Thursday, September 17, 2015

Wu-Tang Forever II

Remember a few weeks ago when I said Wu-Tang Forever could go one of two ways, and chose to go right? Welp, today we gonna go left.

For two years, I lived in this really tiny apartment with a really pretty view of the city lights at night from my balcony. The only furniture in it were bookshelves, an unassembled chair and my bed. The TV was only plugged in to play the occasional video game and stream stuff. It was minimal, but peaceable; anyone I allowed in would settle either in my reading nook (which was just a large, unmatched comforter and throw pillows next to a large bay window) or on my bed...before falling asleep within 12 minutes.

I was working on finding my peace, and I found simplifying my life made it easier to navigate. And then Danny needed a favor.

My mom has a habit of picking up what I call stray people. People who don't belong to nobody, or don't want to, she offers solace - food, a place to stay, a place to build yourself up before you leave the nest. She usually doesn't ask for much in return, so it happens that a friend of hers had a son who needed some place to stay for awhile. His wife was divorcing him and leaving him with a lot of debt, his mother was out of the country, his sister was too busy having a baby and my mom being my mom, offered some help.

Usually with offering help, I somehow get offered in there too...not the way that it ended up, mind you but...I'm getting ahead of myself.

It happens that Danny was doing a class and needed help. Mom offered my services, but advised I come with a price. Being the zen maiden I was, I offered to do his work for him if he brought me either wine or french fries for every paper I did. And thus, the deal was struck; once a week, he'd knock on my door, sit in my nook, and let me write. Somehow though, he started to talk, and all his monsters flew out of his mouth. He was looking for absolution. He was looking for love. He was looking for pity.

Being that he was a racist, sexist ass, I could give him none of the above. Although he was half black, he hated that side of himself and spewed the worst vitriol I'd ever heard from someone so obviously enamored and afraid of said blackness. He loved the female form, but treated it like a transaction to be had, a tit for tat exchange where in a pound of flesh was traded for another pound. Women were pieces of things, not fully fleshed out, realized people...except his mother which...chile...

Instead, between paragraphs and bites, I hit him with the real. He was an asshole, he was looking for his mother in all the women he was supposedly in love with, and until he decided to change, the same sad-sack shit was going to keep happening to him. He was shocked; nobody had ever talked to him like that before, he'd said, with such even amounts of candor and disdain.

I guess it was my honesty, or the fact that I was clearly not wanting a relationship at the time, but one day, my clothes just fell off and it happened. Suddenly, it was something new, something to kind of look forward to; we'd have a little real talk, I'd have a little snack, and then some lack-luster sex and he'd be on his way.

I'm not the kind of girl who sleeps around. It's not for lack of trying, or for some inflated sense of self, it's just that I tend to want to be with someone to be with someone. I want intimacy and a meeting of minds. I want passion and fun. I want the whole thing, not just the sex. At that time I was fighting with that part of myself. My ex had moved on and was trying to get out there and get it in and though I was happy for him, I looked at my lacking love life as some sort of stamp of WORTHLESS on my forehead.

Essentially, I was using sex as a weapon against myself. Sex with him, though physically "meh" was emotionally beating the shit out of me. Every encounter left me wondering if that was all there is, if I would forever be the girl you fuck, but not the girl you love. No matter how much I tried to change my thinking about it, to convince myself that I could keep going, my real self was looking me in the face and shaking her head. Can't run from yourself forever, and you can't keep putting yourself in bullshit situations and thinking that it's not going to change or effect you.

Even though I was "happy", I was not truly content or still in my spirit. I still felt that I needed a man, any man, to come in and make me whole. One day, though, before he came over, I sat in my own nook, relishing the quiet and my mind just said "Okay girl. That's enough." And so it was. That same day, I ended it all the same way I began it: with charity and candor, I told him it wasn't going to work out. Not on a sex level, not on a friendship level.

I have this thing where I believe my relationships have to add to me, not take away, and I found the longer I kept up the charade of possibility for him, the worse I felt about me. Iron sharpens iron, and being with him was like an ax meeting wood; he'd done nothing to deserve or warrant my friendship, but where I was, using energy I could've turned inwards trying to make his stubborn trunk into something workable. I would've been a great friend to him. Maybe I could've helped him be a better person. Maybe we could've grown into a friendship.

But I doubt it. Shit was never on 10.

I guess the moral is here, just like you can use somebody to help you, you can use somebody to hurt you. You can try to change your nature, or you can embrace it; eventually all rocks are worn away by water - your true self is the water, that false shit you put up? Rocks.

I learned my lesson. I still look back on it sometimes and wonder what I was thinking...

Am I alone in this, or is this a phase everyone kind of goes through? Help me understand me >.<

Xo,

Tess