The Hard Way

The past few months have been full of change and disappointment and realizations about how this world, and the people in it*, really are. It's been sobering and sad. But, there are some things I know now:

1. People really have a hard time when someone is honest and says no when they are not able to do those things themselves. This is very, very threatening to people. How dare I set boundaries if they (mistakenly) believe that they can't?! How dare I.

2. People think that they have authority to tell other people how they should be and how they should live in this world, with seemingly zero awareness that no one knows another person's life, path, motivations, or reasons for making the thousands of decisions we all make each day. It is stunning how many times I have been told how to be, and that who I am and how I take up space in this world is wrong, without ever being asked who I am, why I am, or what I'm going through.

3. Working as hard as I have to be more and more authentic each and every day, and being honest and clear about my boundaries, my needs, and my wishes, leads to a lot of people feeling that I am challenging and dangerous. It's hard to be treated as dangerous when I am just trying to live without the burdens of being who everyone else wants me to be--being who they want me to be so that they feel more comfortable, but then I am left feeling caged, pinned in. I lived that way for most of my life, but refuse to stay in that cage anymore. I am not dangerous, just real. The two are synonymous apparently.

4. People seem much more willing to abandon me and write me off for telling my truth (and not even in a mean or aggressive way--most of the time, in fact, I speak from a place of caring and vulnerability), than deal with the realities of their own choices and lives, which they choose to ignore, but I do not.

5. Being honest in this world isolates me more than I ever would have guessed. It doesn't matter that I am honest with compassion, not cruelty. I was told that "the truth hurts" and therefore it should sometimes, often, not be said. I know, though, that secrets, lies, repression, and suppression hurt much more.

 

I have learned these things the hard way.

 

I will keep telling my truth.

 

(* for those following along, this post has nothing to do with my romantic life! All is wonderfully well with Elle.)

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on loneliness

Sometimes I think we end up feeling more alone when we are in relationships. Do you know what I mean? Like when you want that one person to be your confidante, your friend, your lover. Just them. But what if they can't be? What if they're gone? What do you do? If you can't go to them, be with them--if they are not there...

Then what do you do? It's hard because--you can't go anywhere else, really. Nor do you want to. You want it to be them. Want to get all of those things from them. But they aren't available. They're not there, for a thousand potential reasons. A thousand valid, completely understandable reasons.

So, you are alone.

With your thoughts. With the chores. With your fears.

When you're single, it doesn't hurt so much. You learn how to lean more on yourself in moments like this. And more on a network of friends. Being alone doesn't feel so lonely.

But once there is The One, that network gets weaker. It shouldn't. It does. And it hurts more when you find yourself on your own, left alone with the weight of your life, because you don't expect it anymore. You're not supposed to be, anymore.

But really, aren't we always?


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What the fuck, world?

I've been feeling diffusely angry and discontent lately. There are many reasons for these feelings, not the least of which is that I'm on a deadline to finish my dissertation by December 6th. 

But today? Today these feelings of  utter despondence with this world were compounded by getting cat-called and harassed twice by male strangers in 3 minutes as I walked home from work today.  As I make the slow trudge home in 90 degree heat-- hungry, needing to pee, and feeling the early pangs of what apparently is some sort of pinched nerve in my lower back-- on two separate occasions, WITHIN THE SPAN OF THREE MINUTES, two different black men think that, likely because I am a black woman, they can express to me their opinion that I am attractive to them in some way. 

The first one walked right up next to me to inform me that I looked "very nice" and then kept calling things after me after I sped up and walked away from him.  The second man is a guy that seems to think we're friends because I walk past him often on my way to and from the subway.  I think this man has often informed me that he "likes my hairstyle" whenever I'm walking to the subway on a Friday night with my hair in it's nice, lesbian-y faux-hawk.  His comments without fail make me annoyed that I can't try to look nice without annoying assholes providing unsolicited commentary.  Today, however, as I walk by, he interrupts his conversation with his fellow loiterers to yell out at me "Hey! Lookin' good girl!" And then, as I refuse to acknowledge that I'm hearing him, "Black girl! Black girl! White girl! White girl! Black girl!" and so on.  I mean, first of all, what?? Second of all, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? 

Why is this the kind of bullshit that I have to put up with, most notably on days when I wear a dress or skirt.  I am left significantly more alone if I'm wearing pants.  It didn't matter that I was clearly tired and hot and minding my own business and DO NOT KNOW THESE PEOPLE. I was wearing a skirt and am female and one of few black people in this neighborhood. So of COURSE any other black man in the vicinity has every right to yell at me on the street.

I HATE IT.

And even before this bullshit happened, I was thinking what I've been thinking a lot lately: Not a single soul on this planet was popped into this world with their consent.  We are all here completely without our own choosing.  None of us had any choice to be born or not. And yet here we all are, plopped out into this crowded, hot mess of humanity, and having to find a way to make it through.  And as we try and try to survive, and do the right thing, and contribute to the world in some way, we are bombarded by idiots and victimized and stolen from and discriminated against.

It fucking sucks guys. And we all deserve better.