Worth The Weight

When I was but a young fatty in middle and high school, music videos on BET and MTV were everything to me. This was back when the show Rap City stayed on for like five hours, and when Carson Daly was the man. Like many of the horny young boys I went to school with, my favorite part of the music videos was the women. If only I could be as sexy as the women in the DMX feat. Sisqo video for "What You Really Want"; if only I looked like the three Kims, Latoya and Tina. I can't think about how much time I wasted fantasizing about getting so small that I could show up at school in a jean FUBU short set. This I think about as I choke down the yogurt and tuna in my meal-prepped breakfast and lunch. 

I love you so I can't lie to you: meal-prepping has sucked butt cheeks. By my third week of doing it, I had stopped eating breakfast and lunch altogether. That's right, I got to a point where I would rather starve than eat the carrots and salad that I had prepared for myself. Eating these joyless meals was actually making me emotional and depressed. I mean, how many blueberries can one person eat?!

Last Saturday when I went to volunteer, I overhead the 20-something volunteers talking about what they were doing to manage their weight. And I say manage because if either one of these three girls lost so much as a pound, they would die. I interrupted the conversation when I heard one of them talking about putting some type of thick weightloss powder into their water. I just had to know how they are able to stay so small. They talked about not eating until they were full, not snacking, drinking meal replacements, exercise, all of which sound horrible to me. They talked about being hungry but deciding to eat what was best while still trying not to allow dieting to ruin their lives. 

Looking at these three beautiful young women, I realized that they had to be keeping something from me. How could they be content drinking Slim Fast shakes while everyone else had pancakes? Later in the week, it came to me: the one thing that keeps them small, more than the fad diets and cleanses, is the fear of getting fat! But I am already fat, so where does that leave me? I guess the fear of dying would be a motivator if I didn't already feel dead eating this nasty food. 

Somewhere along the line, they also got comfortable with being hungry and even not eating for long periods of time. This is something that happens young, for I remember watching those Lifetime movies about White girls with eating disorders and vowing to starve. I was typically binge-eating cookies before the next movie came on. 

I think I would be okay with dieting if anyone had been honest with me about how sad it would make me. Since I can't swallow my emotions with food, all I do is sit around and mope, thinking about hurtful things that have happened to me that Cheetos helped me to forget. So, I'm laying here feeling everything, wishing I had a piece of cake. IT'S A PARTY! 

Unlike the other diets I have tried, I am going to try to stick with this one. My doctor says that my goal should be losing enough weight to lower my blood pressure and cholesterol. My goals is to lose enough weight to bone whatever single/divorced African Alpha is available at my college homecoming. Whichever comes first I guess. 

Full disclosure: I had a piece of fried chicken for breakfast this morning because I didn't do my prepping yesterday. Rookie mistake. I'm really trying guys. 

Love and Middle Age 2: The Story of 😶

Just a week or so ago I had another conversation with TAFKAS, and yet again, he had a story for me. I tell you, TAFKAS is the grio of our generation! I take so much from his tales of love, loss, and distress. This go 'round, he told me the story of 😶.

I remember 😶 fondly from college. In a room full of young adult men who couldn't stop saying stupid ish, he said nothing. I mean, the boy was silent, nearly mute. As someone who over-talks, I appreciated this about him. Whenever I saw him, I'd say, "Hey 😶!", and he'd nod politely. Yet, according to TAFKAS, this was just the way he was around folks he didn't know. Around those who loved him, he was an anxiety-rising, sarcastic drunk, suffering from, you guessed it, the heartache and disappointment of love not actualized. 

Can I just say that I had no idea that men were out here brokenhearted like this! But I don't know why I am surprised. The older I get the more that I realize that we are all broken, being kept together with the strength of weak, wet, off-brand Bandaids just so we can go outside without falling to pieces. 

Anyway, back to😶 . The story of 😶 and Ife would have been a beautiful one if it would have  ever started. The two met at a summer program sponsored by our college for high school students. So by the time I arrived on the campus, they'd already been friends for two years. And I get why a guy would like Ife. She was smart but chill. She was cute but normal; very sweet and easy going. Yet for some reason unknown to anyone, he never tried to get with Ife. Over the years, this apparently has manifested into bitterness that is still present today. I mean, she is married with a family now. And here's another kicker: HE'S MARRIED TOO! He has this in common with 🍦, walking down the aisle when you are in love with someone else. I guess this is a thing, further proving my theory that by 40, you have already met the love of your life. 

What touched me about 😶's story is that, although I was not close to Ife, is that was familiar with a boy that she dated, XX. This guy was a piece of work. He was what the elders would have called "manish". He was in one of my study groups. I asked him why he was so quiet in the group once and he said he didn't know, then I turned his computer around to see that he was looking at pics of a half-naked booty model. And although he was not a bad guy, he had some annoying qualities. For one, he only wore ankle pants. I mean, come on! Can you image how 😶 must have felt, watching the woman of his dreams date a dude that wore capris and watched soft porn?! It was hard for me to watch! But again, I can connect. Every man I have ever loved ended up committing to women not as cool as me. 

Again, TAFKAS has painted a picture for me about the importance of shooting your shot. If only I would have understoond this when I had shots to shoot. 

P.S. - Where😶 now? According to Instagram, he is just out in the world working and living and being present in his family. I hope that this depiction is accurate. No good comes from being hung up on someone. Ask me...and 🍦...an everybody else.. 

Adulting- No Thanks

I am not even 40 yet, and I am almost out of the juice it takes to effectively be an adult. It's just too much. 

Anything that can be considered a part of "taking care of business" or "being grown" I simply can't tolerate. I don't have the patience or the energy or that whatever. I just want to take a nap. 

To get things done, I try to space out my heavy tasks throughout the week. Today, I had to have a conversation with my graduate advisor. I wanted to scream the whole time. Making a doctor's appointment takes so much out of me that I usually have to hide under a mountain of blankets afterward. Every time I have to do anything concerning my checking account or paying a bill, I experience level trillion trauma. And don't let me have to call the IRS for any reason. After those calls, I usually have to go on a 5-day mental hiatus. Could you imagine if I had kids?? I'd probably be blowing bubbles right now in the corner of a padded room. 

I need a break, even though I take 600 breaks a day. I need to rest, even though I am quite sure that the amount of hours I sleep is considered some lightweight human hibernation. How does everyone else have all this energy? I have friends that run businesses and raise families and travel the world! Friends that juggle lovers and keep up lies and live in a fantasy. Friends who work quadruple shifts at hospitals. Creators. Engineers. Disrupters. Imaginators. Spouses. Caregivers. HOW?

So that I don't feel too bad about myself, I like to imagine that once a week, my friends do photoshoots of themselves in different outfits doing different things so that they can post them at different times on social media to distract from the fact that they too are at home, screaming into a pillow. 

Sidebar: Can you believe that there are people in the world that have pets that they clean, feed, and take on walks all while they hold down a job, maintain relationships, and just live?! It's shocking! 

Sidebar Sidebar: I saw a video of a college friend of mine at a birthday party on IG. She looked super cute and was dancing with the energy of a 10-year-old. Watching the video exhausted me to the point that I fell asleep unintentionally with the phone in my hand. Her vibes exerted so much energy from me that my body shutdown! 

Okay. That's enough whining for today. Time to sit still in the dark. 

Holls and The Locked Box

The other night I woke up from a night of mixed, weird dreams, sat up straight and asked out loud, "What if my box is locked?!" I mean can that happen? I'm not sure, but what if it can and it has happened to me? What if my vag is as depressed as I am and has just shut down? Given up? This is on my mind, of course, because of the tragedy that was my last gyno visit. 

What a mess. 

If you read my blog even remotely regularly you know what a nightmare my paps are, and this last one was every bit the disaster that I thought it was going to be. I told myself a whole bunch of fluffy, positive stuff like the hippy Yoga ladies do on Youtube for a good outcome but sadly, that didn't help. I won't bore you with the ghastly details. Let's just say that me and my gyno were both visibly shaken by the horror of it all. It was so bad that the exam didn't even happen. Afterward, I sat on the examining table crying as a really compassionate nurse rubbed my back. Once I composed myself and left, I vowed never to try to get an exam again.

"You can't do that!" Bells yelled into the phone. "Papsmears are preventative care!"

Sigh. Bells is all about her preventative care. In undergrad, it was as simple as eating Special K bars for breakfast instead of my traditional stack of pancakes. Now she gets every recommended age and gender appropriate test/screening there is. The woman is going to live to be 206! 

"It hurt!" I yelled, and boy, did it. One crank of that tongy thing in my junk took my breath away. 

"Well it's uncomfortable for sure," she agreed. "But you have to get them done."

I called Savannah in a panic about the whole thing and she met my anxiety with her usual cool, Cali-carefree demenor. 

"Savannah, I am the only woman I have ever heard of that needed emotional support from a nurse after a routine pap!" I cried into the phone. 

"Oh, that's just because you are a little sensitive," she said. 

SENSITIVE?!

"You need to get some toys," Mama Savannah, Savannah's mom, echoed from the passagenger seat. I was on speaker phone. "Or some D."

D?! Everyone is a comedian. 

And then the other night it all came to me after my weird dreams. My vag has locked up, taking with it any hope (all be it small) that I had of ever having a relationship or a normal, grown-up lady life. And I can't say that I am mad at her. I think I would shut down too if I was as un-social as she is. It's time to just stop caring and embrace the hand-me-down thrifted turtle necks and easy-fit gender neutral blue jeans. It's a wrap! 

"Shut up, your junk didn't lock up," one of my medical buddies said in a very annoyed tone. "That's like me saying that my ear has closed up or my eye or something."

Is it? It doesn't sound the same. 

I can't lie, this whole situation makes me a little sad. Oh the whoas of being the only woman alive with a passive peach. 

Picture Imperfect

So a friend of mine asked if it was cool if she tried to hook me up with her husband's friend. Apparently, she got the idea that this may be a good idea after hearing me complain about my loneliness during my Zoom birthday party. I have to say that I am shocked. None of my friends have ever tried to hook me up with anyone ever not ever not once. I lie. My freshman year of college, Big Homie Sans tried to hook me up with this dude named Carl. She figured that it was a match made in purgatory because we were both fat. He was...interesting. Imagine Egor from Winnie The Pooh with an afro. Boy, this was one unhappy guy. Lucky for me, I am into unhappy people. He wasn't into me though. After innocently calling him on New Year's of 2004 to wish him a happy holiday, he very aggressively rejected me like a poorly transplanted kidney. So again I was shocked when my friend circled back and asked if it was okay to give dude my social media handles. WHAT? Of course! I then went to my Instagram just because. Yikes. 

There is nothing about my social media that displays me as hot. There is nothing about my social media that displays me as sexy. There is nothing about my social media that displays me as interesting, fun, cute, bangable, or remotely smashable at all! The only thing my IG makes clear is that I exist. That. Is. It. I scrolled through three years of pics and I was so disappointed. There was not one picture that would make me want to get to know me if I was a man. A man or even a woman looking for a platonic bestie! I don't have not one pic of me posted on the hood of a luxury vehicle. There are no pics of me smiling seductively at my fancily plated dinner. No pic of me from the back, standing with my hands outstretched on top of a mountain. It's depressing!

"You don't want a guy who wants you for your pics. You want a man that wants to get to know you," said Tiesha. What a good friend. She had time for my bellyaching even as she recovered from COVID. But she was mistaken and had no room to talk. All of her pictures, even the most casual ones, make it clear that she has a showstopping rack and good skin. 

"I am going to call Von and see if I can get booked for one of his sexy, boudoir photoshoots," I grumped into the phone. I was half kidding. Even if I had the $3 Trillion bucks to book the shoot, I'm not that excited about a guy I went to college with seeing me hogtied in a thong. Tiesha let out a sigh/moan/cough. I don't think she was crazy about the idea either. 

When I was too young to understand what she was talking about, an older woman in my grandma's retirement home told me in a hushed voice that men are visual creatures. I guess she thought to tell me this after watching me rub melted chocolate across my t-shirt and the lap of my jeans. I hope that this is not true, for I haven't taken a flattering pic in years! How does Megan the Stallion do it? Rubi Rose? Oprah? On top of this, my desire to get dressed up and be presentable dies with every passing day! But now that I am aware that folks are out here asking for socials...God, why do I even still care? If a picture is worth a thousand words, a few of mine are over it and exhausted with the process.