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.

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.

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.

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...

Brilliant Nights

"Make Love" by Keri Hilson

...this is my song! it's too amazing to list just a few lines...

I am going to Miami tomorrow. I am quite excited about it too. I'll be misbehaving as I turn 22 on Friday, although I am telling people that I am turning 21. I think this is an appropriate time to start lying about my age. I'll be turning 21 next year as well.

My brother picked me up from my apartment so that he can drop me off at the airport in the morning. He is quite swollen. He used to be such a scrawny boy. Now he is a man. He is not fat, just built and muscular. It's something about the food at Virginia Tech. Every person I have known who goes there comes back as swollen as men do when they return from jail.

Anyway, I want to discuss the cost of the flight. Fee and taxes are a scam, I believe. The ticket should have only been $144, but peep the fees son:

Air Fare	144.00
Federal Segment Tax	7.20
Airport Passenger Facility Charge	9.00
September 11th Security Fee	5.00
Ticket Total	165.20

And, I have to spend $15 to check my bag, which I might not do because I am only going for 5 days and all the little pieces of clothing I am bringing could fit into my one, large tote.

And what is a September 11th fee? I suppose that this money must go to some agency that investigates terrorist activity or develops new technology to screen for weaponry or something. It is just an annoying fee. I think that we are underestimating terrorists, hatred, and anti-American ideology. They are not going to attack the US via a plane, probably ever again. They, whoever they are, will do something far more atrocious and far more sinister and far more unpredictable.

Not to be morbid or anything.

But, forget all that. Pray that I have a really, really, really good time in Miami, wish me happy birthday, and look up "A Date with a Crackhead". Propecia is my best friend!!