No Need Necessary

Chocolate called me and asked how I was doing. I told him that honestly, I was feeling a little down for one of the same reasons I have been feeling down for years: I don't feel like my friends have time for me. I asked him how he handles it when he feels this way. He said he never does. He doesn't need anyone. 

On top of being completely self-sufficient and self-reliant, he is so excited about the amazing things happening in his field of tech that he doesn't have time to think about the homies. He's got to stay at the top of his field. He's got interviews to do and professional trainings to take. If I would focus on my job hunt, fitness, writing, and professional training, I wouldn't have time to remember I had friends. 

This idea excited me. I thought of myself moving and shaking, making moves, making money. I'd be so high on my own supply that I wouldn't need a soul ...until I slowed down to look both ways and see that no one who cared was around or cared to be around. It sounds like that would be fun until it wasn't and would end up feeling very empty. I mean, I feel empty now! 

I admire how he needs no one, but I am not built that way. I need to talk and laugh and feel heard. This sucks, because when these things aren't happening, I end up feeling pretty sad. See the circle here? However, I think my life would probably be 1000% better if I tried to be more like him, making it so my need for friends was not necessarily. 

The Price of Greatness

Coffee considers himself a great, "elite" man, and as I get to know him, I have to say that I agree. He is very good at his job and at getting things done. He is really good at identifying a problem and coming up with a "program" to address it and guarantee success. Needless to say, he is a workaholic. He doesn't take vacations and has very little free time. I suppose this is the price of being great. 

Man, when I was a kid, I used to fantasize about how great I would be. I was going to be amazing! Even now, I think about how great it would be if I were great. I think of how much more independent I would be and how much money I would have. One thing I don't want to think about is the amount of work and sacrifice that would go into it. Years ago, I saw a documentary on Kobe Bryant that he did while he was still alive. He said that at night, he would go to the local college campus and see all the kids his age hanging out and having a good time. He thought about how cool it would be not to be famous, and what a time he could be having if he had decided to go to college instead of the NBA. However, he would snap out of this thinking, saying that not being a free and fun college boy was the price he paid for greatness. Hm. 

I guess my price for greatness would be forgoing my never-ending depression and interacting in the world. So, I guess the question is: Is striving to be great a better move than just continuing to withdraw from life? I guess the answer is buried in how much I value money versus how much I love the concrete darkness of continually falling apart. Maybe I should take some more time to think about this. It would be easier to do if I had all the time in the world. Now that would be great. 

The Cappin' Captain

I went to school with some real bosses. Pharmacists. Doctors. Lawyers. Business owners. Materially, I do not have as much as many of the people that I graduated with and, admittedly, being what I consider a "have not" played into my not wanting to go to my 10-year reunion with my friend DZ five years ago; played into my insecurity and anxiety. I don't have a $500,000 home or a luxury car. What would I tell people about my life? How could I explain to people that in the 10 years that it took for them to become "rich", I was kind of lost in the world, essentially, with my degree and everything I had ever written? If anyone were to ask me what I was doing at the time professionally, a common question at homecoming, I imagined myself screaming. I imagined myself crying. I imagined myself dropping dead. But one thing that never occurred to me to do was lie.

X lies. X lies big time. X lies to the point that it is almost laughable. If X had seven twins and thirty personalities, X still could not have accomplished everything that X says that X has. And these are not little white lies. These are huge, traceable, and, at times laughable lies. It has gotten to the point that folks are starting to figure this out about X and now have to cross-reference with their circles and contacts if what X is saying is true. Or sorta true. Or complete fiction. 

X is fun. X is funny. X is a good friend to X's friends, but X is also a mystery. A real head-scratcher. For although it has been confirmed that X's resume is about as good as a penny with a hole in it, X still somehow displays the financial fruits of this invisible labor. This, in turn, has turned people who know X into professional hypothesizers. Is X the bastard child of an African prince? Did X win the lottery? Is X an art thief? A Narco? A scammer? I mean, what?! People can't wrap their minds around it! But I can. 

Being completely honest opens you up to judgment and who wants that? Not I said the cat! But lying is exhausting and troublesome. You have to be lightning fast, ready to cover up a previous lie with another one; sidestepping questions and accusations. I am not lightning fast. I am molasses slow. I'd have to come clean after one day of pulling everyone's leg. X has been at it for almost 20 years! Kinfolk always tells me that the grass is not as green as it looks with a lot of our old classmates which is great, because I've never liked grass. DZ would say it is simple as standing in your truth. If I were close enough to X, I would tell X the jig is up and to exit the fairytale into reality. Homecoming is all love, and everyone has their own BS. I'd encourage X to sit next to me on the astroturf and have some spilled tea with me. It doesn't pay to lie, and that's truth. 

10 Year Fears

I didn't go to my 10-year high school reunion. I ended up going to a high school outside of my district, gay boyfriend in toe, for a fresh start. What I got instead was a fresh hell. I won't go into too many deats. Let's just say it was horrible.

On the flip side, I had the time of my life in college. It was how I had wished that high school had been! I had fun. I was social. I had friends. People knew who I was. Yet, my 10-year reunion is later on this year, and I don't think that I will be going to that one either.

Thanks to the soul-imprisoning social network that is Facebook, you no longer need a reunion to keep up with your compadres. A large amount of my time in the morning is dedicated to going through my Facebook timeline and liking advance degree announcements, manicured hand engagement pics, wedding albums, and job promotion brags. And who can forget the exotic vacation imagery? I feel in my heart that attending my reunion will just make me even more envious and depressed. I would like to see my friends, but I feel like they all have gotten more beautiful with age. Meanwhile, I have gotten fatter when I was already fat to begin with!

I can't believe that it has already been ten years. Where has the time gone?! I have to look at my resume to remember, which is another post entirely. For now, these are my feelings on that: 😒.

I want to go to my reunion, but only if I'm gorgeous and making Arab money. That may sound stupid, but I feel close enough to you to tell you how I feel. We'll see how far I have progressed for my 20-year reunion.

The Sad Truth

A few nights ago I spoke to my friend Jamaica and she was all mixed up about this marriage thing. It seems that once you turn 24, the bitter marital world tries to push you over the broom, whether or not there is an eligible bachelor within miles of you or not.
Anyway, she was annoyed. Like me, she is a firm believer in love; however, she has become an adult, without her permission, and a combo of the outside pressures, a lack of fellas, and tightly knit career plan time crunch has her wondering if love is needed and/ or worth waiting on when corporate America is telling you that you have two years tops to make it and your gynecologist is telling you that you have ten years before the fruits of your womb are down syndrome candidates. Figure in time for a good old-fashioned courtship. Stressful right?
Then, just a few days ago, I talked to my guy pal P and he believes that men should be allowed to marry one than one woman. It's not sexual, he claims, because women outnumber men by huge numbers. The men would be doing us a favor see, giving as much of us women a taste of marriage as possible. Me being a feminist, this did not sit well with me. But P broke it down like this: I could happily let my husband have more than one baby mama or sit and pretend not to see him having sex with desperate women at clubs. He even went as far as calling me selfish for not being willing to share my mate.
The point of these two tales? How are we as people in our 20s supposed to be prepping to tie the knot when we are not even on the same page? Listening to my stressed out male and female friends I find that whether you are in the "no time to wait" school or the "bundle of wives" school or somewhere in between, I am noticing less and less talk about love; more and more about business and convenience. Is this what marriage has become, or was it always this way and we were just too busy watching Disney movies to notice? Either way, I think I will wait for the real thing...unless my gynecologist advices otherwise.