On Being Open and Facebook

I am an open person, but still am deemed by folks as mysterious and closed off. Oxymoron, or just the truth of my character, I can't really say. In any case, my openness is sort of a defense mechanism, a way to put out who I am in the world so that it can never be misconstrued what my intentions are, so that it's never hard to say what Tes is about and what Tes is striving for.

So, it happens that on Facebook, a person I knew years ago, a person who was my best friend at the time, comes out of the woodwork to tell me that I've changed; I'm a mean person, a closed off person, and unforgiving to boot. He told me that and then asked for my phone number to call me to talk. ...excuse...what?

Sidebar: What is it about Facebook that makes people think they know all there is to know about you? You post a few pictures, list a few favorite movies, and now people have insights into your inner workings based on arbitrary likes and dislikes. What's that about?

This person literally disappeared from my life. I'm talking, one day we're on the phone and hang up as usual, then four years later I get a Facebook friend request. And now he comes out his face to call me mean, say I'm changed for the worse and haven't forgiven him for pulling a Houdini at a time when I needed all the friends I could get. 

Anyone who knows me truly, or is on their way to knowing me truly can attest that I am a kind person, almost to a fault. I'm the kind of person who actually thinks about living her life in a way that doesn't harm other people; how many other people my age can actually say that? 

There is a difference, though, between kindness and foolishness, forgiveness and being somebody's Patsy. Dude straight up called me to the carpet, disparaged my character and demanded my phone number like I owed him something. And let's not even get into his indignation when I told him "no."

The long and short of it is I had to tell him about himself, let him know I had forgiven him a long time ago and no longer even thought of him. Explained that people change, and grow and not everything under the umbrella of "being nice" is actually nice or entirely black and white. And then, when he demanded a better response, I told him to fuck off.

When he knew me, I was 18 or so. No responsibilities. No school at the time. No real goals. Since then, I've gotten an apartment, am on my second car, two years at my job, been in a committed relationship, none of which I had accomplished at that time when he knew me. I've experienced things, and thus I've changed. And I no longer need or want him in my life. It's part of growing up, figuring out who the leaves and who the roots are in your life...

What he fails to realize, I think, is that I don't need more people in my life. I need more good people. More like-minded people. People who respect my choices and know that I'm on a journey in life to find the zenith of myself and are not gonna impede that process. He was never that person, never one of those people. 

Open or not, some people just don't deserve me, which is oddly something I learned after my break up. I've started to realize that I am better and thus deserve better, so if that means losing points in somebody who I don't know's eyes, then that's just what it's going to have to be.

Sometimes I forget that the folks who were your friends, were your friends. 

My Birthday

I think it's weird that I never have anything to say on my birthday. I truly just spend the day being thankful for being where I am and thanking people for their birthday wishes, but this year seems so different.

For starters, I was excited. Although it snuck up on me like it always does, when I realized it was coming, instead of the "Oh, shit," feeling I typically get, I got a real happy, giddy feeling. I don't have anything special planned, just dinner with my Mom, and I don't plan on getting a whole lot of gifts, but I just finally feel different.

I feel like all of my birthdays I was waiting to feel my age, or waiting to feel some way about it one way or another really. That's not to say I feel my age now (I always feel older) but I feel like I'm finally a person. For a lot of my growing  years I felt like an idea, something that was supposed to be happening, maybe, but just...wasn't. I feel now that I'm actualized. I'm living, and breathing and functioning to the best of my ability and I'm proud of that. I understand that a lot of people don't get to feel that way about themselves, or don't feel that way because they feel like they can't be proud of the little things.

I am proud of the little things. I've maintained a job for two years. I've lived on my own for about four months and haven't ruined or wrecked anything. I'm paying off all my small debts. I'm healthy. And most important, more often than not, I'm just happy to be.

I won't deny it was a hard year for me, what with my break up and the stresses of moving, but I feel like with those hardships I got to find out who I really was, and what I was really made of. Getting through those two things was like breaking a glass ceiling that I didn't know was so thick until I got to the other side. Sure, I'm a little cut up, but no worse for wear. In fact, I may even be better than when I started.

So, for this birthday, more than the others, I may not do a whole lot of moving and shaking, but I will revel in the pride I feel and the joy. Bask in the well wishes, and look towards the ever-brighter future.

Breaking Up Is Truly Not The End of The World (But It Hurts Like a Bitch)

So, if you know me or follow me anywhere else, you know that Tarzan and I are no longer a couple. Can't lie, it really really sucks. Is it childish I wanted us to last forever, that I expanded and changed all of my dreams to fit in another person?

A few years ago I would've said hell yeah, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Why would you change and do this or that for some other person who's not even guaranteed to stay with you? The truth is though, that's what faith is. I've always had a shaky relationship with faith and expectations and the like because whenever you put faith in anything you run the risk of being disappointed, and in my life, up to a certain point, I'd become so heartbreakingly used to being disappointed by the people I trusted and the ideas I put faith in that I sort of stopped believing in the good things. Sure, I'd think about the good things, write about a few good things, but the sky was always falling and I was the one chicken just sighing and waiting for it to take me out.

I always had this idea that being in love with someone would heal all wounds and make everything wonderful and perfect. In that aspect, yes, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. With experience comes a really big picture in 20/20 of all the teenager-y things you thought and the silliness of them, because I'm still not perfect. I'm a person who did the best she could and loved the hardest she could and for that I'm proud, but surely not perfect. Love doesn't solve everything for you, but it does make you realize what your real problems are and for me, it was holding back.

I was so scared of trusting people and letting people into my life. They could trust me with anything; strangers would tell me deep dark secrets and horror stories and I'd simply pat them on the shoulder, tell them everything would be okay, and then go on about my life, but didn't trust the people in my life enough to tell them something simple as how I was feeling, preferring instead to deflect and talk about them. Trusting people, is an easy way to get hurt, but it's also a beautiful way to form attachments, which I've learned life is all about.

Breaking up hurts, especially when it's from such a great person, someone you learn from and become a better person through knowing. But I was lucky; my former steady is a gentleman, a sweetheart and a scholar; he hasn't dogged me in the street, hasn't leaked any nudes, and I've avoided a lot of those horrible break up stories you hear about or read. You'll never hear me say an unkind word about that man. I'm trying to maintain a friendship with him, because over the year and change we were together he became my best friend, sometimes understanding what I was feeling before I knew what it was I was feeling, and because you never give up on the people you love.

So what's next for this girl?

I can tell you honestly, dating is far off. It's not that I don't want that connection with someone again or that I'm immune to the loneliness that creeps in after a breakup, but rather, I know that getting over an old man by getting under a new one rarely works. Plus, the guys that I like are really really hard to find :) . Next up for me is biting the bullet and finally going back to school for my Associates of English. I know it may not be a lot to people, but it's the world to me, a first step towards a new horizon.

After I get that degree, I'm thinking on a move to Philadelphia or Seattle, some place I've never lived but that suits the type of person I am and hope to grow into. The Hip-Hop scene in Seattle (or lack thereof) is not a draw exactly, but Seattle is like my Los Angeles - that dream place where you meet people you've always wanted to meet and do things you've always wanted to do. But I'm thinking Philly suits me a lot better; the few times I went for a visit (though hopelessly lost on one of those visits) it was beautiful and the people were really nice.

A lot of times, folks use breaking up as an excuse to give up on their dreams, on love and on life in general. But it's like Brandy said, life's not over (and you can start again). It hurts, like a bitch, it hurts, but it's not the end of me. It's not the end of all the love I have to give or the lessons I hope to learn in life and it's not the end of my dreaming.

The Nature of Broken Things

I'm a really emotional person. Highly, highly emotional and very few people get to see any side to me other than my aloofness, my slight meanness, or my totally engrossing kindness*. The few who see behind the little that I do show, however, know that there's so much more here than my frame or any words I could ever say would tell you.

I'm moving into my very own apartment in less than a month. I have never lived one-hundred percent independently in my life. Sometimes, I'll admit it's felt like I've been autonomous from my support system but in my mind of minds I know it's never been true. But it's about to be. So as I branch out on this new life, this big life, this new big thing I keep looking over at this broken couch in my mom's living room.

She's told me I can have the broken couch. And I look over at it and just feel waves of emotion. I hate that couch. I love that couch. I'm angry at that couch. I feel like I need that couch. But the truth is, that couch is me, or what I believe parts of myself to be: broken, damaged, and inadequate.

I don't want to bring damaged, broken things with me, because I feel like I don't have room in my new life for more than one big, damaged, broken thing. And that one damaged, broken thing happens to be five foot tall, with an afro.

As much as I think I've grown, as much as I can read and hear in the words I chose to use and the thoughts I now think, the changes in me that have happened haven't mended this brokenness I always feel. It could be self-imposed, as I don't let too many people near enough to me to heal or hurt. It could be the fact that I feel I haven't found what it is I'm going to truly "do" for the rest of my life and thus have no direction. I keep thinking that if I can find what's broken and fix it, that all of my problems will disappear, but deep down I know that's not true; by the time I find what's broken, something new will be cracked or in need of attention.

Do we ever really heal? Do we ever get fixed? More pertinient to my close-knit life, can we, in time, heal ourselves? I feel like I've been putting bandages and salve on these wounds that are really slow to close: I see myself healing, and I see myself doing better, but I'm frustrated with the seeming lack of forward movement, with the lack of visible progress.

I have a decision to make: I either take the broken couch, or I start fresh and make a new base. I can either take these feelings of inadequacy and all this repressed anger with me, or I can try and let it all go and start something new. Each of those prospects are terrifying.

I guess I'll get some beanbag chairs, and figure out the rest later.

*Not to brag, but when you hear it enough it sort of sticks with you.

Freedom|Freedom

I've been absent from writing awhile and it's been a challenge to figure out exactly why. Did I lose my mojo? Did I just not have anything to say? The truth is, I'd lost my sense of freedom.

I danced under a streetlight for 10 uninterrupted minutes to some Stevie Wonder and some Spice Girls. Didn't stop when cars went by, but truly danced and booty popped like no one was looking (it was on my bucket list). And in that moment it all just came smashing together like two inevitable toddler heads at a play date; I'd stopped doing the things that make me feel like myself, and feeling like myself is what makes me feel free to be or do anything I put my mind to.

Somewhere in that hustle and bustle of scheduled time, I'd neglected me and what makes me happy. Long walks to nowhere. Thirty-second (or longer) dance parties. Music and books, art and learning new things. Truthfully, the past month or two (or three) I'd been going to work, coming home, and...that's it. No writing. No reading. No singing. No joy.

I suppose I felt obligated to this idea of what an adult person's life is. My parental figures go to work and come home and that seemed like what the traditional American life is but I always forget I'm not traditional and that puts me in direct confrontation with people who say they want to understand or help me, but don't know me enough to tailor their "advice." From my hair, to my shape, to the words I chose to express myself, I never seem to be in-line with the life my family and some friends seem to think I should lead.

I get discouraged with having to explain my choices in life to people, not because they have any valid or vital for my everyday life but because I feel like I shouldn't have to. These are people who see me in passing, people who've never seen me furiously typing away at keys, or dancing while I brush my teeth. These people don't know who or what I am because they didn't make me. Why am I explaining myself to these people? If I were explaining it to folks on the basis of letting them know who I was, I'd have no problem with it, but explaining myself to be judged? Takes away that sense of freedom.

It's a feeling of obligation, I've decided, that makes me feel so unlike me. When I feel obligated, especially if it's to family or close friends, I block off the things that I need or want in order to make things happen for them and I give them my freedom.

But you know something? I'm twenty-two f*cking years old. I shouldn't be obligated to anybody's ideas of who I should be, because I'm still creating myself as it is. If I'm a wreck, I'm a wreck, if I'm a success, I'm a success, but that path I chose should be purely my own, and I should enjoy the journey, because I only get one.

So, moral of the story is this: steal your sense of freedom back from those who've hijacked it. Even if it's only for a ten minute spotlight/streetlight dance party. Even if it nobody else understands you or why you must scream-sing 90's R&B ballads when you drive (just me?). Even if you gotta keep explaining who you are to people over, and over, and over again. One day they'll get it, or one day you'll quit talking, but either way you'll still be who you are, you'll still need what you need, and it's nobody's responsibility to hand you your sense freedom. Don't be afraid to take it.

What Is The Matter With Us Young People?

I'm fresh into this life game. Admittedly, I'm not brand new, but for perspectives sake I'd just like to make it known people still call me "Sweet Baby." In my eyes, I'm seven years from being thirty (!!!!!) while in their eyes, I'm just the youngin', the shorty, or the little sister.

So why is it that when I look around at my peers, we're starting families, we're moving in together and getting engaged?

I was thinking this over as I was talking to a coworker with an adorable Southern accent which I admire (admittedly, I have a Southern accent but her voice and her accent together is something stupendous) and she said that she and her fiance' were excited about the next phase of their lives. The last time I sat down and talked to her, they were simply dating and living together and now, she beamed a big, prideful smile and showed me her elegant, beautiful ring. When did this happen? Why is this happening?

Another coworker of mine just had her third child (all with the same man, mind you) and they're now engaged. Another is not engaged, but pregnant by a man she lives with, and yet another is proposing to his girlfriend this very weekend. None of us are over the age of twenty-five.

It took me back to my Sins of Our Fathers post and thinking on the ramifications of our parents actions as we ourselves reach adulthood. At this age my mother and father were married, had me and were living on an army base. At this age, so many of my co-workers and associates, friends and family members parents were either becoming or on their way to being parents. So are we doomed to repeat their pattern, becoming young parents before we know better, or do we actually know better?

A lot of us come from broken homes with one parent living away from home, divorced parents, widowed parents, and blended families that never fully blended. In watching our parents struggle to continue to love each other and the lives that they'd dealt themselves, had we learned that what they did was on the wrong side of right?

For instance, I plan to move in with my boyfriend sometime this year. No children. No engagement rings. No wedding bells. I want to see what he's like before I decide to make a family or a life with this him. Moreover, before he comes, I want to experience some independence, so I plan to have my own place in one or two months, start paying bills that I create, and learning how to be okay with what I've got. My mother never had that; she fell in love with Dad, she got pregnant, after living together two years, they got married. She never had time to decide if my father was "it" for her; the decision was made by an earlier decision she'd made to keep me and to stay with him. Had our parents known or seen what we now know, would things have been different? Would some of us be here? Would our families still be together?

Maybe that's what the matter with us is. Maybe we've had to mature so much faster, because our parents had to mature that must faster. Maybe we're now realizing at this age, what took our parents to learn at age thirty. Maybe we're trying to create the ideal families we never got to have, with people who understand where and what we come from and have an ambition, a drive, to do that much better.

Maybe there's nothing wrong with us at all. A lot of people from older generations like to lump us all into this pants-sagging, Waka Flocka admiring, good-for-nothing kids, but they fail to realizing that just like they had those same types when they were young (that they didn't necessarily fall in with) we have those same types. A lot of us are hard workers, in school, at our jobs. A lot of us are doing the right thing by not ourselves, but these budding families we're creating. We're doing the best we can with what we've been handing which, given the indiscernible 'gift' we've been given, is pretty damn good.

There's nothing the matter with us, I've decided. We're trying. We're striving. We're making connections and feeling free to be untraditional in the way we show our love, make our families, and even create our lives. We're learning; you were given the chance to, and now it's our turn.

A Short Story (That Says A Whole Lot and Yet So Little) of a Short Trip

I hadn't seen snow since I was in my single digits, and the last time I visited this new, big-little city, I was sorely disappointed with all the sunshine; if I wanted sun, I could've stayed my ass in Texas. But on our anniversary  it seemed as if all that hope from the last trip culminated in the white lattice falling from the sky. I may have squealed in glee, I'm not sure, but I do remember taking a big handful of snow and letting it melt in my mouth, just like I used to as a kid and was warmed inside by the nostalgia.

"Happy anniversary," he'd said, with a big smile.

If I were the spontaneous sort, I would've sat in the middle of the hotel parking lot and soaked up the ambiance the chill and inner joy that the snow was providing, but we'd made tentative plans with a few associates to go boldly where we hadn't gone (together at least) before. We were prepared to make fools of ourselves on a skating rink, and he and I were equally geeked to get there.Plus, I'd spent an agonizingly long time getting ready, and didn't want to make us any later than we probably were.

Now, the thing about driving in New Jersey is that you don't realize how long it's going to take until you're on the road. We'd been following his friend's car for so long, I began to wonder if I'd somehow traced behind the wrong car and we were on our way to a "Hills Have Eyes" situation. Upon mentioning that to him, the terror on his face made me laugh. Thankfully, we arrived at our location, after passing a few pastures and hamlets untouched by time.

The rink itself wasn't much; the building was small and a little shoddy with character. Long discarded spiderwebs swayed in the breeze from the cracks between the front doors and the concrete under our feet was cracked. Slightly rusted doors separated the entrance from the actual rink. Paint cans and wooden beams sat near the door as if someone had left for lunch and never came back to finish their odd job. I loved it.

I stood in front of him, keeping my feet as far apart as his, however, him being a foot taller or so it was harder than it looked for my small stature. Realizing I was mimicking him, he posted up in a stance that nearly put me in a split. Our chuckles filled the small space and we huddled up for warmth, or in my case, for the closeness. That's when it started: the bubble.

You ever stop and notice couples? Sometimes you'll see them with their friends or family, or even with each other but separate, and they're simply part of a crowd, and then, suddenly, they aren't anymore. They make a distinction between the world and them, forming an invisible barrier as if they're being filmed for a romantic comedy montage scene. The people around them subconsciously part, giving them room to pass, their intimacy obvious even at a peripheral level. They've made a bubble.

The first thirty minutes or so, it was just us, the folks we came with, and the people who worked there on the rink. The footwork of those people was insane. One guy, simply given the moniker of "Cool Mothefucker" seemed to walk and skate at the same time, another man literally moonwalked on his skates. Me? I stayed as close to the wall as I possibly could that first thirty minutes; I didn't want to make a fool of myself in front of him, them or the experts by falling.

And then the DJ did something fantastic. He played a song I knew and loved, that put me at ease. It was a lot easier to skate after that, a lot easier to loosen up and have fun. Up to that point I'd been skating alone, but when looking behind me, there he was, almost as if keeping watch over me that whole time to make sure I didn't fall on my ass. I held out my hand, and invited him to make a fool of himself with me.

The couple we'd come with had made hanging with them a little awkward by the arguing and passive aggressive daggers they were staring at each other. Truth be told, even if they hadn't been in a cold war, he and I would have created our own space. Sometimes (more often than I would have liked) my bad shins forced me off the rink and to a seat, but seeing the experts, and my lanky steady, sailing by to increasingly awesome tunes fueled my fun and kept me smiling.

An hour went by and the place was packed. Adults and teens alike had flooded the rink and were skating backwards, doing flips, two-stepping - it was something out of a cliche'd dance movie but much more interesting as I got to imagine the plots and back stories of every skater myself. For instance, there was one skater who, every time he passed, would pop-lock. He wore a throwback buttoned down jersey short set and knee high socks. His skates matched his outfit and he had on a 80's inspired gold chain. My dude's eyes lit up every time he saw Jersey Guy and he whispered that he wanted to be just like him when he got older - fun, free and unapologetic about it. I said he could be all those things, just not like that, and certainly not publicly.

Another hour rolled by at which point my shins were on fire and swollen, but I didn't let that stop me. Okay, yeah, I did, but I was still having fun. I'd lost track of my group and instead, sat alone and made up stories for all the skaters and watched Tarzan breeze by and try not to get run down by the aggressive skaters.

When couple skate started, even Jersey Guy had found his steady and they rolled, dipped and slid right on by. I was sad I couldn't get up there with them, but to my surprise Tarzan came off the rink and sat with me. The music got more and more romantic, culminating in a song I've loved since I was a little girl. And that's when it happened: I was in the bubble.

Maybe I'd been in it that whole time and had to take a cue from the soundtrack of our life that was going on to notice. Maybe I'd been purposely oblivious to it to not get schmaltzy. Whatever the case, when you notice you're in the bubble, everything seems to glow. Arguably, it could've been the strobe light hitting the disco ball, but for the story's sake, we'll say it was love that had made my world gleam silver.

We didn't need to stay any longer than that. It seemed like that was the moment we'd been leading up to, he and I. Now, that's not to say the other places we went or things we did didn't seem like the type of things couples did or that we weren't in so many bubbles for the entire trip, but this one made us feel like a fairytale to me. So often with long distance relationships the time you spend together, everything seems special and dipped in honeyed gold and whatever, but because of my analytic mind, or maybe in spite of it, I knew that day was something truly important and special. Not only did the time feel golden, but I felt golden. I felt beautiful and delicate and all the things a young girl hopes to feel when she first falls in love.

I went ahead and took our skates to the counter and looked behind me to see Tarzan and Jersey Guy yukking it up and shaking hands. Turns out, Jersey Guy had been skating since he was a toddler and did it out of love for the music, love for the sport, and truth to himself. He encouraged Tarzan that, if he found something he loved, to never stop doing it. I guess there are worse people Tarzan could aspire to be like.

Whether this story tells you more about me, him, or us, I'm not sure. Whether it restores your hope in love, spontaneity, or even snow, I can't be certain. I can be sure, though, that for me, it restores something in me long broken. It restores that belief that fairy tale things do happen to ordinary girls. It encloses my former jaded self in it's sweetness and warmth, forcing the me under all the previous hurts to resurface. Finally, most important, it reassures me that the love I've always wanted, more so the one I've always needed, is indeed out there in abundance, and I truly, finally deserve to be the girl, smiling and strolling inside the bubble.

*New format sponsored simply by my need to write a story.