HoustonLanaVegas

It's almost midnight. I've been asleep all day so I am awake. I have energy for once. I want to go dancing. When I was in my 20s, I used to go dancing. I also want someone to come scoop me so we can go drive around downtown. We used to call this parking lot pimping. Once, Tasia and I aimlessly drove around downtown in her Volkswagen Beetle with the sunroof down. She turned on "HoustonLanaVegas" by Drake. I looked up at the stars with my arms up. I was so optimistic about life. I couldn't wait to see what I was going to become, who I was going to be. I want to dance. I want to drive around downtown while listening to Drake. I have no dance partner. Tasia is now married with two kids. In the other lifetime, I hope old Holly is dancing or cruising. How dope would that be? 

The Big Picture

The other day, I found some pics of me from high school and a pic of me at the 8th grade dance. I was cute but didn't know it. As excited as I was to share these pics, I doubled down on the promise I made myself years ago: I'm not going to be that old chick that keeps pics at the ready of herself when she was young. Have you seen people's faces when they are cornered by women like this? It's like they want to say, Sure, you were cute then, but look at you now sis! It's pretty embarrassing for the lady shoving her phone in everyone's face to see a 20 year old picture. I knew a picture shover once. It was very uncomfortable because she didn't look like young her at. all. 

"I'm going to show my old pics whenever the opportunity presents itself, I don't care!" Risky exclaimed. "In college, I was in great shape!"

I wasn't, but I didn't look as sad. In current pictures, I feel like I look grumpy and annoyed which makes since because I am! If I had any dignity I'd just stop smiling all together and be honest in a photo or two. We all know I won't do that. 

For now, I think the solution is to avoid pictures altogether. I used to love taking them. Now I need a three month notice just to hide in the back of a pic and frown. Although I won't do it, I see why people rather show off a pic of themselves at 17. 

Young and Fresh

I got to talk to Willa this week! She is a young woman I mentored as a volunteer when she was in middle and high schools. Now, she is a recent college graduate and I couldn't be happier for her! She has some immediate career plans and wants to go to grad school. I'm really excited for her! She told me some hilarious stories about her college experience, and for some reason, her stories made me think of my post-graduate magazine internship supervisor: LD. 

LD could be a lot and, although I think it could be unintentional, could also be cruel, like the time she told me she felt I was full of parasites because of my eating habits. That is a story for another time. Apparently, during our internship interviews, when asked about what we could bring to the magazine, many of us said we thought we could bring a "young and fresh" perspective. Later, after we were well into the internship, something triggered her having a full-on ageist meltdown where she proclaimed something along the lines of "And no one cares about you all being young and fresh! No one's trying to go back there!" Admittedly, I thought I was dealing with a perimenopausal boss who had an ax to grind with young people. However, after talking to Willa, I can honestly say that I don't want to be young and fresh either. 

Willa is amazing, and I am excited for the beautiful things coming her young and fresh way. I do miss the optimism I had during this time. However, I don't miss the insecurities. I am also now fully aware of the hard times that were torpedoing my way while I danced at rooftop parties. Young and Fresh be damned, I am happy to not be there again, even if I'm still healing from some of my young and fresh disappointments. 

When talking to Willa, I made sure I was encouraging. Unlike LD, it was not my goal to make her feel dumb for being young, although my personal experiences tell me that some of her plans needed a bit of polishing. And that's fine, she's got her whole life in front of her. That's the beauty of being young and fresh. 

Big Rudith Energy

I talked to Rudith this evening. She told me she went to Sephora to get some makeup and asked the saleslady how old she looked. This lady said she thought she was 28 or 32. She said she was going off of Rudith's energy. This made me laugh. This same woman would have probably thought that I was 65. 

The women in my life are moisturized, thriving, and surviving, do you hear me? They are meditating, doing spin class, hiking up stuff, attending screenings and dinners. Their complexions are clear, and their smiles are bright. Outside of the fact that they have obviously taken care of themselves, I do believe that they have the energy that the salelady was talking about. They seem excited, which is a quality that I think SCREAMS youth because when you get older, you realize rather quickly that there is nothing, nothing to be excited about. Sometimes, when I see their energies breaking through my phone screen, I want to roll over and cough. 

Having great energy takes a lot of energy to maintain, and I don't have the energy needed to flip on a light switch. However, if I am going to look 28 at 41, it may be worth a try. After much consideration, I think that I can offer the energy gods a full spin in my driveway before coming back in the house. I will make more of an effort to be chipper. That will include, but is not limited to, not groaning for no reason during phone calls, not getting up and immediately falling into a slouch, and no longer screaming into my pillow for no reason. Can that be enough to be forever young? I am really trying here! Because if I can no longer be young, which is fine, I at least want to look it. 

Mammogram

I'm scheduled to get my first mammogram today. Am I scared? Well, I'm up in the wee hours of the morning blogging about it. You tell me. 

I don't want to go. I may cancel depending on high my anxiety is. I'm told it's going to really hurt. I'm beyond nervous and petrified something may be wrong. Listen, my who-ha has already put me through the ringer. I just found out I need gum surgery. I'm not losing any weight, and my grandma had dementia so when I forget something, I panic. Now I have to worry about my boobs? Being a grownup is ghetto. 

Not long ago it felt like this milestone was a way down the road, now it's at my doorstep. And having watched all those breast cancer horror movies on Lifetime growing up didn't help. Man, I thought I had worries as a kid because other kids made fun of me. I didn't know what worries were! I just want to read my Babysitter's Club books and watch Nickelodeon, not live in fear of my own breasts! 

I don't want to talk about this anymore. Wish me luck. 

Youth pt. 2

It feels like me and the women in my life turned 39, the universe was alerted, and she sent us an array of crap. The whole thing has me thinking about the meaning of youth. 

As you know, 39 brought me endometrial polyps I had to have plucked out. That was emotional and incredibly stressful for a woman whose anxiety is already so naturally high that I could shoot to the moon on it. A college friend told me that she has already had her mammogram, something that should be set for next year, because our good friend's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer at 39. 

For some of my other girlfriends, the race to have a baby has never been so real, especially for my uncoupled friends that have to weigh waiting for a man with getting a donor. Today, my 39-year-old doctor friend died in hospice care from a disease she wasn't even old enough to get screened for! 

Is the universe trying to tell me and my soon-to-be middle-aged friends to cherish life and your health because you never know what trick life is going to pull out of its hat? Okay! Message received. Now can you please keep all my girls well and alive?

It doesn't work like that. 

When I was a kid, I'd hear my grandma on the phone giving and receiving updates on sick friends and friends who had passed. The whole thing would go over my head, now it's at my feet. For lack of a better word, it's scary. 

Is this to be life from now on? Scared for my wellbeing and that of those I love? I guess this is yet another disgusting part of adulting. My grandma would tell me to pray. I think I will. 

Youth

When you are young, people will tell you, "Do it while you are young." " Enjoy it while you're young". And the people who really know what they are talking about will tell you, "You are only young once" because that is, truly, the long and short of it. But no one will tell you that you are thinking all wrong, as if your youth has an expiration date. 21 you are young. 41 you are not.

Every now and then someone you view as truly ancient will tell you that you are only as young as you feel. Okay. But you are also only as young as you are, and all of these things have to coexist in you as truth as you move and love and do what you do. I am learning what I find it hard to articulate to others: youth is not something you have but more like a shadow that moves with you. And just like a man that don't want you no more, she will begin to spiritually withdraw until the coast is clear to jump ship completely. And one day you wake up honey and you are you, minus that special something that excused you, that ran your operations system, that set your goal calendar. You are now a new you that you may or may not welcome, and no one, not even women, prepares women for this. 

One day, you are expected to just take out your First Aid kit and begin to treat the wounds youth left behind and begin to transition to the mature you, the senior you, that respects money, takes vitamins, and gives a sh%t! And don't be that old person who is haunted by youth traumas like financial stuff and love ailments. Life has time for you like it has time for itself, and you go from a work in progress to a relic that hurts people's eyes. No one wants to see you until there is something to see. And to think, just 20 years ago, you were dancing on a table someplace. You will remember these times until you die with pristine precision, which is both beautiful and cruel. What we are talking about here is the equivalent of catching a firefly in your hands. The bulb is flickering. The end. 

The Waiting Game

My period was three weeks late. I know, T.M.I. 

And, like any woman who has had a period come late, I was majorly freaked out and panicked. Believe me when I tell you that I was mere moments away from going outside and running into traffic! In hindsight, I see that this was all part of my ever-getting-increasingly-horrible PMS, but what are you going to do?

I called any friend that would answer the phone to ask them to pray that my period would hurry up and come because not getting it on time makes me incredibly anxious and scared. And they all pretty much gave me the same response: "You aren't pregnant, so why do you care?" Um, what?! I have been getting periods every month since I was 11-years-old. Forgive me if it not coming in a month rubs me as curious on the low end and horrific on the high end. But you won't believe what I discovered in talking to my friends. I have some homies that have gone two and three months without having a period before and they were not pregnant. Is that not crazy?!

Mere hours before my period actually came, I was feeling pretty down and hopeless. "Maybe I am going into menopause," I said with a deep sigh as I talked to P on the phone. 

"It's not menopause," he said, assuredly, "but you may be on  your way there. I mean, you are almost 40."

He was not with me for me to punch him in the face, so I just screamed silently as he changed the subject about something guyish that I didn't care about. As he rambled on and on I thought about what he had said. What if he was right? He is a nurse after all. What if I was sliding on the banana peel towards middle age? I mean, is that possible? I can remember so clearly being in college and goofing off with my friends. And what about babies? True enough, I do not want kids. But for some reason it dawned on me that I did want to be married while I was still young enough to have them. I guess so that people could see that I was childless not because I am old, but by choice. Is that stupid of what?

After I got off the phone I cried and cried, mourning my lost period and my youth. Sooner than later, I imagined myself in a cold gynecologist's office, going over hormone replacement therapy and how to address vagina dryness. I though of my grandmother, who had gotten a hysterectomy. She was the picture of femininity; however, every few weeks, she would ask me to help her pluck her chin hairs. Was I going to get chin hairs? I cried myself to sleep, only to wake up an hour later to go to the bathroom and discover that Aunt Flo had arrived, unapologetically late. I sighed a sigh of relief. I was young for another month. 

The Universal Aunty

What is youth?
This is a question I have been going over again and again in my head for the past couple of months, ever since I allowed myself to be aware of the fact that, in December, I will be turning 35. And after much deliberation, I have decided that youth is being able to live as carefree as possible without the fear that any little decision can result in a disaster that you can not rebound from.
When I was in my 20s, I lived in a never-ending, 24-hour cycle of consistent fear. What if I lost my job? What if I lost my apartment? What if I was unable to pay my bills? What if I lost the small amount of clout that I'd built for myself? Guess what? All of the above happened. And since I felt like I was 105 at 25, I slipped into a black hole that has been very hard to climb out of. I didn't understand what it meant to have youth on my side! When you are young, you can lose everything and make enormous mistakes. Then, after you've cried and sent out a series of emotional Tweets, you can dry your eyes and use that youthful energy to start all over. And what I know now is that you will do that over and over again until you end up someplace that sticks and that is called life. I didn't understand this as a young woman so now, as a sorta-young woman, I am a few steps behind the game. But it is all good. It has been put on my heart to warn those beautiful melanated beauties behind me of this part of the game that no one shared with me. I have Christened myself The Universal Aunty.
Yesterday, I went to brunch with Haynes and we were seated next to two adorable little sisters. They informed us that they were 25. I told them to drink more water because 30s acne is real. I told them to go on birth control, quit their job if they hate it, and travel. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE YOUNG! They should be building experiences, not chaining themselves down to a way a life that can be snatched away like I did. Know this while you are busy knowin' stuff: life has its own plans for you.
Recently, one of my rideshare drivers told me she was 23 with no kids. I told her that after she dropped me off at my destination, she needed to get on the freeway and drive to Miami. I told her not to worry about money, she could sleep in the car. She said that that sounded nice, but I could tell that she was not going to do it. There is something about liking access to your phone and good credit that will forever keep some of us in chains.
Five years and two months from 40, I am just now understanding this, and I intend to use this last bit of my sorta-youth to learn, live, and shine like it is 2009...minus my micro braids and crush on Nelly.

Lady Lumps pt 1

The other day I woke up with a pain in my left boob, the problem boob.
I got up and went to the bathroom to investigate the situation to find that I had some type of lump above my areola.
I was not surprised. My left breast has given me nothing but problems since I was 13-years-old. Unusual sensitivity in my breast caused me to have to go to the doctor with my mom when I was in the 8th grade, only to find that I had a bacterial infection. I had to take pills, and since then, my left boob has been saggier and considerably more pancakey than my right one.
Now I know some of you all are reading this and holding your breath. I know what you are thinking: The Big BC. But I was not thinking that at the time. I was thinking, Great, more s&*t that I have to deal with. Keep in mind, I was also not completely awake. I rolled my eyes at my boob and went back to sleep.
Now, when I woke up for real, cancer was most definitely on my mind. I went back to the mirror to study the situation, rubbing the lump and to me, it didn't feel like cancer. I, of course, am going off of a breast cancer display that I felt on in college during some type of AKA sorority breast cancer workshop. A breast cancer survivor had a display of a set of breasts and told me to press down on both with two fingers and tell her when I felt something. It took a while before I felt something small and sharp deep in the display breast.
"That's the lump," she said with a stern, straight face. I catalogued that in my mind for a moment such as the one I didn't know I would be having 14 years later and went back to my dorm with my friends to get ready for a party.
My mind was racing a mile a minute. This bump on my breast hurt! I remembered a doctor in a Lifetime movie telling a patient in the movie that breast cancer didn't hurt. I exhaled a sigh of relief.
But then I panicked! That was a made-for-TV movie, not real life!
Then I remembered, when I went to Planned Parenthood for a pelvic exam, I was given a breast exam. The nurse said I had healthy breast tissue. Again, relief.
Then I panicked! That was six years ago!
But wait, I thought, I am only 34. Relief.
Then came the panic. I read an article not too long ago about how women younger than 40 and dudes are getting increased breast cancer diagnoses.
I decided to do what I do best: ignore the problem. However, that went out the window an hour later when the bump on my boop started leaking.

Taco Mac Talk

Yesterday I took the train north to hang with my homies Dev and Latasia. I had not seen Dev in so long. We went to Taco Mac and I got the appetizer nachos that were HUGE, but forgot to ask for no jalapenos. I feel like they had to have put a hundred on there. I spent most of my meal pealing them out of the cheese.
It was a nice, light, carefree day with carefree convo which reminded me I am young, a well-needed reminder. We talk abo t young woman stuff like magazines and boys. Good times. There is talk of plans for a slumber party in the works. I am always down for a sleepover!