No New Friends?

Someone wants to be my friend. 

I find myself being low-end annoyed and high -end shocked. Lord knows my actual friends have had it with me. I've been forwarded to voicemail more than a baby mama during tax refund time. I'm admittedly and comfortably negative and dark. From my understanding, being too involved with me can be too much. So someone new wanting to be my friend is also confusing. 

But she does. 

She is always checking in with me. She's very nice and seemingly kind. Yes, confusion is the word. 

I think I have this attitude about this whole thing because I don't even want to be my friend anymore. My days are a dizzying collection of deep breaths and weeping. I'm so over me that I recently Googled "How to dump yourself". To say I'm not a happy camper is an understatement. So why would anyone want to be around me? This lady seems cool. Shouldn't she be taking pictures on a boat with her homegirls in matching swimsuits?? So many of my girls have taken that boat pic in matching swimsuits! There are no swimsuits over here. Just a 32 oz Chick-fil-A lemonade and my laptop. 

Man, I used to love making friends and being social. Now the very thought makes me so exhausted I can't breathe. Stay tuned! Something tells me a friendship bracelet may be coming my way soon! 

Part 2

I turned 40 last week, so I guess I'm in the second half of my life. I'm not going to lie kids: a week in and it's not going so well. 

I hurt my knee which has me hobbling around the house like a senior citizen. Keep in mind that I moved slowly with very little grace to begin with. Now I do this kind of slide, shake, and drag move to get to the laundry room. It's about as cute as something not cute can be. 

And if I could be really personal with you I'd like to say that I REALLY need a shower. Taking one today has anxiety shooting through the top of my head. I'm trying not to imagine my knee going out, me slamming into the shower glass, and a huge shard going through my chest and killing me instantly like something out of Final Destination. 

I also need to bite the bullet and finally get glasses. I was prescribed them when I was 18, but they did not properly accentuate the hairstyle I had at the time, so I tossed them. Now I'm ten minutes from being Mrs. Magoo. 

God has blessed me with another year of life when so many people I loved have died. So I want my Part 2 to be something amazing and beautiful. I want success and wealth and to have a plan for my life that takes me someplace. And I know I can do it but right now, I'm on the struggle bus. 

Optimistic that tomorrow will be better because I have no other choice. And people say that I don't have a heart of gratitude. 

Disappointed vs. Devastated

My friend K.Dot is an awesome hot-hot lady. She is classy. She is smart. She is pretty. She is kind. With all of these great traits, it should be no surprise that it has been hard for her to find love in Atlanta. I feel like people all over America are aware of how Stephen King dating is in this city. However, she is 36, single, and ready to mingle. 

If you think that dating is rough on a woman in the world, try dating in the church. That is a whole 'nother level of stress! People want to know what has happened, or what is "wrong" when you haven't gotten hitched by a certain time. While other single women at our church may be biting their nails, K. Dot is taking a more relaxed approach. 

"Will you be upset if you never get married?" I asked. 

She thought about it before saying, "I will be disappointed, but I won't be devastated."

Something about this remark seemed so profound to me. Disappointed but not devastated. Interesting. 

Maybe this wording was so striking because in my life, when confronted with anything, I go right past disappointed and crash into devastating. This is a big deal, because when something is devastating,  getting over it feels insurmountable. When you are disappointed, you sit in that ache for a minute, then you move on. There are so many things I need to move on from. 

I don't make new year resolutions anymore. They'd never come to pass, and I'd end up pissed at myself. But if I had to have one this year, it would be to be disappointed. There is freedom in it and room for correction. Hopefully this new way of thinking will bring joy and success into my life. If not, I will be devastated. 

Big Like The Earth

I don't know what switched on in my 6 year old nephew's head, but he has finally realized I'm fat. 

"Holly, you are big like the Earth," he said, matter-of-factly as he ate MY snacks. 

Then later that week, as I sat minding my own business, trying to swallow down a low calorie salad bowl, he waltzes in my room and announces, "If you keep eating like that, you are gonna be overweight." 

"Really?" I snorted, trying to pick the last piece of unseasoned meat out of the bowl. "Tell me about it." 

He also likes to lean against me while I'm working because I, "Feel like a big pillow."

His remarks don't hurt my feelings or upset me. He is just a kid making observations. But they do annoy me. For the first time in my life I am seriously trying to do better. I could do without the commentary.  

Recently I hurt my knee and need a walker to get to the bathroom and back. It's not cute, which I'm painfully aware of. As I'm trying to get my footing using it he goes, "Hey Holly, old people use those too."

I took a deep breath then continued to struggle drag my way to the toilet. 

The truth is, I am big like the Earth. And hopefully, a year or two from now, if the aliens haven't come, my life will be a testimony to my nephew of what happens when you work hard and decide to make a change in your life. I would like my nephew to see me have energy, something I've never had. I want him to see me run, something I've always wanted to do. I want 40 years of fatness to be a distant memory for an Instagram reel. By the time he's nine, I want him to be like, "Holly, do you remember that time you were big?" And we will both laugh about that time so long ago because by then, I will be fit like a baddy. 

IUDizzy

Who would have thought that me, who's about as sexually active as dry toast, would have to go on birth control? Sadly, it's not because I decided to have some type of a Hot Girl Winter as I skid on the banana peel toward middle age. Long story short, I have a condition and getting an IUD was the best way to treat it. Sigh. As if Frank, my ever-so-loving name for my vagina, hasn't been through enough. Now I have some contraption inside of me to keep things under control. And yes, my vagina has a man's name, obviously because it has given me nothing but trouble. Not to mention the bad haircut. 

Over the years, I have heard my fair share of birth control nightmare stories. You know the greatest hits. "Birth control gave me blood clots." "Birth control made me fat." "The morning-after pill didn't work for me." "My IUD dislodged and I got pregnant anyway." "The pill gave me a beard." "I missed one Depo-Provera shot and woke up with a penis." 

When I expressed my concern about getting an IUD to my gyno team, they shut me down pretty quickly. 

"No, no, we are doing this," the main doctor said. 

"But I have done online research-" I began. 

"Every doctor on my team has an IUD. I had one when I was young enough to have children."

"What if Donald Trump makes birth control illegal and comes to get it?" I cried. My anxiety was sky high, and I had heard rumblings about how The Donald was coming for contraception since that whole abortion thing was such a slam dunk. 

"He can't," they all said in unison. But I was not convinced. 

"Listen, there are a bunch of women happy with their IUDs that are not writing Yelp reviews," one of the student doctors said. Maybe so. 

About a month later, I have to say that it is clear that there is something inside of me. It's uncomfortable sometimes. I just move pretty slowly. I don't want to piss it off. 

At night, I imagine that it pops out of place and does a soft shoe on my stomach. Then it moonwalks across my kidneys and does the cabbage patch on my liver. I wake up right before it goes to my heart to poke holes in it. 

I guess I am not that great of a patient. I don't even know how long I am supposed to keep this thing in. I am assuming it is somewhere between three months and forever. Or until it gets carried away in my sleep, doing the Wobble in my throat before I wake up and throw it up. Honestly, I am preparing for things to go either way.