion, racial lines, culture, etc. to divide and categorize us such that we are evil to one another.

But during this time of year, the animosity seems to subside a little bit. We extend a loving hand that is rather paralyzed during other times of the year.

I read an article on CNN's website about another family facing foreclosure after some mess had occurred earlier in the year with illness and a jobloss. A friend put their story on her blog and set up an account so that people could make donations.

In under 2 weeks, the blog had raised over $11,000. How amazing is that? The really amazing part are the people who donated. They were people who had also lost their homes, had cars repossessed, lost jobs and the ilk.

This is a sad Christmas for a lot of people and I'm glad that despite it, people are able to preserve the spirit of the season and think of people above themselves. Go team human race. Maybe I underestimate us.

Hemmorhage

"Dream Big" by Jazmine Sullivan

...I gotta dream big / cuz when it happens / it's gon happen real quick...only get one chance...

I read an article on the http://www.nytimes.com/ in the health section that was rather disheartening. It was about filial law. Filial law, for a little while, hasn't been a real topic of concern in our culture. The government stepped in to introduce programs that alleviate the financial burden of aging, such as the Social Security program and Medicare, which functions under the idea of citizens paying into the system.

But healthcare is more expensive, drugs are more expensive, people work too much to keep their aging parents in their home, and the population of the elderly is growing quickly and their needs are exorbitant. Long-term care insurance (didn't know that existed) is apparently also insufficient in what it covers and leaves many paying out of pocket or going to government operated nursing homes (gross).

The writer of the article is discussing the last months of her mother's life and the daunting task it was to get her to qualify for Medicaid, which is not a program people pay into but an entitlement should you not be able to provide for your health coverage via working or out of pocket. Her mother's nursing home cost $14,000 a month. What kind of mess is that?

The article explains this situation in much greater depth than I am able, but I had to write down all that the article made me think of. First of all, I don't want to be an adult. It sucks and I don't understand why adults aren't warning kids not to grow up. There should PSAs everywhere about growing up and having responsibilities. I feel ill-informed and insufficient for my adult years.

Secondly, I don't know how I feel about filial laws. Legally compelling children to take care of their elderly parents seems risque. It would be a noble, loving thing to do if you are able, but legal compulsion seems drastic, messy, unfair, and undemocratic. I hope that I am able and that my parents will allow me to take care of them in their old age. Despite the tumult of our relationship, I love them dearly and have grown up to see how hard they worked for my siblings and I, how much they sacrificed, how much they continue to endure.

But my parents are from Sierra Leone and want to return to Sierra Leone. It won't be difficult to provide for them back home. Everything is much cheaper. Provided that they are in relatively good health, my parents will be very comfortable while in Sierra Leone. The entitlements of their retirement will go much farther while living in Africa than in America. I will also heavily subsidize their lifestyle when they are ready to return home. I would send them back now if I could.

Nonetheless, I worry. What are people supposed to do about their parents? I fathom that people want to help their parents, have them live comfortably as they inch closer to the grave and die with dignity. But looking around, life is hard. How are people supposed to be able to do that given the cost of living? I feel as though the idealogy of this country are cracked in too many places and there is about to be a complete implosion.

Freetown, stand up...

If you'd like to read the article:

http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/unenforced-filial-responsibility-laws/?hp

Pitter Patter

Homeless Veteran / Very sick with Liver Disease / Lost job ... / Please help / God bless you

...Un pour tous et tous pour un...

Why we even have wars, I cannot understand. In all the history I have taken, no war has ever seemed just or necessary or the best/only option.

War seems to be a hyperbolic manifestation of compromised human ego and declaration of economic or poliltical superiority.

I hesitate to include WWI and WWII in this categorization, but in the most rudimentary of analyses, they both do fit into the aforementioned description. Granted, on a more sophisticated and complicated level, WWI and WWII were more about world preservation than ego tripping, but there is something unnerving about what happened in the world during and because of these two wars

Nonetheless, these wars that we all learn about or discuss, agree with or criticize, were fought by real human beings, real people, some who lost their lives, some who lost their minds, and some who came back generally incomplete. These are real people.

Yet we discuss them and live our lives as if they are just concepts, as if they were intangible, as if they were not real. But they are and they suffer. They risk their lives for the freedoms of the country and they return to a system that is slow and sometimes totally unhelpful. They are homeless, they cannot get complete healthcare, they lose their jobs, and they are lost in paperwork and apathy.

How is this possible? Of course, there are those who throw their lives away no matter what help they are given, as is true with any group of people in any system, but the system is also insufficient.

I do not think that the United States of America means to ignore the needs of, mistreat, or take for granted the veterans and their sacrifice. I think that the problems of veterans are a product of the general individualistic culture Americans subscribe to. This country, with all its rights, qualities, justices, beauties, and fairness is also a country that does not encourage community the way others around the world do. Maybe because we are so rich, we do not need the close interconnectedness of communities in other countries (because even the poorest of this nation are better off than those in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and everywhere else really).

But I think it is the biggest failure of American culture. We ignore one another. We do not care about one another. When a group needs help, we label it the new red label, "socialism". But what the hell is wrong with socialism? Socialism does not mean unending help for nothing. It is supposed to help people maintain while they strengthen in order to provide for themselves. What is wrong with that? That's a different blog altogether.

If you don't want to take care of the poor, the teenaged moms, the sick, or the disabled, please at least take care of those who fight to give you the right to complain about who you do and don't want your tax dollars spent on.