Shame On Me (For Being This Size)

Not to quote the untalented rapper of this quarter, but I'm different. From the way I think, the things I read, the way I dress, I just don't seem to fit in with my peers (or even much my elders) and I've learned to be perfectly okay with that.

What I can't find myself being okay with is that people seem to want me to be less than what I already am, want me to revert back to that pre-high school train of thought that says because everybody else feels a certain way, I have to feel the same way.

For instance, I woke up today and perused my Twitter and found someone I follow, a very talented woman, fat-shaming the entire hell out of another woman for a really brave picture she took of her stomach. The former couldn't understand why the latter was so bent out of shape; she was only stating her opinion, the opinion that the latter's body was utterly disgusting, and what did she (the big girl) expect anyway? It's Twitter, it's rude and obnoxious and gets off on shade, drama, and slander, and this girl, the bigger girl, should've known better and been ashamed of her body enough to not post it.

(I'm reminded of a quote that says there's a special place in hell for women who aren't kind to other women, but I digress...)

I staunchly disagree. Firstly, who is anybody to shame anybody for something as superficial, something as ever changing, as how they look? Looks is one of those things that fade with time, but beauty is one of those things that grows as you grow, that develops out of your kindness, your creativity, and your wisdom. Beauty is an intangible, but it's really noticeable when you don't have it as it seeps into your personality, into your words and actions.

Second, and most important, anyone can take pride in how they look, whether they are traditionally attractive, or not. To tell someone they can't like how they look because it goes against how you think they should look, or how you yourself look is ugly. So what if someone's bigger than you? So what if they think paisley and floral prints are in and you don't? Let them do them, and you continue to do you, such is the wisdom of time; whatever someone else does, that doesn't directly effect you or your way of life, is them and should remain such.

Fat shaming is one of those things that makes me mad. I feel like I'm fat. Those who see me often and know me tell me I'm not. I eat whole grain, nuts and berries, love fruit and vegetables and have drastically cut down on my fast food intake. I've started walking and running after my shifts at work and even started a small weight training regime. I still weigh one hundred and seventy pounds, size 14, and I get discouraged all the time about it.

Standing naked in a mirror, I can't look at myself straight on for more than three minutes; any more time than that and I just want to crawl into bed and hide away my body. It's been this way since I was maybe twelve or thirteen and puberty hit, and I've been working ever since to become accepting of my shape. Some days, I'm there - I look at myself and think that I'm beautiful, inside and out, and I just smile and go about my day. Other days, I look at my stretch marked skin, bigger hips and thighs and just sigh and shake my head, pinching the fat in the mirror and feeling sorry for myself.

I shame myself. I don't need anybody else to say "shame on you for looking that way." But...why should I feel ashamed? I'm doing everything I know how to do to stay healthy. I'm keeping both my mind, and body, sharp and trying new things everyday to make me feel better about myself, whether it's standing in the mirror (and not picking myself apart) or getting rid of the super oversized (and super small clothes) that haunt my closet. I'm doing for me, I'm concerned about me; I don't need a stranger being faux concerned about me or my weight all under the premise that I don't care for myself when, if they knew me, they'd know I really do.

Folks find me attractive. Other folks don't. Neither of that really matters as long as I find myself attractive (well, me and Tarzan anyway). And most days, I do. And from what I can tell, he does too. And the day anybody else's opinion truly matters will be the day I say f*ck it and order me the biggest, baddest, bacon infested burger and start the damn downward spiral. But between me and you, I hate beef burgers, don't like pork bacon, and feel fine about me. And I refuse to be ashamed about that.

I Smell Like Teen Spirit

I'm getting to that point in my life where everything smells like teen spirit.

I thought I was supposed to be out of this teen angst that seems to be plaguing my twenty-second to twenty-third year but it seems like the more I seem to grow up, the more disillusioned I get with the things I've already been told, the people and places I've already seen, that seem to never change as I keep changing. It's nonsensical; if I'm changing, why aren't they? Why is everything staying so still when I seem to be vibrating on this whole new plane of being?

There's supposedly this point in your teens where you realize everything your parents told you, for the most part, was bullshit. Sure, they got it right every now and then, but they didn't take into account a few things (I recall my dad thinking minidisc players were the new "thing" and would never go out of style. Do you have one? I sure don't.). I don't know about you, but I knew my parents were full of it around 8 or 9 when I saw them eating "Santa's" cookies. So why is it that I seem to still be grappling with the ideas, the traditionalism, that they kept trying to teach but never seemed to fit me? Is it that they were teaching to an archetype of a child and not to me personally? Is it that they never told me that it would be hard out here for someone like me, with all this inerrant good and big heart with so many vultures and scam artists circling?

Don't get me wrong, my life isn't a crap shoot by a long-shot. I've got a nice job, great friends, and a boyfriend I'm still madly in love with a year into our relationship. I'm happy, overall, but the disillusionment sneaks in in those small places where I'm unhappy and shakes awake that angry teenager in me. Why can't I have a better job? Why can't I go to a good school? Why can't my boyfriend be here, or me there, without so much fanfare/planning/logistical shit to deal with? Why?

It's nothing anybody can answer. It's nothing anybody has to answer to. It's simply the way things are. The thing becomes turning this angst into something workable, managing this generalized anger and disenchantment into something resembling a plan of action or a goal or a workout plan or something to occupy you so you don't lie in bed all day mad at the world.

Fresh back from an anniversary trip to see Tarzan, Jane is tearing apart her inner jungle in a frenzied fashion, trying to make sense of her emotions and the changed landscape within her. What does she do now? She rebuilds it (after she's done tearing it down of course) and cuts out those things that make her ask too many whys. Rearranges it so that the landscape is no longer foreign, the goals no longer hidden by the weeds and things that don't belong.

They always like to say that Rome wasn't built in a day, and they are right, but how long do you think it took a council (or even a single person) to come up with the idea that Rome needed to be built? For me, Rome is going to take maybe a week, give or take.

Wish me luck.
XoXo

Sins of Our Fathers

The sins of my father...

Turns out, it's more than a really dope Usher song, but an actual thing that, until today, I didn't know effected me so deeply.

My father was a cheater. My father wasn't there for me when it counted. My father tried to make amends with money. I idolized him with the sort of idealism that only exists in those not young enough to know better, those naive enough to believe that all anybody has to be is good and good would come to them. I was the best daughter I knew how to be, and he still left me behind.

I knew my father was a cheater when I was maybe 9 years old. He told me I may have had a sister (and possibly a brother) that my mother didn't know about. Made me keep that secret for years, only for me to meet the girl and not feel any sort of sisterly bond. That didn't make it any better.

Unlike what Usher says, the sins of the father don't just fall on the son. After my father left, I spent my time trying to fill that loveless space he left behind. Filled it by chasing after a boy who couldn't give any less damns about me for two years, spent time on a future baby father of 5 hoping to be lucky number 6, and fell in love with a cheater. I became some spiteful amalgamation of the cheater and the cheated on, over and over and over again, never stopping to ask myself where this whole thing started.

The father's sins on the daughter are tougher to see. Sure, everyone is walking around wearing 'Daddy Issues' t-shirts, but the fact is it goes so much farther than any of us can really see with the naked eye or fully explain with superficial proclamations  My father molded me into a cheater's accomplice, a woman seeking love in all the places where a strong male figure should have stood. My father didn't teach me what to look out for when it came to wolves in sheep's clothing, how could he from thousands of miles away? My pride and hurt wouldn't let me ask him for a thing, making it so even now, when there's something wrong, I don't say anything to anybody; I handle everything on my own, because if my own dad could let me down, who can I really rely on?

Every man I've ever been involved with has had issues with their fathers, from the absentee father, to the abusive father, to the father that was there, but never there enough. We're all broken by our parents in some way; like priceless crystal glasses, from the moment we're let out of the box, we're smudged with fingerprints, dropped, cracked. Nobody's parents were perfect, and none of us will be perfect parents, but we all aim to be better than our parents were.

That gives me pause; my father's real father wasn't there. My dad's last name is different from the rest of his siblings. His mother treated him, and continues to treat him, as if God himself set him down in front of her and said "Raise him." Those things couldn't have been easy for him; he did the best he could, it just wasn't enough to prevent me from going through it with men, with myself, with the perception that I put forth of this solid ice queen.

One day, I think I'll forgive him. One day, I'll feel more sorry for him than angry. That day isn't today. Most likely won't be tomorrow, but it's coming. I can't focus on what he or my mother did wrong; I'm grown now, it's up to me to make whatever went wrong, right. I'll keep in mind though, that the cheating gene is in me. Keep in mind my propensity to run. Never forget the ease with which I tend to toss people who I find needless away. I will keep in mind  the rest of my life what it means, that the sins of the father are passed down to the son. Or in my case the daughter.

I Are a Poet

I have a noticeable Southern accent, even to those who are more Southern than myself. It gets worse when I'm nervous, which it did tonight; legit, I almost vacated the premise and my bowels at the same damn time.

I've been writing poetry since I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. I wrote about school, and boys, and stress and love and hate and bitterness and love and road trips and vacations and love... I read at the most wonderful, welcoming place, a bookstore/African culture hub called Under One Roof, for the first time when I was maybe 11 or 12. And it was love for the performing aspect of the art ever since.

But then somewhere along there, life starting becoming more tangible, more real. And one day I woke up and was not a poet anymore. Instead I was a young woman working through this life thing and didn't have time nor patience to work through iambic pentameter and alliteration. Instead I picked up a journal, choosing instead to write my thoughts in these books never to be released or read by another person until I had my own daughter one day who thought her mother didn't understand what she was going though; then and only then would I want those books read.

Occasionally I would foray back into poetry for a brief stint, expressing my boredom with my lackluster love life, or poems written with the ink of tears from some pain I hadn't wanted to explore. And then I got my heartbroken and you couldn't keep a damn pen out of my hand, but yet I still never read again.

Until tonight.

Tonight I read an untitled love poem to Tarzan, and to myself, in front of at least a good 15 people. I followed up a pair of Jesus poets with seemingly more swagger than actual substance but were still type dope in their lane. I brought my Mom, as I used to back in those early days, and she (as she used to) clapped and whooped the loudest before I even said a word.

I was introduced and said a sweet, country "Hey ya'll" and explained I hadn't spoken in awhile and that I was once a pretty good poet to which the MC Paul replied "Are!" So I said, "Okay, I guess I are a poet." I smiled, took a deep breath, and it was like I'd never left my hobby, my skill, behind. It was as if I'd placed my pen down between writing lines one day and had just picked it back up with new fervor.

I forget sometimes, in this life of being a worker for my employer, a girlfriend to my boyfriend, a best friend to my best friends and a daughter to my parents that I have to be a person. A whole, individualized, unique person with her own passions, fears and wants not attached to anybody else. I'd forgotten that, forgotten to release the poet in me, allow her to be who she wants to be.

She's like a friend, my inner poet, who went a long time without speaking to me, and now that we've caught up, I can't imagine why we stopped talking. Don't get me wrong, I'm no slam poet, I'm not the type of poet who remembers every poem they've ever written and can recite them on site, but I am still a poet. I am still a poet. I am still.

Sometimes I have to be reminded that I am still here, still breathing, still thinking and believing and still just being. I still am. Or in Paul's case, I still are.

I'm Stronger Than I Think

When I was ten or eleven years old, I had two titanium rods screwed to my spine to cure my scoliosis. The surgery was a success, and I was supposed to be hospitalized for at least two months. A little over three weeks later, I walked out of that hospital (okay, they rolled me to the car, from what I remember, but I could've walked...just very very slowly).

Today, at twenty-two, I'm starting to have this weird back pain at night. Sometimes, throughout the day, a part of my upper back will feel as if it's being pulled in one direction while the rest of me is staying still. My hips and knees ache. I'm like, thirty-eight, in a twenty-two year old's body.

I've been doing a little research here and there about the long term effects of these rods, and the outlook isn't very good. People's discs are crushed, some have trouble sleeping if they aren't lying completely flat and it all starts for most of them after the ten year mark, but they ignore it until it's too late. I'm done growing up, so I think the risk of my spine curving again is minimal. I want the rods out.

A friend of mine, Tony, has said I don't live for myself, and that I should start thinking about what I want. This is a big thing that I want, but I don't want it for my right now, I want it for my future. If you could read some of the stories from people who had the surgery in the 70's, even one's who had their surgeries the same  year I had mine, and read their pain and frustration with their bodies not holding up despite the promises and the "progress" they'd made.

It's a big thing to want, and I'm scared of it. Not the surgery itself, but the wanting of something seemingly so big for myself. I've always been afraid of wanting things for myself, afraid that wanting those things would put automatically make them not come true. But it's a new year, and I'm older now and have learned that wanting things is nothing without the action behind them. I'm old enough now to know the difference between wants that are possible and wants that are impossible.

So in the spirit of the new year, my goal is to want things, and go for those things that I want.

It started simply by seeing Django for a second time (I freaking love that movie) and evolved into "Where do you want to be years from now? What do you want to be doing? Who do you want to be?"

I want the rods out. And I want to live near my boyfriend. And I want to graduate college with a degree in English and teaching certification. One day, I want to be a mom and a homeowner. I want a life that's full. And today's the day I start wanting it more than fearing it.

When I was ten or eleven, on my way out of the hospital, my nurses said I was stronger than they thought. My father told me the same, a few weeks later when I tried (and succeeded) crawling my way to the bathroom instead of waking someone up to help me. I am a strong woman, a lot stronger than I know. And it's time to start testing my metal (no pun intended).

Waiting For Confidence

I'm a modern day mystic. A gypsy. I do palm readings and tarot cards and carry around a rose quartz stone in my purse to bring me luck in love and a calm disposition.I studied numerology and astrology and Buddhist mantras. I believe in souls and spirits and ghosts and aliens and that one day, when I die, all of my beliefs will have been true. I believe in everything.

The one thing I don't believe in though, which is a sad state of affairs if I've ever heard one, is myself. I don't believe that my opinion or personage matters. And how sad is that, for a person who still believes in true love, and magic and the sanctity of pinky promises to not believe in herself?

I don't know why I don't. I don't know when I went from this over-exuberant  confident kid, to this sullen adult with nothing but fear and regret on either fork of her road staring her in the face. If poetic justice were true, I'd have blossomed into this beautiful, confident, self-reliant chick. Maybe it just takes longer than I anticipated.

I wish I did believe in myself. I wish I still held the belief that nobody would hurt me, and that wanting something and working towards it would mean that you get it, but I don't. Is that what growing up is, losing the magic and the security? Can I hold onto all these beautiful, tenuous things and still grow and become who I'm supposed to be?

Right, this about me, though. Me and my inability to see myself for all the flaws that I have. I want so many things, from the love of my life, from my family, from my job, that I'm too timid to ask for for fear of losing it all. But a friend once told me that a reward is nothing without a little risk, and that if I'm too afraid to jump, I would probably end up sitting on the side of the pool with the other kids too scared to fly or swim.

I hear that I'm wonderful. People say that I'm smart and beautiful, that I'm kind and something special. People tell me that all the time. Nobody has ever really proved it. I don't want to blame my lack of belief in myself on others, but you could see how that would confuse a girl: I'm every woman, but no woman at the same damn time. I should start proving to myself these things, but how do you define when "enough" is? When will I be smart enough, pretty enough, whole enough to please myself?

New year, new me, indeed. Nothing's changed. Still the same star crossed, lovelorn Virgo I've always been, and still, nobody seems to notice a thing. It's of my own making, this prison of doubt, and I've misplaced the keys, so what do I do now?

For now, I wait. I wait to either stop believing all together, or wait until my beliefs in myself are so full I can't deny them anymore. For now, I just wait.

A Few Things I Learned: From Django Unchained*

*And the controversy prior to.

1) Spike Lee came out to say that "Django Unchained" was disrespectful to his ancestors and that he would not be seeing it. I am not one to begrudge someone for their opinion or convictions, however I do consider the sources from which those opinions come and act accordingly. I'll be honest and say I've never seen a Spike Lee film that I've liked or would care to see again. None of his films from the past decade have been critically or commercially acclaimed by anyone in my circle or out of it. And "Django" is set to be a hit right out the gate. What did I learn? Sour grapes make good whine.

2) Katt Williams, in his recent influx of infinite knowledge, has said that he was offered a script for "Django" and turned it down because "any n*gga who would take that role deserves to die." ...Who here who has seen the movie can see Katt in any part of that film, much less the lead? Don't worry, I'll wait. What did I learn? Sometimes, unhit dogs will holler too.

3) Say what you want about Quentin Tarantino, he makes beautiful movies. Blood spatter in comic, gregorious and over the top. The music is a mix of classic Americana, rap, hip-hop, and musica de la banda. The actors are all at the top of their game scene stealers in scenes with one another. There's something to be said about a director who keeps up the same fervor and passion and belief in his craft to risk failure with his ideas every time; that something to be said is "that dude makes awesome stuff."

4) Quentin Tarantino uses the word "nigger," which seems to be a big deal to people. Those people say it belittles their heritage, or it (and the movie itself) makes a mockery out of slavery. To that I counter that women are still being called bitches in popular rap songs on the Billboard 100. I counter that I hear the word "nigger" more often in things made by my people than anyone else. If anybody is making a mockery out of slavery and belittling the history of our ancestory it is us, and our willingness to call anything and everything out as racist whether it is or isn't. What I learned from that is, in this post racial society, it's still only okay if "we" do it, but not "them."

5) The word "nigger" was a character in this movie. Just like Django, and Dr. Shultz the word had a story of it's own before we heard it and then became something else with every utterance of it after. Sometimes it was malicious, sometimes it was gleeful, and sometimes it was just a noun after an adjective of an (at the time) unheard of and unseen sight. The blood in this movie was an action. With every splatter and gurgle new life was on the screen, drenching walls and ground in a thin, shiny red layer of awesomeness and mirth. What I learned, last and most important, is that filmaking, great filmmaking, is not dead: when we let art thrive and expression grow, we end up with beautiful, creative and fun representations of not just our bad, but our amazing.

Cinephile out.