Earth, Wind, & Fire

"Come to My Window"

...I would stand inside my hell / and hold the hand of death...

Usually, I adore the end of the year and the excitement of a new year, the newness of a new year. Currently, I am not excited. I gather that my lack of excitement is due to the fact that I am wholly unsatisfied by my life. The new year will not change my life. Only I can change my life.

In my youth, I had this idea that the new year and its majesty would be enough to change my life. Somehow, these new digits on the date would carry a momentum of change strong enough to drag my life along and into greatness. And for many years, such was the case.

After some time, my life became too heavy with things like anger, depression, broken hearts, etc. The momentum of the new year was no longer enough and I would stay in the same wreck that worsened over the year. When the next New Year's Eve came around, my life was heavier than the last year and again unqualified to ride the momentum.

I don't know why I feel differently this year, but I'm tossing my life up and believe that it will make the momentum this year. People tell me all the time that I am so beautiful, I am so intelligent, I am so caring, I am so considerate, I am so funny, I am so aggressive but none of the those things have done anything to improve my life in last two years. So next year, each of those aformentioned qualities will be put to good use. I want to really be beautiful.

Egyptian Fast Food

"Party Life" by Jay Z

...when you blue / got nothin' do...

I read an article on CNN under the Living category on the home page. It was called "Why Women Shouldn't Say 'I Love You' First" and I found it to be quite provocative.

This wasn't a subject I had a strong opinion about, if any opinion at all. But the explanation provided in the article made me understand.

Basically, despite our post-feminism movement era, there are still [environmentally induced] differences between men and women. Men tend to process their feelings slower than do women, so even though the relationship may going very well, he may not have arrived at the same emotional destination and would not be able to reciprocate equally.

For that reason, the article's author suggested that we females hold off the declaration of love so as not to risk hurt. As she poignantly explains in the article, she is not trying to be anti-feminist. Asking a gentleman out on a date or even proposing are acceptable things for a woman to do in this day and age. But an "I love you" has a specific rewarding reaction and there is no way to gauge accurately if that person loves you or not until you say it and brace yourself for the response.

I agree. Not that a man could not feel love before a woman and be subject to the same heartache, but it seems that it does not happen as often as it does with women.

The article tripped me up. I have no idea how to manage relationship business, emotions, communication of emotions, etc. I have no mature experience in relationships. [I have even been betrothed already and I have no clue on the makings that sustain a long term relationship].

My brother Richard and my best friends tell me I behave and think like a man in the romance department. I have been called emotionally detached, unavailable, and even rigid.

They point out, however, that I am quite warm and emotionally available for friends and family but I shut down for the man in my life. I express almost none of what I am thinking, I do not encourage them to share with me, but then I complain that I feel alone and cut off.

I know that I am doing it, as I have just formally diagnosed myself. However, it has become so elementary to my behavior that by the time I realize I am being "emotionally unavailable," it is too late and he has already pegged me as impenetrable. I honestly hope that I can watch myself more closely and stop my self sabotage (I cheated myself / like I knew I would). I hope to exorcise my immature demons and demonstrate a higher degree of normalcy in my courtships, especially with the 30th Century Man. This one, I really don't want to fudge. A glimpse of hope: another friend informed me that it just takes the right person. When the right person comes along, I will be able to grow up and make a genuine change.

In the meantime though, I'll still let him say "I love you" first.

Static Swag

"Bed" by J. Holiday

...watch the sunrise peak over the horizon / the sun ain't the only that's shinin' / now I'ma send you out into the world with my love...

I used to watch a show called Absolutely Fabulous on BBC some years ago with an aunt of mine. I loved that show because the two female main characters were dysfunctional, alcoholics, inappropriate, socially retarded, embarrassing, and other bad adjectives.

One of them had a grown daughter that was intelligent and was the keeper of her drunken mother and best friend. They were constantly humiliating the poor girl.

And they were absolutely fabulous. Sometimes I wish I could live their totally useless and reckless life. They do not care about anything whilst I fret of everything.

I also used to wish my mother was like one of the women on the show when I was younger. At the time I didn't understand the implications and complications of having a mother with a disease such as alcoholism. I just wanted to have a mother who I could be close to. Despite their dysfunctional behavior, the fictional mother and daughter pair were quite close.

My beautiful Mommy was just this person that I did not really know nor identified with. She was like an old camp counselor that gave birth to me almost but we had no real connection. It never occurred to me to go to my mother for help, advice, conversation, consolation or anything of the ilk. She bought me things when I needed them and punished me and that was the extent of our relationship.

But I always wanted more from her. I tried to get her attention in many stupid ways. It ended up backfiring on me when she couldn't stand me at all and we basically lived our separate lives.

This situation is how I learned how miraculous and inadequate language is: dealing with my mother. It was always interesting to see what she garnered from something I said and what I actually meant. The discrepancy sometimes would be amazing.

I just wanted an affectionate, playful mother. And she kind of was but not as much as I would have liked her to be. My father is. I always wanted my mother to be just like my father. It wasn't that my father wasn't enough, but it was because I was a girl and I wanted my mother. And all my friends and cousins throughout my life have had such great relationships with their mothers while we have tried not to kill each other over the last decade.

Then one day, I was watching an episode of Celebrity Rehab on VH1 (isn't Dr. Drew Pinsky so fine. Make me wanna get right). Rod Stewart's son was a patient in the program and was explaining the pain of not having his rock star father around enough and their family not being the normal, nuclear American family he wanted so.

Dr. Drew said something that hit me hard and even made me choke up a little bit. He explained to Stewart that our parents are human beings too. They are people with flaws and shortcomings who do bad and wrong things just like we see ourselves do. The image of our parent that we have created and the person that parent actually is are two different things. They parent according to the person that they are as well as what the have seen.

My Mommy is an introvert, quiet, pensive, serious and mature. Therefore, she probably wasn't going to be the bubbly, playful, sunshine-all-the-time kind of mother. Life wasn't all that good to her and it continues to bother her and here I was making trouble in her house trying to make her be the mother I thought she should be which was oppositional to the person that she is.

It made me cry, I think, because I realized that I had been fighting a futile fight. And I haven't been fighting my "mother". I have been fighting this woman with feelings, with tragedies, with sorrows, with insecurities. An actual person. But I thought she was just my Mommy: this empty person who just collected my insults and disappointments and remained unaltered.

Kids are such idiots. And it's a lot harder growing up than they said.