Trust Issues: A Family Affair

I have trust issues no Drake. I didn't know they were as deep or as encompassing as I've recently found them to be, but they are truly there and I'm wondering why it took me so long to notice them.

Yesterday at my job was hard; back-to-back calls, brand new rules and even more unnecessary pressure. I spend a majority of my day fighting; I fight my car, I fight my customers, my managers, the last thing I want to do is come home and fight. But sometimes what you want isn't what you get.

It wasn't necessarily a fight, but more of a calling to the carpet, yet again. I don't mind those, they let me know what I need to work on, but when I'm already doing the best I know how to do, and people are constantly telling me I'm not doing good enough when I know and feel that I am? It not only hurts, but it makes me close myself off even further back than I am in myself. And that is where I learned of my trust issues.

I haven't truly trusted my parents in a really long time; the last call to the carpet forced me to come head-on with that realization. I love them both, very dearly, but I don't believe in them the same as I used to. I have this settled feeling in my heart that they have, and will continue to drop me, leave me, or let me down just like they seem to have the settled feeling that life is going to f*ck me up and over, and that I will continue to let it and thus, let them down. 

It's been that way since the divorce. I always thought I'd gotten over that so long ago but as it turns out, it's just solidified in me a distrustful nature of my family. Instead, I pick my family as I go along - W is the sister, Soul Brotha is the brother that I've always needed and wanted. In my mind, I am my own mother, nagging and pushing, but encouraging and hopeful. I am my own father, firm and determined, constantly reminding me of my worth and that I deserve the best. My parents, their amazing qualities, are instilled in me already to make me push myself further; I just wish they knew they hadn't failed, which I feel they sometimes think they have. 

I am not the college student they raised me to be. I am not a doctor, or a lawyer, not yet a teacher not yet even on my own. But I am a great person. I am smart, I am kind, I am stead-fast and hard-headed with my goals. If that isn't enough for them for now, then I suppose it's time I stopped wanting to please them so much. 

Not to say I will stop honoring them, not to say I will stop listening to and learning from them, but my heart is hard against them, defensive, and I don't really know where to start chipping away at it in that respect. I'm not sure if I'm ready to or know how, but I know that my love for them is going to push me, I'm just apprehensive about if it's pushing me closer or further.

Tes and Gratitude

Sometimes my emotions sneak up on me. I go through my days pretty much thinking and doing, and in the spare moments feeling. For awhile I haven't been really getting in my feelings, just scraping the surface.


So this morning I wake up singing Brian McKnight's "Never Felt This Way." Just woke up humming, then all out singing. And I stopped and sat for a second and really felt what it was my soul was telling me with it's song choice. My heart suddenly felt so full and big, as if was waiting on me to notice it's swelling before growing even bigger. Sitting in silence I felt entirely and with all my soul grateful.


I didn't realize my heart wasn't broken anymore. Isn't that strange? For so long I'd been walking in this life like a broken woman, like anything good coming to me had to have a catch or an underlying method to hurt me. For so long I'd been masking the brokenness behind superficial friendships and meaningless chases with dudes I really wasn't into, trying to bide my time until I could tap my little heart and not feel that throbbing pain of a bruise. I didn't take the time, I suppose, since starting this journey through and to myself to check on the heart of me to find that those stitches have since dissolved; I spent so much time on my mind and it's labyrinth on the way to understanding that the heart of me just got an occasional tap to be sure it was still there, still beating. My heart's healthy and happy, and so full of love for life...it's a strange feeling


And in feeling that I felt gripped with joy and gratitude to a higher power. Because I couldn't have done all this by myself. I'm not religious, but I woke up thanking God. Not only for what I've acquired by myself through what he's given me, but for the people he's put in my life, for the opportunities he's given me and for, above all, the ability to see the gift that each one of those things are. My parents, my friends, Tarzan, and this moment in my life where I feel like I can finally look my happiness in the face and not look behind my shoulder to see if something bad is sneaking up on me are all really big gifts. 


Gratitude is a big thing, and a thing I don't think a lot of us actually feel. I think we feel thankful for a couple things but get so bogged down in the bad things, in the things we wish we could change but can't, the things that still hurt that we forget to be humbled by the really awesome things we do and have. I know I'm guilty of it, and so when gratitude snuck up on me in addition to all these other happy emotions no lie, I cried (Remember when I had said that too many emotions, good or bad and I bawl? Oooh chile, I ain't lie).  


But unlike so many of the tears I've shed in the past couple years, these didn't hurt. These didn't sting and weren't bitter. I felt happy and humbled and just...joyous. I smiled through each and every tear and just felt grateful for every thing that I've got, even for the things I don't have. Family, friends, falling in love...God really snuck up on me with it all today. And even for that I'm grateful. Feel a little like a punk for admitting I cried, but definitely grateful for the feelings that brought it about. 


Be grateful you guys. Every thing you have that enriches you is a gift. Every thing you don't have that weighs others down, is a gift. Everything you are and everything you are not is a gift. 

Tes and That One Word

I wrote a short story about my day on Twitter earlier but it seemed lacking in so much that I had to just come here and put it all in perspective.

I was taught by my father's mother that as a lady I didn't work on cars. I wanted to mind you, but I just never learned because ladies, as set in stone by my Nana, didn't do those sorts of things. So it happens that I'm 21 years old and barely know where the oil goes. Instead, my grandmother taught me that as a lady, a cunning one at that, I could coerce more knowledgeable people to help me and so far she's been right.

Tonight my car's oil light went on. I'm not surprised; Amber (that's the car's name) has a leak in the oil gasket that's getting a lot of blowback to the rest of her under carriage. It'll take approximately seven fifty to fix. I know this about Amber already. But if I have the hood up? Nobody knows that, as my face is a constant state of confusion.

So it happened tonight that a very tall, chocolatey man steps down from his Range Rover to help me and my little hoopty. I explained what I thought was going on and he proceeded to take the oil from my hand and put it in the car while I went to buy another bottle. Once those were figured out he then checked my lights, my under carriage, my brake fluid and let me know I had an oil leak. To which I replied "No? Really? That's such a shame..."

After it was all done I thanked him ever so much and started to get in my car when I saw him writing something down. Slipping his number in my hand, he gave me a giant smile and told me if I needed anything to call him; I smiled and said a polite 'thank you' and let him drive away first. All ten digits; his name was Thomas . And then I remembered something.

The guy I'm into, his name, starts with a T too. And he's taller than this Thomas dude. Probably with worse eyesight, but just thinking about him made me remember that this dude here? Couldn't compare. Sure, Thomas was sweet enough to help me with my car, and that's a lovely thing not a lot of dudes do for women anymore. But...he's not it for me.

Awhile ago, that would've been it. I would've been all over poor Thomas before his lights fully disappeared around the corner. But now? That number felt foreign in my hand, like someone had handed me a Martian monkey wrench and said "Do something." The guy I'm into means something to me to the point where this "potential" somebody? Doesn't measure up to what I feel for him right now. That's odd for me.

I'm scared of what that means for me. Does that mean me and this dude, Tarzan, are exclusive in my mind? And what are the implications of that? When I'm literally throwing ten digits of an attractive ass dude to the wind, where in my past I would've kept them as at least an option what's that really saying about who and where I am now?

I'll tell you. I'm not the same girl who was running after attention from men who I didn't care for. I'm not the same girl who's rushing to be someone to someone else. I'm just a girl who's fallen in love with a guy. Am I still insecure? Very. Am I still working harder to be confident? Definitely. But now that there's this calmness in my spirit from knowing that someone, somewhere thinks something of me to wait on me to get there? Nobody's worth throwing that away for.

The romantic in me is all out and vulnerable. Be gentle, ya'll >.<

Musing: Fear, Love and Chess...?

There was once a time where I was fearless. I would get on a bike, knowing I would be almost magnetically drawn to the one pole/ditch/bench/object in the area, fall and scrap something, and yet I'd do it anyway. There was a time when I was fearless, and wrote a boy in my class a love poem, because he told me he thought it was cool that I read above our grade's reading level by at least 4 grades. I used to be fearless once.

When my Dad left my Mom, I thought I handled it well. My dad was my best friend in the world at the time, and all I knew for sure were the three of us (and my dog Lucky) and suddenly I didn't have that knowledge any more and couldn't be sure of the ground I stood on, much less the people in my life. And now that I think on it, that's when I started to become afraid, not only of doing things away from my two people but of life in general.

So between the ages of twelve and eighteen I was existing in this world; life was happening to me, and I didn't really have any feelings about it. Point of fact, all I was interested in during those years was falling in love, and being somebody's everything and having something, some love, that I felt was lacking. And I looked in all the wrong places for that validation. Once I hit nineteen, for the first time in life I lived exclusively with my Dad. I stayed with him no more than two years all together.

When I was nineteen I fell in love with this guy who could never and would never love me back. I spent the better part of my year or so knowing him trying to force myself to be what he liked, force myself thinner, prettier, funnier, anything so that he would see things the way I did, so that he would see me as a woman who could love him. And then I spent the next two years learning to trust myself again, and forgive my foolish heart for not taking the hints that were given; I spent those years undoing all the damage that he and I caused myself.

Over time I've become fearful. I fear not having things as much as I do having them. I fear making friends, as because of my nomadic past I have a tendency to pull away from people once I feel like I'm no longer needed or that I may be moving. I fear not being near either of my parents, because to me they (and W) are all I've got. I fear falling in love again because the first time was disastrous and took me so long to come back from, and I still feel like I'm missing pieces from it.

But I can't let fear govern my moves anymore. Life is scary. You fall in love and you don't know how or when or why but you do, and for someone not knowing how and not having answers that could be terrifying. You find a new job that you're not sure you're even qualified for, where it seems everyone, including you are expecting you to fail. You make a move that's so out of character for you, you question your own mind and intentions. Life is scary, but not living it would be the real nightmare.

Not taking those leaps when they present themselves is short changing yourself, psyching yourself out into believing that, for whatever reason, you don't deserve or wouldn't know what to do with those things that you crave and that you do, indeed, deserve.

I keep thinking that I confronted my fears on a snowy day in Fayetteville, that the day my heart was broken was the day I came face to face with my worse fears and overcame them. Only now do I realize that fear still hides behind my advice to others, my cautious way of living, my unusually tough walls to get behind. I give the veneer of being shy and reserved, but the fact is I'm amazingly outgoing...once I stop being afraid of you. And I'd never realized it until, once again, I got overwhelmed with feelings of missing home, and remembering that crazy dude who didn't realize that he'd broken me. I got caught up in the 'what if' game of these new things I'm attempting, this new life I'm trying to forge for myself. And I cry when I get overwhelmed which makes me feel really...girly; more than one emotion at a time and I'm pretty much putty that's another blog for another time.

Fear of rejection. Fear of pain. Fear of losing things you hold close to your heart. We've all got them, and we all process them differently. I forget that not dealing with them doesn't make them go away, rather for me they make them all the more tangible. As a woman who's going through this inner change into who I'm meant to be, I neglected working through my fears as I figured you grow out of those, right? You grow out of not being picked first for the teams, and the teasing, and whatever else made you fearful as a kid...right? No, fear is something that'll grow within you if you let it.

So my sage words for today are diminish the fear. Everything you do is going to have risks and consequences, and anything you think you deserve is going to take sweat and tears and work. Not taking those risks to avoid those consequences cheat you out of the rewards. Letting fear rule you makes you a pawn on the chess board of life when you should be the Queen (or King), the piece that makes all the moves, the most valuable piece on the board. That's not to say be hasty and just move your Queen around whilly-nilly, but recognize the good before it's too late. Don't let the fear of losing the Queen piece cost you the entire game.

Honesty is Pandora's Box

I have a fast mind. It's a maze, and it's complex, but I figure things out relatively quickly. So from a very young age, I loved to lie as lying was just figuring out what people expected you to say, and saying it convincingly, most times before they even said anything. It wasn't getting away with things that made it such an unshakable bad habit, rather it was the thought that my words could change realities, my words could change perceptions, and it didn't have to be what was right or what was true. I was power tripping as a kid, and thus became known as a liar. 


Over time, my lies became manipulation. I would toy with my peer's lives and minds, the puppeteer feeling going to my head. I convinced a girl to break up with her boyfriend as they "weren't compatible". I convinced a guy that his best friend was "scheming behind his back". I even got a girl to completely drop my potential love interest, in hopes of getting with this guy I'd purposefully befriended for that very reason. By peppering the truth with a couple stretches, a few white lies, the world could be what I made it. And then I got played and lied to. Learned that lesson painfully. 


I learned that those traits were nothing to be proud of; liars are a dime a dozen and not all of them are any good. Girls who told the truth, girls who were honest despite any trepidation and fear, courageous girls, were valuable, or at least should be. I learned that being lied to hurt everything in a person. If they knew about it, it would change not only their perception of you, but of anyone following you. If they didn't know, it would jade the relationships and interactions of their future in ways you couldn't begin to grasp. And that made me stop being a liar, almost cold turkey.


The issue with that is, honesty is Pandora's box. People are constantly asking me to be honest with them. I'm a closed person who likes to think things through before I say them, mull over the ramifications and the benefits and then make a wise decision. The truth, just like biker shorts, ain't for everybody. 


My mother always said never ask for more than you can handle, and never ask questions you don't want the answers to. And she's been right on that just don't tell her I said it as people often ask for my brand of honesty and are shocked by what they hear. I'm muted in life...okay not muted but composed. I don't get riled up easily, and it takes a lot to shock me. I'm really observant and draw connections like there were dots between them leading the way. That right there is a recipe for disaster as some people's dots aren't really meant to be connected by outside forces but by themselves.


Me and W are yo-yoing continuously because of my formerly lackadaisical view of honesty as it pertains to my feelings. To make her feel more at ease, more secure with my friendship, I'd developed this veneer of not having deep feelings. Surface wise, it always seems like jealousy, bitterness or competition between us on my end, but under my still waters lies insecurity, uncertainty and a fear of not having anyone in my corner. Now that I'm evolving, that veneer is being painfully peeled back, exposing raw nerves to cold air.


 She's not really used to me telling her when she's hurt my feelings; she knew formerly as I would be really curt and sniping in my responses to her. Now I can recognize what's going on with me, and I'm not afraid of asking to take time out to figure it out. Now, I tell her sincerely what I feel with very little filter. She's kind of in a tough place in her life, trying to figure hers out just like I'm trying to figure mine, but she wants me to depend on her as I've always done not realizing that the actions she's taking now make it real difficult. I need something stable. I need something consistent. She can't give that right now. Telling her I don't feel safe , secure, or as trusting of her as I used to hurts her. It hurts me too. But it was something that needed to be said. 


And therein lies the rub with this honesty thing. It hurts both ways and nobody seems to recognize that. The person being honest feels, in most cases, sorely aware they are hurting someone they care about and exposing themselves to possible retribution, ridicule or rejection. The person receiving the honesty can misconstrue it as a critique, an insult and sometimes a purposeful aim to hurt them. 


Pandora didn't realize the ills she let into the world, and by the time she closed the lid, it was too late. You can't un-say things, or lie to cover up your honesty on some "JK" type thing. But...the great thing about that box is that it frees us of all those things we held inside, freeing us to be more ourselves and less our short-comings, hang-ups and pent up emotions. It frees us to live more sincerely, more nobly, and in a world full of liars, half-truthers, and people walking around with the baggage of being lied to, that is a hopeful thing. With every honest step we take forward, we're walking into a more hopeful and genuine future. 

A Letter to an Unknown Love

I've kind of been waiting on you my whole life, but I'm probably not going to tell you that. Instead I'm going to show you, in very minute, subtle but big ways. I'm going to hold your hand a lot, but not enough to crowd you, and I'm going to look at you sometimes with curious eyes, wondering what I did to deserve someone who fits me like you do.

I spent so much time wondering about where you are, and what I was doing wrong to make it so that you wouldn't see me, or notice me. I was always so down and hard on myself not realizing that if I didn't think I was important, nobody would think I was. I'd been treating potential dates up until you like I had to win them over, I had to make them like me, not realizing that it was me who was holding all the cards, that I was the prize.

I'm not sure how I'll meet you; maybe out at a bookstore or a video game expo. Maybe at a poetry meeting or simply by bumping into each other. I'm not sure if I'll impress you immediately, or if I'll be that slow burn that eases into your life and warms you from the inside out. I do know that if it's you that I've been waiting on, I'll definitely know it. And maybe deny it.

You see, I'm afraid of myself. Afraid of letting myself go and afraid of the power with which my heart and soul rule my life. I know if you somehow find a home in either of those places then I'll fear you too, or rather who I'll be because of you. I lost myself once in a guy and it took me so long to trust myself after him that I found myself chasing unattainable and ultimately uninterested (and uninteresting) men and I never want to go back. There's no GPS to the soul, and I'd hate to have to build myself all over from ashes into a woman.

I don't know you, but I know you'll be kind. I need kindness in my life because more often than not I'm unkind to myself and rarely believe in my own good. I know you'll be intelligent, cause Lord knows I don't find i'g'nant men attractive. I know you'll have depth to you, some of which you'll let me swim in, the rest which you'll hold for yourself and God.

I have to warn you, I'll be insecure. I'll be worried. I won't see me the way you do, and won't think I'm as ______ as you think I am. I'll worry about other girls and what they say to you and what you feel about what they say. It'll drive you, I know, but just find patience with me; I've never had someone like you before who wanted all of me, not just the fleshy, sensual parts, and my base mind will always take it there with you and other women. It's me, and before you get to me, I'm already working on it so try and just walk with me there.

I worry about finding you. I think about how my life would be different, but at the same time I know to find you, I've got to find me first. And as I'm slowly clearing away the trees that are keeping me from seeing the forest, I know somewhere along the path you'll be waiting. And this time, I think I'll be ready.

Sincerity

I'm a reflective girl. A girl who's gaze kind of glazes near the  end of conversations. A girl who's always thinking of ways to make herself better, to quell the sadness that finds it's way around her heart. A girl who still manages to smile with her eyes. I'm a girl who thinks so much that I forget what it is I need to do, things I need to find to make me feel like me.

I used to think the thing I needed was love. Attention from someone who I could share my whole self with, not just the bright, shiny pieces. Someone who would treat me as I know I am, like a Russian doll, with smaller and smaller parts until you get down to the smallest, but most beautiful piece. A person to treasure me as I've always wanted, dreamed and hoped to treasure another. But I've been thinking for awhile now that love isn't the thing I lack; Mom, Dad, W, SoulBrotha...I don't lack for love. What I'm missing in life, after years of teenage pining and wishing and praying, isn't love, it's sincerity.

There are rare times when my far off gaze focuses, and I'm able to open my heart and let everything I know of myself out into the world. I say that I'm lonely. I say that I'm sad. I say that I wish I were in a better place to help those who are often helpful to me. The one thing I don't recall saying is that I just want something real. I want an authentic life, something that brings genuine joy to me. Mom always says to speak it into existence...why haven't I said it before?

I started thinking that it wasn't attention necessarily that I needed (let's be honest, if you're not specific enough, next thing you know you're getting all kinds of awkward, dirty and just plain wrong solicitations) but a sincere interest. Someone interested in more than my rack and hips. More than what I could offer to them. A person interested in me, interested in what makes me.

W hurt my feelings awhile ago; a guy I'm thinking of being more into wanted to hang out after he got off work. Though it was nine, I didn't see much wrong with it, but W says it was obvious what dude was up to. Cue my doe eyes; why would I think that he was trying something off-hand when all he said is let's hang out? Where does that mean "say let's get naked?" It was her tone, the condescending way she rattled off what he was really up to that made me just sigh and want to cry.

It felt like she was saying nothing is real, nothing any guy will ever say to me will ever be what he truly means. For a girl like me who craves the closeness, a girl with obvious trust issues no Drake and self-esteem issues that's like a shot to the chest; why? Why can't a person say what they mean? I do. Why can't I accept a person at face value? Why is it naive of me to hope that a person is interested in more than what's between my legs?

At that point, before I started sinking in to feeling sorry for myself I just shook it off and said with squared shoulders "F*ck them, all of them." I refuse to believe that nobody is genuine. I refuse to believe that every word has to be analyzed, every action scrutinized. Does it happen that people are disingenuous? Yes. Every time? No, and to believe so would put my soul in a terrible place of disbelief in what's true; good things happen all the time as long as your heart is open to them and your back isn't to them.

 If I am what's real, any of the extra fakeness will fade and phase into the background. If I am sincere, I will attract it. If I know I'm beautiful, I'll attract people who see that beauty. If I am what it is I want I can stop looking for it in the faces of strangers and be happy looking into my own reflection with a wide, honest smile.