Free Write 4: Crying

You cry on Memorial Day after your mom leaves because she called you a whore.

It hadn’t started like that. You spent the weekend with her, doing all the things that need to be done for graduation because there’s so much to do. You go to the hair salon and get your hair permed and layered, sit in the chair for what seems like hours. Waste time reading books for class while an African man chats up a white girl all while talking about about the consciouness of black folks. You go to the mall and get your graduation outfit at the swnaky new york and company, which is a knee length A line pink hued floral print skirt and a coral a top, grab some polos and manhattan chinos because you’re using the mastercard, then spend more money on a scandlous dress at Express, where the salesboy, a cute, slender boy named Avery with a fro convinces you to buy it, and you do because he’s cute and you’ve never met a boy named Avery.

But the weekend is hard, too hard when your mom sees you. She starts with her list of demands which include telling you how much of a loser you are because you don’t have plans for grad school. You don’t have a job lined up, and man, what did you spend all that time in school for? She yells almost, her accusatory eyes searching you in the car going 75 mph. You sigh because this is the usual diatribe. You have plans. Maybe getting a job up north, maybe moving back in with her, maybe going to Phoneix to live with your crazy sister who’s too girl crazy. But you don’t say anything. What’s the point.

Then she drops you off on Monday and you welcome the quiet emptiness of the house. She searches your closet to find some lotion and then she finds it. The toothbrush. She asks if its yours and you say no. You’re seeing someone, a boy with too blong hair and white teeth, and light blue eyes that look grey when he’s worked too many hours. She asks you if you’re sleeping with him because you say it’s casual. He makes you feel good because he calls every day and sends cute emails and because he says he loves how he feels inside you. But you don’t tell him that. Instead you tell her that he’s nice and she asks you point blank, are you fucking him?

Are you?

You don’t say anything and shrug, it wouldn’t matter if you did, but then she says, it would. It’d make you a whore. You know the whole story. You were supposed to save it for marriage, you were supposed to save it for love, you were supposed to feel emotionally secure. But you’re getting older and there’s no garuntee that that type of guy will come along, and you just got tired of not having some of the same things your friends do. You got tired of not having sex, you did it because you felt like, because you were paying rent and no one else could tell you what to do.

But your mom, she doesn’t see it like that. Everything you do is a shortcoming. You don’t fulfill her dreams. And while this boy is a good thing compared to those other ones, she still doesn’t approve. She’s been down on you for the longest this week. You know it isn’t her fault because she’s not capable of making herself happy but it still hurts. Why can’t she support you? Why can’t she understand you? Is it really that big of a deal because you met someone and he’s leaving toothbrushes at your place.

You hate crying because it’s a weakness and you started to drink instead to get rid of the sadness but your mom, she overwhelms you.

You let the tears fall.

Blogs of Yore: The Ice Cream Story

Why Paisley posted a blog of yore, which is an old blog from an archive. My archive isn’t the big, but I wanted to post an old blog from my myspace account. It was written on March 23rd 2005, and while I don’t think it’s the best thing I’ve written, I wanted to pick this one because it’s old, and well, I like it. So enjoy.

I’ll probably post something else on here later.

the ice cream story
Current mood: melancholy
a few days ago my flatmates were talking about their significant others and how awesome it is to be in love. i swear, this is why i avoid people. straight girls especially since boys, beers Mills and Boone and Brad Pitt is all their life. so, they’re talking about how they’re all dating someone. like even Canns- she finally got Ant do dump that girl in his hometown for her.

I’m really digressing. anyway, I’m really tired of thinking how unloved i am and decide i don’t want to participate in the conversation. so to take my mind off things i take a shower- which is a cold one, because the stupid water heater is STILL broken. before i went for my shower my flatmates asked if they could have some of my ice cream. i bought some Vienetta earlier that day because it was on sale, and i figured it was a celebration box since i get my grant this week. i come back downstairs fifteen minutes later and guess what, they ate it all. i said they were greedy pigs and they said they’d buy me a new one.

i saw them the next evening and they did buy me a new Vientta. the only problem is that they got the flavour i don’t like. and I’m sure I’ve told them i don’t like mint. i told them to just eat it because i wasn’t.

the odd thing is two days later, no one has touched that Vienneta. I’m not going to eat it, and they haven’t either. and i don’t think anyone is happy with this result. it’s almost like we’re sacrificing this ice cream.

why does this sound like all of my relationships?

Free Write 3: Lights

I’m trying a little experiment right now. I’m sitting in my room, as usual, but I’m in the dark. I have two candles lit, one in a votive candle holder and another in a lamp that I got from Ikea a few years back, when I thought I had enough money to decorate a room. It’s dim and the book on my shelf are illuminated this soft yellow color and I can see the shadows of some text books from my women’s studies class, a Louise Erdrich book and the most recent issue of Alaska Quarterly Review, the race and ethnic studies workbook, and the writer’s market from 2003 that Noel gave me. For some reaon these are all mocking me. I like the light, the soft candlelight that I use to sleep but it’s mainly lights, bright lights and loud places that I like illuminated. Or maybe I like things that are bright because I’m alone most of the time in my room, and I can feel like this light and is mine, not anyone else’s but mine, and it’s the only time when I feel happy that I’m alone, because I have something that no one else can get. Sometimes I read in my closet with the bright light bulb turned on, or I turn on the lights in the middle of the day because it allows me to see that modern art postcards I got at the Tate Modern many moons ago, and I can see all of the things I did do.

But what does natural light, like sunlight, candle light even remind me of my shortcomings? Maybe it’s because it feels natural and I can relate to other things that happened in nature, or things other people did. Like right now. Even though I’m sitting in the candle light I’m thinking of a series of Derby (or was it Colby) pictures where there were a bunch of scientific experiments done because of the invention of candlelight, or I’m thinking of Nicolas Pusso and that Neo Classical painting and I’m thinking man, I haven’t accomplished much. And there’s something about those lights that make me feel, I don’t know, like other people have it, have used it better than I ever can, and I don’t want to share it with them.

Except for candlelight. I used to be really afraid of sleeping in the dark, so I lit candles and fell asleep to those. They acted like extra persons, something to remind me that I wasn’t alone. I wouldn’t say an angel, but candles were a companion for me when I had no companion. Sometimes I think I might sleep better if I slept with someone else in the bed, but when I sleep in bed with someone or think about it, I think of Jon, and how he said we were friends even though we slept in the same bed constantly. And then I got confused. Sleeping is such a personal thing that I’m afraid of sharing that with anyone either because people turn on me. It’s the darkness that people love. I think that’s a biblical quote. But cats were great to sleep with. I sometimes wonder if I am one of those people who loves the darkness, or the artificial light.

And when I think about it for that biblical quote, what does that mean for me? I mean, light is when it’s busy, because other people are trying to do what they need to do. But me, I like the nighttime because it feels like it’s mine. And I like that. But if I love artificial light because it’s a wall, it’s like saying I don’t need the natural light. Natural light reminds me of how little I have anything natural, or organic, or real in my life, and I don’t know where to go from there. Does that sound weird. But lights, I don’t know.

Free Write 2: Flash Drives

Last week I had to give in and buy a new flash drive. I’ve been holding out on doing this for the last, I don’t know, year or so, but it seems like anytime I want to save anything I have to email it to myself because most computers don’t come with A drives anymore. And sometimes the internet breaks down. I am stuck with no paper or presentation or even what I had to do with my spanish presentation and come back home to email it to myself because my internet was so damned stubborn the following morning. This was exhausting. I had to borrow the flash drive at my job and then I sighed and resigned myself to, maybe I have just to freaking get one.

But I don’t even know why I’m so against buying one. The one I got it small and portable and comes with sexy bright neon pink and blue cases, and they were on sale. I’ll probably have to get more in a few days because I want to clean out my hardrive and hey, they’re on sale. But I’ve just been relucutant. A few days ago I asked Scott B. if he knew if any more computers with A drives and he said, naw, Chicago that’s old school. So even the teachers are saying stuff to me.

I think I’ve been so reluctant because well, I like my hard drives. I was so excited when I got my first floppy disk in the seventh grade computer science class. I held on to that thing and put tons of stuff on there, like my assignments, random stories I wrote where I ripped the plot from old movies with Db Sweeney (My rewrites were better) and my very own thoughts. I even jokes around with Shilemah and said that if there was a third world war maybe someone would find my old disk and I would be like a 21st century Anne Frank right? Or something. Floppies meant freedom, meants that I could hide stuff from my mom, and write entries about how much I hated her, meant that I could, I don’t know, be someone or something different.

And even now I associate floppies with that. I bought a bunch in high school that were neon colors and labled them, gave each subject in school their own floppy. I loved holding them in my hand and feeling the perfect right angles on each side. I loved, I loved, I do’nt know what it is that I loved so much anymore, and that bothers me a bit because now I have to give Floppy up for Flash. Flash sounds cooler, but I’m not the one to be flashy.

Maybe the flash drive represents my inability to change. I know I need to delete some files, I have to move some things soon, but what? what do I save? I think I am holding on to a part of my past, even though in the past two years I’ve discovered other things that I like. I like kissing boys like that’s all we can do, I like dancing to too loud music, I loive long conversations with people who I just met. Rain. Tea. Skirts that rest at my hips and walking around barefoot. Sleeping constantly, and most recently, writing for myself. But maybe that flash drive is like a memory in a way. I know I should move on, but I don’t want to, and hell, even now I’m not sure what’s in my memory that I should store and what to trash. I want to get rid of all the bad shit that happened to me, but I feel that’ll be the most resonant and I’m not sure why.

I want to go back to a time when I just wanted to kiss someone by Lake Michigan.

When I could pour over books by Judy Blume and not be laughed at.

When I could believe that love was impossible in some way.

But you know what, I don’t even think there was a time when I even believed that stuff, but I could embody all that stuff in a disk. Hard drive won’t be the same. It can hold too much. It’s much, much much too efficient.

Bad relationships

I started thinking about this a whole lot a few days ago. Sometimes I go to this group called Sister to Sister, where a couple of older black women who are university employees invite younger black college girls like me to talk to each other for contact and support. I met this girl named Ashley who had dangerous curves, knee high leather boots and flawless chocolate skin. Her booming voice introduced me to the two-year-saga of her and her beau Mark. Mark’s a basketball played trying to make it to the pros and she just loves him. The problem is that he sleeps with other girls and tells her about it, says he’s not feeling her, but calls her at two in the morning just to hear her voice. He calls from different numbers, has people spy on her to make sure she’s single, and professes that yes, he’s kinda screwed up right now, but Ashley is kind and caring and he assures her that she’s wifey, and those other females are bitches and bo’s (I’ll have to post something those titles, but for now) So she asked the group, what should she do? She thinks that he could be the one and he just needs more time to mature even though she’s older than him. She wants for him to be The One.

Some girls said that she should wait it out and see other people on the side. Two of the older women said that maybe she’s not at the point she’s ready to let go, but it’s a start that she’s recognizing that she’s better than this relationship. Then I just told her that she needs to let him go. He’s not worth the agony that he’s causing her, and she should free herself up for someone better by cutting off all contact. This includes emails, phone calls, let’s be buddies, those things.

Ashley was kinda shocked that I said this. I said that anyone who calls and tells you he’s sleeping with someone else is just disrespecting her. And he’s not treating her very well. I asked her what his Good Count was, and she said she’s not very happy with him, but at least it’s a relationship. She also thinks he’s The One and God sent him into her life.

I didn’t want to say anything about her religion (I’m agnostic) but I told her that she needs to look out for her happiness, and it doens’t seem like this guy is contributing. And as far as him growing up: he needs to do that on his own terms, because people only change if they want to. People don’t change for other people.

She then told me that her and her mother don’t get along. She’s always tried to stay close to her mom, but her mom doesn’t want to people around her, and maybe she’s trying to correct it in this relationship.

I think I felt some connection with what she said in that sense, because I wonder if I have the same model for my relationships. My situation with my mom is a little different. I often feel that my mom emotionally blackmails me, but I notice there’s a pattern with how I treat my relationships outside of her. I tended to prefer relationships that were emotionally intense. In a way, I think I still like those types of relationships. There’s a certain urge to bond, an impulse to rush toward a connection, and I miss that in a way. The problem was that I often lived for the other person, and ignored my wishes and needs in the process if it hindered the course of our relationship. I knew a lot about that person, but didn’t know that much about myself. And while those types of relationships are intense, dramatic and exciting, they are also draining, emotionally hurtful and abusive. And I found that I can’t survive in a relationship like that. I tried with enough friendships and relationships, and if it goes wrong, then man, it’s soul destroying letdown.

My good friend Carisha said that I struggle with being able to live in the moment, and I think that I may have that trouble in relationships. I also notice that a lot of my relaitonships are like the model that I have with my mom. I know you’re supposed to model your relationships after your dad, but mine died at a young age. My relationship with her is intense and passionate, but man it felt like someone had taken a fork to my hurt when she said that I wasn’t the daughter she wanted. I’m trying to stop having these types of relationships. I look for reciprocity, even if it’s reciprocity in a small moment. I have had other relationships where they haven’t been anywhere near as intense, but they have been good people. They call when they say they will, asked me out, hung out with me, and when I had a less than perfect moment (which translates to I might be a little emotionally selfish and need the support) they have been there for me. I think I am on to a good thing, but like Ashley, I feel like something’s missing. I’m not used to it.

My therapist said that I haven’t been in enough emotionally healthy relationships for me to be fully comfortable in them. I want to get to that point someday, but I’m not there yet. And since I have changed in my relationship approach by taking things in the moment, recognizing when someone isn’t reciprocal in the likeliness I drop it, and limiting the time I have with old friends because it’s not productive and I really should let them go, this is all still hard. I don’t know if it will get any better. I hope it will. I hope to become a pro at this.

I wanted to ask Ashley why it mattered so much to her for Mark to The One. I mean, why are you trying to mate for like when you’re not even old enough for a guy to buy you a drink? I asked her. I think it’s the false security a relationship provides, and perhaps, she’s modeling her relationships after the one she has with her mommy.

Even with all of this, I still have no clue how to solve what I go through with my mom. I think I just need to take a breath and relax. I don’t know if there’s any way to solve this though. That’ll take more though.