Trauma Drama

I honestly didn't think it was possible for me to become more reflective and emotional than I already am, but apparently I can. I find that when I think about my childhood or even my young adult years, I end up in tears. I just heard a song that was popular when I was in like the 5th grade, and started weeping. 

Millennials like to throw the word "trauma" at everything. Something traumatic must have happened when I was a kid that I haven't addressed. Now, I get triggered and have these big reactions. I mean, maybe, but I don't think so. I didn't have a lot growing up but I grew up in an area where no one did. I got a bike in elementary school. I was a Girl Scout. I spent a lot of time with my beloved grandma. As far a childhoods go, there have definitely been worse. 

If I had to guess, I think the bigger issue is the passage of time. My being a tween is so vivid in my mind, yet, in present time, I find myself looking down the barrel of being elderly and admittedly, I'm unprepared and scared. I will never be younger than I am this second, and I'm already 300-years-old! I believe that living in a fashion where you marinate on regrets is a recipe for disaster; a recipe for failure. But boy, do I have some. Again tears. 

Apparently, looking back at the past causes me some sort of something, but it's also difficult to be present, especially when things aren't going my way. A part of me wants to wade in a time where old opportunities are still available, but that's impossible. 

I guess the solution is to just to keep living; to keep pushing until I find a space I'm at least sort of cozy in. Until then, que the tears. 

Love and Middle Age- The Story of 🍦

Recently, I got to figuratively sit at the feet of one of my favorite grios, TAFKAS. He may be the only person that I went to college with that has more stories than me, and you know how I love a good story! The best thing about his stories is that he hung out with a completely different group of people, so I often get an entertaining tale with an unintentional side of tea. In this particular conversation, he told me the story of 🍦, a tragedy concerning long-lost love.

It's funny that he mentioned 🍦 because he had come up in a conversation with LadyChatsAlot about a month ago! I suggested that they go out together since they are single and living in the same place. Honestly, that is the only connection you need when mixin' and minglin' in the HBCU graduate world. She's single. He's divorced. Sounds like a winner! 

"Nah, 🍦only likes ghetto women," she said. Then she told me a whole lot of other things about🍦that are none of my business but that I sucked up like a daiquiri! These things were on my mind when TAFKAS went into his story about 🍦 but from a different perspective. 

TAFKAS started by painting a picture of 🍦and his relationship with a girl named Chelle freshman year. I did not know her well. All I knew is that she had one of the most perfect butts I'd ever seen! I remember them being together, and I have also heard a hundred different variations of stories concerning why they ended. These things are not important. What is important is that 🍦still pines for this woman 20 years later. 

"He works out so that Chelle can see how strong he is," TAFKAS said. "He has his job so that Chelle can see what a success he is. Everything he does is so that Chelle can see what she missed out on." Something about that statement sat on my chest and was pulling at my heartstrings that night as I scrolled through 🍦's social media feed. Every pic of him out with friends or exercising now seemed to have a double meaning. My old friend DZ had once told me that she never got over any of the men she had loved, and that they all had a place in her heart. I felt the same way, but I had no idea that men dealt with these same types of heartaches. Especially not men that I hear are as...social as 🍦 is. 

Then this morning as I did my early morning meditation ( laying in my room in the midnight hour, grunting into the darkness), a thought flashed across my mind that caused me to sit up in horror! 🍦hasn't been with Chelle since he was 18 or 19 years old, and I have heard experts say that at our age, if you are single, you probably know or have already met the person you are supposed to be with. What if many of us blew it with our soulmates when we were too young to even know what was going on- when the clock had started without our permission? When we were too immature to invest or divest in our relationships? That would mean that many of us missed out on love before we were even aware that there was love to be missed! Now many of us are waiting on something that has already come and gone, or we are in something that should be with someone else. This is so sad and scary for me! What if our cosmic future does really rely on our early decisions from a time when we sucked at making decisions? If this true, we are all on a hamster wheel and for what? Kicks and giggles?

I pray that this is not true. If it is, my true love is a deceased gay man that was everything to me in my teens. If this is true for 🍦, his true love was not even his ex-wife, but a girl he fell for back when many of us thought that Nelly, Nelly, was the greatest rapper alive! Man, is age sobering or what?! And that is real talk, no country grammar. 

Money Talks

"I made bipityblahdumpity this year in sales," Mary said. She was sitting on a bar stool, sipping on a cocktail that matched her lipstick, wearing a pair of glasses from her own collection. She, me, and Carolita were reunited for our quarterly supper club outings which took a hiatus during COVID. We were at one of those Atlanta dives where the waitresses have fat asses and visible lace fronts. The music being played was suitable for a middle-tier strip joint or, in this case, waiting over two hours for overcooked, oily fried green tomatoes. "Twipitiydobitty sustainable business model," she went on to say. "...investments with a poopity return over a 12-month minimum."

I could feel my eyes glazing over, so I looked to Carolita for clarification, only to become even more lost. 

"Me and my sister do a yaddayadda."

"What's that?" Mary asked. 

"That's where you twinkletwinkle on a star for a diddybop," she explained. 

I just stood there, my eyes bouncing between the two of them. What were they talking about?! And why didn't I know what they were talking about? And how did they have money to do all this stuff? Oh right, they have real jobs, I thought to myself. That and some deep well of knowledge around money that I just do not have. I am literally two years away from 40 and know as much about investing as a newborn! I guess I should start hoarding the canned goods now for darker days. 

I read somewhere once that how you were raised has a lot to do with your attitude toward money. Carolita was raised in a solid two-parent home. Granted I don't know all the details, but I don't think that she ever had to sell water on the side of the expressway to make ends meet. Mary is the daughter of hardworking Nigerians. My grandmother was literally scared to spend money while I had witnessed my mom write checks for food at the Winn-Dixie with her fingers crossed. I guess I fall someplace in between the two of them. 

"If I had a thousand dollars to invest, where would you advise me to put it?" I asked Mary. This was a serious question. 

"That's a hard question," she said, sipping on one of those really skinny cocktail straws. I am assuming that this is a hard question because a thousand bucks is the equivalent of five cents in the investment game. 

This conversation lingered on my mind, even after the dinner. I want to be a lady boss too! How can I be down? 

"Well, I am not balling like them," Tasha assured me when I told her about what we had talked about. For a split second I felt relieved. Maybe I could have a roommate who I knew in the low-income nursing facility. But then she went on to talk about how her grandparents were leaving her property when they die and how her mom hand been saving and investing for her since the womb! 

I got off the phone and just stared at the wall in silence. How did I allow this to happen to me?! I can't be the little old lady who lived in her shoes because I only have one good pair! I am going to be the angry old lady who fashioned a tent out of her plus-size maxi dresses to squat under a bridge. I should have been more motivated! I saw how not having money stressed out my mother. And it's not like I ever deluded myself into believing that some man was going to come a long and support me. Men have always picked over me like rotten fruit and the ones that didn't wanted money from me! Now I am skidding towards middle age without a pot to piss in! As you know I am a writer; I love a good story. But not even I want to know how the story ends for the almost 40-year-old that didn't prepare appropriately for life. 

I can't whine about this anymore. My anxiety is rising. Plus, time is money. 

Life Is A Scratched Cell Phone Screen

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that I have always been a little sensitive to time, especially in regards to aging and missed opportunities. Time has been showing up as a theme for me over the past few weeks. Young women that I mentored when they were in middle school just graduated college in May. My little brother just turned 30, and while I was twiddling my thumbs on whether or not to go to grad school, many of my friends enrolled and are now finishing up Ph.D. programs. And at 36, I have now gotten to a place where people who are WAY older than me feel comfortable reminding me that I am almost 40. It's an awkward place to be- kinda young and sorta old at the same time. But I assumed that no one else my age cared about these things, especially not my college friends. When I go on Instagram, they are all drinking artisanal beers in their $600,000 homes. This is why my meet-up with my old friend Tanya was curious. 

Tanya is that friend that you don't speak to for months, and when you reunite, it is like no time has passed. We knew each other at our most ratchet: as freshmen in college. There was really no one better to twerk and drink the days away with. She is a man-magnet because she is so fun and funny. She is strong and independent and often felt like a butterfly that you just couldn't catch. So you can imagine how weird it was to meet up with my butterfly after not hearing from her for a couple of years, only to find that her wings are sprained and bandaged. 

Why? Well, you guessed it- a man! She is going through a nasty breakup with her boyfriend of eight years. They lived together and now have to vacate their condo because neither of them can afford it on their own. Now she and her son have to uproot their lives and start over with the help of her family, who NEVER liked this guy. I have never met him, but I don't like him either. She told me about how she played nursey for him when he was sick, how she led the household when he lost his job, and even let some relationships die because he required so much attention, only for him to text her all through our girl date about how he didn't approve of her being out. I couldn't believe that my independent friend had hitched her wagon to someone that seemed VERY controlling and immature. She even told me that they keep their GPS on on their phones so they always know where they are when they are apart. WHAT?!

As you can imagine, she was pretty down. And not just because she has gotten to a point where she can't stand someone that she once loved, but because of the time that has been wasted. Eight years. You know, when you are in your 20s, you are taught to never look at time as a waste because you learned something during a situation. By my age, if you are smart, you have learned that that is a lie! You can learn life lessons in a relationship, on a job, or any other situation and still come out knowing and feeling that the whole thing was a huge waste! You cannot get time back. You cannot! It is the one thing we all lose repeatedly that is not coming back to us. Eight Years. She got with this guy when she was 27. Now she is almost 40. 

Before we parted ways, I took out my phone to take a picture of us and noticed that my screen was cracked. 

"Aw man!" I said. "Well, life is like a scratched cell phone screen," I joke. 

"Isn't it?" she asked, flatly. 

Touche Tanya. Yeah it is. Life looks all beautiful in HD until something comes along and scratches our view. Hopefully, our scratch isn't an 8-year all-consuming love drain that is going to be a nightmare to get over. 

The good thing is that Tanya is strong and amazing and will get over this and find love again. It's not like she has a choice. Like me, she is almost 40. She doesn't have the time to do anything else but move on. 

They Don't Dance Nomore

I talked to Robin Mercury last night!
This is big news because I don't get to talk to her too often. She lives in California and she is super busy but let me tell you, she is one of the best friends a girl can have! She knows how to do hair and she won't charge you to hook you up! She will party with you on Saturday and go to church with you on Sunday. I mean really, she is amazeballs. She is also an artist and a really good dancer, yet she told me during our convo that she is no longer drawing or dancing.
"What?!" I cried when she told me.
"I know, but I don't have time," she said, braiding some weave into her hair. We were using that Facebook chatty video thingy.
Robin's story is not unlike many of ours. Bills and obligations have made work a priority and all those eccentricities that made us cool girls have no place in our lives as women.
I can connect with this. When I was younger, I LOVED to read. I mean, I could finish the fattest book in the world in a day. I had all the series. I would thirst for literature. But now I have no time to read the way that I would like.
Is this a strictly female issue? I ask because I don't have time to read because I am working, but my brother works, a horrible overnight shift at that, and he still makes time to play his PS4, even if this means he only gets mere minutes of rest before he has to clock in again.
Is this what Aunty Maxine Waters was talking about when she said she was trying to reclaim her time? Is she making time to meditate in between debates and interviews on Capitol Hill?
Maybe I can get in a few pages of a book a night before I go to bed. Anything to refresh my inner girl.