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.

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.

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...

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.

Yes, I Was the One...Keyword: Was

"Where Does the Good Go" by Tegan & Sara

...where do you go with your broken heart in tow? / what do you do with the left over you?..

I literally just walked in from working out at the gym with a new friend of mine.

I met her the day after I wrote a blog about my addiction to 7/11's cupcake cappuccino. Of course, the day after I have admitted to my addiction, they didn't have cupcake cappuccino! So I had to settle for French vanilla, which, after I doctored it up, wasn't that bad.

We randomly started chatting about school and how we needed this coffee, the line was too long, I liked her boots, she like my peacoat, xy and z.

I discovered that she is a transfer student and she doesn't really know people. Being the mother I am, I felt I had to help her start a social network. So we exchanged numbers and went to Yoga the next morning (she put me on to the most amazing activity every).

Today, we had dinner together, hung out idly, and then we went to work out! I ran about 3/4 of a mile and walked half a mile. I know, it's negligible, but I'm working up to greatness.

The point is, I feel really accomplished (along with the test I pray I Aced today). I made resolutions and new promises to myself and God and I am keeping them. I am also being realistic and counting on the fact that there will be bad days and I won't be able or won't want to maintain this regimen. I will not beat myself about those days or allow myself to fall off completely after missing a couple of days.

There will be no 3 West this year or ever again.