I Can Blow Big Bubbles

"They Gonna Talk" by Beres Hammond


...some things were meant to be...

MyLove

I didn't fall in love.  They say not to use the term "falling" in reference in love.  Love is supposed to be deliberate.  Not that you decide "I am going to love this person" but that when you feel the unmistakeable, you admit and accept it.

Love is my favorite thing to do.  I used to fall in love at least twice a year, haphazardly, insincerely, and with juvenile understanding.

And then I met this man, just after one of my lovely haphazard accidents.  He was supposed to be just a rebound, just something to do in the meantime as I recovered.

One fine day, I realized that something was happening.  I didn't process with my friends about it.  I denied and played it cool.  Love kept knocking at my door.  This b*tch is relentless, I thought to myself.  I gave in and I answered the door.  I let Love sit down and we talked it out.  She said Girl, you're grown now.  You don't fall into me anymore.  I realized I wasn't going to fall in love.  I had the option to love him.

So I chose to love him and love him I do.

This is the first time in my life that I have had the option embrace Love and not fall, like a dummy, into it.

OurLove

And this man I love loves me back.  We fight in the cutest way, get really mad but can't stay mad.  Reconcile and concede that we're both wrong.  He's working on being a better man for himself and for me.  I'm working on being a better woman for myself and for him.  We realize every moment won't be perfect or even good but joy is always available and prayer is the way to it.

And we're working on being a better team for OurLove.

I forgot to tell you, but about a month ago, we found out that we're pregnant.  It was scary news, especially for me, because I wasn't planning on having a baby and I was insecure about whether he was planning anything with me.

But he's been very supportive and so wonderful to me.  I fee like I love him anew everyday.  His family has been so kind and supoortive.  And I looooove his family. 

And I'm so excited about the family we are going to be, especially about the father he's going to be.  He amazes me everyday.  Yesterday I had so many moments where I heard my father come out of him...and you know I loooooooove my father.

I love the love between a Black king and his seed and I can't wait to see them together.

Confirmation:  I was looking for a song to start this blog entry with.  I hit up Pandora and picked the Beres Hammond station...and of course that song spilled out of the speakers...because God knows I love my man who taught me that love conquers all.

Training Pandora

"Good Love is on the Way" by John Mayer

...good love is on the way / I heard them say...

It's been a lousy day, mostly due to the gray skies outside and the black thunderstorm inside.  I've been minimally productive, crying, and irritable my whole day.

But I feels better.  Music Therapy.  I turned my Pandora on and set it to my Edwin McCain station...my good White music I picked up when I was younger and finessed in my tenure at an all White college preparatory school...the good old days.

Then I exceeded my skips and switched to my John Mayer station.  And he came out kicking with "good love is on the way."  I just have to remember that good love is on the way.

I'm frustrated with the continued struggle in creating a healthy and functional relationship with my mother.  I can get passed being rejected.  I can get passed being left alone or abandoned, even if I never understand why, the love I have for her will let me get passed it.

But she puts up this wall.  She treats me like a sleezy business partner or a disgruntled ex.  She is not my mother and I am not her daughter.  I want a way to breakthrough to her.  I want a breakthrough.  Get her to stop putting on that stupid face of dominance and stoicism... and show me she has feelings.

Alas, I am being impatient.  I have spent the last six years constructing a wall similar to the one she has had up my whole life.  I keep running into my own wall and blame her.  I keep her and my father at a distance, arms length, feed them with a long-handled spoon.  I did/do it in order to protect myself from being rejected.

I am not afraid of rejection anymore so I don't really need that wall.  I think it's time to be vulnerable...just lay here and be vulnerable and hope that she lays with me...ready to be vulnerable too.

In the Evening Baby

Tell Him by Lauryn Hill

...let me patient / let me be kind / make me unselfish / without being blind / though i may suffer / i'll envy it not / and endure what comes...

I first loved this song way after I discovered this album at the age of 12.  I didn't get this far in the album.  Not that I didn't listen to it, but just that I wasn't old enough for this song in particular to mean anything to me.  For one thing, I was still Muslim, and only because my Mom made me.  I had no real concept or interest in God or religion.

Four years later, I was obsessed with this song.  I had completed half of high school, met the same friends I still have today, and grown into a Christian.  Wayward and still backwards, but exposed to the light at least.

Since I rediscovered this song, it's always been a favorite of mine.  I play it when I'm worshipping, when I'm bored, when I'm sad especially.  It's always been a comfort and a lesson.  To this day, I play it specifically for the purpose crying in order to release the bad and inhaling to breathe in the good.

There is someone I really, really, really care about and love and adore.  And I don't think that person feels the same way about me.  It's a difficult blow to your ego to be in love by yourself.  It's an even more difficult blow to be a Black girl in love by yourself (my Black girls feel me).  Our population of men is scarce and our population of progressive men is even slimmer.  Every Black girl's heart is struck with fear when she meets love: 1).  Love is scary.  It's a risk you take, confessing to the universe that you're prepared for the heartache that this love may one day riddle your body with.  2).  Being alone is scary.  It's a risk you take to live alone, to be without a mate, confessing to the universe that you are prepared to trek on your own.

Black girls learn love hard anyway.  But the fear is dichotomous, afraid to be with love and afraid to be without love.  Black girls learn love hard anyway.  I know I did.  For 23 years, I misunderstood myself, faith, and hope.  I believe that is because I learned love hard.

So I dropped this person I really, really, really care about off and I cried, like I usually do.  I don't want to be alone and I feel heavily alone.  I am looking for someone to belong to.  I am looking for the family that I had to give up in order to stay alive and be sane.  Literally.  I need validation and approval and love and tenderness and reassurance.

But I was looking in the wrong sources.

I needed to pacify myself after my emotional car ride.  I hit up Google and searched for words to teach me how to calm my resentment from being in love alone, and to encourage patience that I lost in the fast-paced world I grew up in.

And of course I found something...profound.  God will never leave you without the nourishment you need if you truly seek it.

I came across the definition of love.  Love is the cure to resentment.  I read quite a lengthy passage that detailed the manner in which resentment is born and the ways to kill it.  Something that stood out to me:  The way we view ourselves determines how we respond to offenses, and also keeps us from committing offenses against others.  It shouldn't matter that other people do not appreciate us or treat us with disrespect because our self-worth does not depend on those people.  We are servants who answer to one Master.

My self-worth is very external.  By that I mean, I only acquire a self-worth by what I am worth to another person or group of people.  That is just absurd, but that is always how I have lived.  I have never appreciated myself, loved myself, cared about myself but I want everyone else too.  And today I learned that no one has to--for 2 main reasons. 

1.  Self-worth should be an internal conversation.

2.  The world and nobody in it owes you anything--not even their approval or love.

Another thing that struck me to tears:  Another cause of resentment is an unforgiving attitude.  Unfortunately, it is all-too-natural for us to have an unforgiving attitude because our personal dignity demands justice.  In our eyes, the other person is certainly wrong and should compensate for our hurt feelings.

Child! If this ain't me!  I think I have been waiting my whole life for an apology.  I don't even know from who really but I gather, from my chronically unforgiving attitude, that I am waiting on justice for a pain grandeur that I cannot cure.  Oh but no one owes me an apology.  And I'm glad to be delivered from such a ridiculous waiting room.

It would be nice, of course, to have an apology.  It would be nice for someone to recognize that he/she was wrong, that my pain is real, and that someone wants to make it right.  It would be nice if my Mom said she was sorry for driving me crazy.  It would be nice if the person I really, really, really care about would say sorry for using you, for dragging you along, for being inconsiderate.  It would be nice if Comcast apologized for overcharging me for a whole year.  All that would be nice.

I am realizing however that the lack of acknowledgment or lack of apology doesn't make the pain of the infraction any less real.  I'm still in pain and I don't really need anyone, other than God, to acknowledge it.  And I don't really need anyone, other than God, to get over it.  Because I can get over it.  I spent my day crying, reading the word and I feel like maybe I might just be brand spankin' new.

So love 'em even if they don't love you.  I'm not doing it for you.  I'm doing it so that when others see me, they praise Him.

It'll be all right -- in the evening baby.