"Rosie" the Riveter's real name is Geraldine.

Reblogged from Lavender Labia

My mother doesn't know who she is. I was talking with her last night about the various costumes people wore to my Halloween party, and when I said that my housemate's friend dressed up as Rosie the Riveter, she said, "Who?" 
"[My housemate]'s friend," I repeated, thinking she missed the subject of the sentence. 
"No," she replied, "what did she dress up as?" 
"Rosie the Riveter."
"I don't know who that is."
"'We can do it?' Women going to work in the factories while their husbands were away fighting in WWII? The feminist icon?"
 "I have no idea what you're talking about."

*headdesk*

I don't like "meant to be"s...

...but I can't help feeling like I was meant to be where I was on Saturday evening. I went to a natural hair meetup cohosted by my girl @HGKWW and saw a young-ish Black woman rocking a low fade. I made a note of her and how she pulled the style off with elegance--since my mom called me crying after she cut all her hair off after it began falling out in clumps, I've been making a mental note of bald/near bald Black women that I see out and about, so I can say with honesty that that look is in right now when I talk with her about it.

About an hour later, before a giveaway, this woman starts speaking and handing out flyers. Her name is Andrene Taylor. She is thirty three years old and has beaten lymphoma three times already. She's currently preparing for a triathlon and serving as the President of an amazing Foundation called ZuriWorks, whose purpose is to raise cancer awareness in Black female communities. And even more, she is hosting an event this coming weekend called It'll Grow Back! Loving your Hair with Natural Care, which along with dealing out knowledge and tips for naturals generally, will feature discussion about the pros and cons of wearing wigs post-chemo, when hair starts growing back, how the hair that grows back differs from the hair you had before, and how hair and healing are connected mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. 

Here, in a place hundreds of miles from home, at an event co-hosted by a friend I made at a school I had a 9% chance of getting into, which I learned about via a website that I stumbled upon when lamenting the fact that I didn't know how to make friends in the real world, I found just what my mother needs. My eyes started welling up just as I was listening to her talk, and I waited patiently while she had another conversation later in the evening just so that I could speak with her, shake her hand, and tell her that she is an inspiration. 

I want so badly for my mom to come down to go to the event on Sunday, but she has decided against it because it's a lot of travelling for her to do by herself. My Nana offered to drive her, but she's already driving her to Philly for her appointment with her oncologist on Friday and to Dover and back twice the following Thursday to move my sister in to school, so she didn't want to put that on her too. I understand all of that, but I'm still disappointed. This would be so good for her. I might go anyway just so I can pass on the knowledge. 

Though I am never anything but the picture of optimism to my mother, I feel safe enough here to say that meeting someone who has been through this again and again and is THRIVING did wonders for me. I want her to know that her very existence is helping. I want to help her help other people. I very nearly want to *thank* someone for the peculiar series of events that led to us meeting on Saturday, because few other introductions have every felt so wholly right. 

My mother, who recently shaved her head after one too many bouts of crying while throwing out the strands and strands of her post-chemotherapy hair that came out in the comb every day, to me on the phone yesterday:

I have to admit, My, I felt like you. It was so nice to go out in the rain and not have to worry about my hair. 

She also recently sported her nearly bald head in a Wawa, instead of wearing her bandana or a wig. She said people were staring at her, and it was hard, but I could barely hear that over the sound of my swelling pride.

Our first Mother's Day with cancer.

I'm glad that this post isn't called "Mother's Day from Room 302B" or something to that effect. My mother has been home from the hospital since Thursday, after going in for a planned stay on April 23rd.

Still, I was dreading calling her yesterday morning. As much as I miss(ed) her and want(ed) to talk to her, I knew that hearing her voice would hurt as much as it helped. Her voice...isn't hers. My mother's voice is strong and sassy. This is one of those times when Spanish makes more sense to me than English, because for 22 years of my life I've thought of the "is" in that sentence as a permanent kind of is, a this is how it always has been and this is how it always will be kind of is. A "ser" kind of is. Cancer taught me that "estar" can sneak up on you. La voz de mi mama estaba fuerte. Now, her voice is barely above a whisper. It is characterized only by its hoarseness. I feel bad asking her to repeat herself, because I know that the shortest of conversations is draining to her. It's draining to me too, because I don't know who this frail person on the other end of the phone is. Mi mama es una mujer de fuerza. 

But the woman on the other end of the phone, who can barely muster the strength to thank me and ask about my exams, is my mother. I guess doing the impossible for 22 years can catch up to you. She's not invincible. (She's too young to not be invincible.) Forty-two and fragile just isn't fair.

On your first Mother's Day with cancer, tears spill out of your eyes after approximately two minutes of hearing your mother labor to speak with you, and you try with all of your might to keep her from hearing them. You use every bit of strength you have to keep your voice steady. When that strength begins to falter, you quickly tell her that she should get some rest and you'll talk to her soon. The heaving sobs come as soon as you push "End". You feel like a woman of despicable priorities for not being there, despite the impending deadlines, despite her telling you not to worry. You are ashamed of yourself. You are six years old and having a nightmare again, only this time it doesn't go away when you wake up. Before you can stop yourself, you wonder how many more Mother's Days you'll get to wish her. And the rest of the day feels impossible as you move your sobs from the bed to the shower. On your first Mother's Day with cancer, you wish you were sick one. You feel like being your mother took everything out of her. You wonder if anything will ever feel right again. 

The hardest sound for me to stomach hearing

is that of my mother crying. Her voice starting to break into a sob while she's on the phone with me, asking for help in ways that I can tell make her feel inadequate. I was going to the bank to get money to pay for her gas so she could come see me today, because earlier in the week she'd said she didn't have the funds to make it to up this way and I wanted to see her before she went to the hospital. I didn't know how much it cost to fill her tank, so I called her this morning on the way to the ATM to ask, and she hesitantly asked if I had an abundance of cash in my account. I asked her what she needed, and she started to break down as she said she wanted to borrow some money to get groceries. I asked again, how much she needed. $100 if you have it. I just, all I have is $100 and I was sitting here looking in the kitchen and there's no food in the house and *voice breaks here* I didn't know how they we going to eat while I'm gone. Is $100 enough? Do you need more? She hesitates more, before saying that $150 would be even better. I shouldn't have to ask you for money, she says. I'll get it right back to you when I get paid on the 30th. I'll have Nana or somebody put it right back in your account. It's okay, I say. No, it's not, she counters.

I don't know how to tell her that it is okay. I don't know how to convey that I am disgusted by this life where I stood in front of my closet last night rifling through dresses I haven't worn yet to see which one I wanted to wear to a semiformal this weekend when my mother doesn't know how to put food on the table. I don't know how to convey that (even though I know this is why individual Black people can make money without ever generating wealth) I am willing to put the basic necessities of my family above most luxuries for myself if only they let me know. I don't want to be that person who gets grown and moves up and forgets about the struggle at home, but it's so easy to be out of sight out of mind when they don't tell me how bad it is until they can't handle it anymore. 

...I don't know how to feel like a good person when I do things like drop $600 on a class ring and look for $1000+/month apartments in DC when my very ill mother doesn't know how to feed my brother and sister. I don't know if any of my own financial woes can be valid in the face of my struggling family. I don't want to feel like they're depending on me, but I want them to know and use the fact that they can count on me to help when I can. She loves the netbook I bought her, but when I compare purchases like that to purchases like these groceries, I feel like I'm showing my support wrong. I don't know how to listen to her voice break without wanting to give up every single extra thing I have so that she never has to feel like that again.

...I don't know if daughters are supposed to feel this way about their parents, like it's my job to make sure everything doesn't fall apart, but then again I suppose that's always been my job, so I should just accept it as it grows and develops as I move further into adulthood.   

A conversation I just couldn't have

I saw S, one of my oldest friends, for the first time since early September last night. We had the obviously necessary catch-up conversation about how school's going, how surprisingly unweird relations with my ex are, and what kinds of jobs I'm applying to and where on my end, and how moving out of his mom's house is going and whether he likes his new job on his end, and Thanksgiving plans and fabulously boring love lives on both of our ends. It was touching to listen to him protest to me applying to jobs in faraway places like Chicago and California, and when we hopped in the car for a late night Wawa run, I realized that there was one other thing that has developed in my life of late that he should know.  

Sitting next to him in the semidarkness of the car, I mulled over how to bring it up. I opened my mouth and closed it again without saying anything. You shouldn't deliver bad news while someone is driving. You also shouldn't do it once they're back in your dining room enjoying a turkey bowl and donuts. You shouldn't do it while you're exploring etsy together, and you shouldn't do it after he yawns and says he should be getting home. Life is full of inopportune moments for this conversation. Is there a right time? How do you say, best friend from childhood, who once made my mother a macaroni necklace for Kwanzaa and whom she often refers to as her favorite son (my little brother's existence notwithstanding), my mom has cancer?

Compounding all of this is the fact that I'm not entirely sure I need to tell him. Does he have to know? (Of course, when something happens with him, I tell my mom and she is genuinely concerned. I know that he would care.) I just...this isn't a topic for casual conversation. I'm not at a point where I can discuss my parents' illnesses in the context of catching up with someone. I wish he read this and just knew; that's how everyone who knows but E, K, and my dad found out. I feel like a hypocrite having shared this with people all over the internet, but some things feel too close to home to be shared with people I distinctly feel as though I'm losing touch with. I don't want this to become one of our regular topics of conversation. I want to stick to safe topics. I want our most complicated things to revolve around our love lives or how this process of trying to grow up is going.

I don't think I'm going to tell him, unless we somehow start talking about my mom and some sort of seamless segue seems possible (which seems highly unlikely). And maybe that signifies all sorts of terrible things about how I'm letting my friends from childhood/adolescence go in favor of my Princeton friends, many of whom I'll probably let go over time in favor of the friends I form in later places and times. Maybe there's a level of emotion that I can't bridge with them anymore; maybe we're just not close enough for them to need to know everything about my life anymore. 

And I don't really think I need to feel bad about this. It seems...like a natural consequence of personal growth and relocation. This post may seem like a counterargument, again, but...I feel like it's different talking about the details of my life with people who haven't known me and my family since elementary school. And if that's unfair...life's tough. Get a helmet. (Boy Meets World ftw.)

The most ominous words your mother can say...

...change as we get older. When we are children, "No" is the most ominous word that can come out of your mother's mouth. As we get slightly older, "We'll see," takes on that connotation (because it means your-ass-knows-the-answer-is-no-and-now-I'm-annoyed-that-you-put-me-in-this-situation-where-I-can't-tell-you-no-publicly-because-of-the-company-we're-in). Then comes "I need you to...", which is quickly followed by "How much money do you have?" 

I thought I was going to stay somewhat begrudgingly in that last stage for a good long while. I was wrong. All of a sudden, I have entered the worst of stages, that I wasn't expecting to hit for years and years, given the fact that my mother is 10 days shy of her 42nd birthday. If The Most Ominous Words Your Mother Can Say was a video game, this would be the final boss battle.


To the best of my memory, today was only the third time I have ever seen my mother cry outside of the context of a sad movie. It is the second time I can remember her voice cracking while she was speaking to me because of the overwhelming emotion. It is the only time I can remember her admitting she is afraid. It is the only time since I was small enough to need to hold someone's hand when crossing the street that she has allowed me to touch her and hold on. 

This conversation began with her asking me to get in the car. I could tell something was up by the tone of her voice, so as I was opening the car door, I started asking what was wrong. When she says the next thing she says, you think the most ominous words your mother can say are, "I'm sick." Then she gets more specific, and you learn you are wrong again.

The not talking may drive me crazy, but she didn't need to ask me to not speak of this for me to know I can't. I can't tell my best friends. I can't even tell my dad. She has asked me not to spend more time at home than I was planning to. She has asked me not to call her everyday or do anything out of the ordinary. She considered not even telling me because she didn't want to taint my senior year, and has asked me to party tonight and carve pumpkins tomorrow and live my life without being constantly overwhelmed by fear and worry. This is a tall order. I am more afraid than I have ever been of anything in the entirety of my life.


After she left, she texted me with one simple word. Smile.


And so I'm going to try to, because my mother told me to. I'm going to try to smile as much as when I first started dating my ex and everyone told me how happy I looked. I'm going to test the black-don't-crack theory with the potential for laugh lines I'm going to create. People are going to think I'm on some shit when thesis gets real and I'm just beaming away.

But don't hold your breath waiting for me to say I'm surviving without any tears.

"The jig is up," my mother said.

"This time next year you'll be off starting your own life hopefully somewhere far away, and that means that it's time for you to start getting rid of your junk. All the stuff in you and your sister's room, in the basement--go through it, figure out what you want to keep, what's trash, what can go to Goodwill." 

Translation: you don't live here anymore. 

I've been saying that to myself for a while now, jokingly calling myself a houseguest when I go home, but evidently the time to make that a legitimate reality is fast approaching. My mother wants me to move out of her house. 

I think this is the single most intimidating thing anyone has ever said to me. Nothing really says you're not a kid anymore like your mom wants her closet space back.

I'm claiming the GRE as an excuse to not start this project until the next time I'm home on break, but I'm already freaking out a little. I'm sure this is going to be a huge emotional rollercoaster, as I will literally be digging through the remains of my childhood and seeing most of it go out the door. 

The clothes I don't wear anymore: First, I will let my sister rifle through them. We're basically the same size and she kind of considers anything I leave in the room while I'm at school to be her property anyway. My less over-the-top semi-formal/formal dresses that still fit, I will probably keep in hopes that owning such dresses will inspire me to have a life that involves cocktail parties, fancy dates, and ridiculous birthday outings. I've been meaning to sell the others on ebay for a while now. I have a very large collection of heels, most of which still fit, but are in varying degrees of wear. I will see which of these seem most like they need to be part of my adult life, and the rest will go in the Goodwill bags.

That may be the only clearly definable category. Other random stuff I'm expecting to find: old CDs that I might try to sell at the Princeton Record Exchange for a few bucks, a ridiculous number of books that I should mail in small amounts to my friend Krystal who is teaching English in Alabama somewhere and has an absolute dearth of material for her 7th graders, nick-knacks and souvenirs from places I went on school trips in elementary school, remnants from my Magick phase, old photographs, gifts given to me by friends I barely speak to anymore. A memory box to which I've lost the key. Broken jewelry and earrings that are missing their other halves. 

What from that cornucopia of miscellany deserves salvaging? Is any of it worth bringing with me as I move forward into the rest of my life? If the remnants of the first 18 years of my life can be divided into trash bags and trash-bags-that-are-going-to-Goodwill, with the exception of two teddy bears, a couple of decorative pillows, and maybe a few pairs of shoes...where has the important stuff from my life gone? I know my mom isn't wrong when she calls it all "junk," but...it's the junk that made me. But when the junk that made you no longer defines you, you have to let it go, right?

The stuff that's in my dorm (okay, well right now is in various closets in my house waiting to go back to my dorm) is way more relevant to my last-year-of-undergrad self than anything in my bedroom is. That's scary, but it's the truth. I've grown up. It's time for that which I lay claim to to grow up too.

Moms Say the Darndest Things

"Maya...I don't know how to tell you this...but...you're a shopaholic."

2nd 30 Day Letter Challenge: Day 22--Letter to a Feeling You Wish You Didn't Feel

Dear

Also reblogged from my friend L

I'm not suffering from you right now, but you come in and out of my life so regularly that as soon as I saw L's post, I knew today's letter had to be to you, because you are never a welcome presence in my life. It comforts me only slightly that I understand exactly where you come from:

Back when Amy Chau's memoir was released, lots of my Asian and non-Asian friends started joking around about whether their parents were Tigers (and not in the legacy-student sense of the word). These students, who for the most part play instruments, got amazing grades throughout their primary and secondary educations, and now go to one of the top universities in the world found it easy to joke about the effectiveness or benefits of Tiger-Motherhood, regardless of whether their own parents had been Tigers. My own mother was only a Tiger certain ways--appearances were everything, and one's hair had to be straight, neatly arranged, and one's clothes had to be ironed if one were going to go anywhere with her--most notoriously in terms of her standards for my academic success; I had to beg and plead for extra-curricular development, rather than be forced to practice my instrument for hours on end. All that open communication and "talking" rather than authoritative discipline that Annette Laureau talks about with wealthy parents' style of raising their children...yeah you can tell we were poor, because her word was law and the only appropriate response was "Yes ma'am Mom".  Praise was not common in my house--in my ex-stepfather's words: "Why should I reward you for acting like you're supposed to?"

Straight A's were mandatory in my household for me according to my mother's rules from the very beginning. I didn't really even have to work at this until sixth grade math; Mrs. Franks hated us and constantly reminded us that we were idiots in comparison to the accelerated math class from the year before (don'tcha just love people who shouldn't be around children in their formative years and choose to become teachers?). I came home with my first ever B, and my mother was furious. I tried to explain that the class was hard, and I couldn't be perfect, and my then-stepfather beat me mercilessly. Buckle end of the belt. My failure (because anything less than perfection was failure) was unacceptable and would not be tolerated in this house. I would be perfect, or I would be punished. End of story.

When my mother and the abusive asshole finally separated for the last time, when I was in the 7th grade, I thought the worst of it was over. I was taller than my mom by that age, and though I had no doubt she could still beat me, I doubted that she would. And I was right: psychological torture was her weapon of choice.

Example A) My school district sent home interim report cards about halfway through each marking period, designed to let you and your parents know how you were doing in your classes so that improvements could be made if necessary before final grades came out. In the second marking period of the year when I was in 7th grade, my interim report card came home showing that I had a B in Art, with As in all my other classes. The comments said that I had incomplete work, which was not untrue--we had been working on an Indian-henna-practices-inspired scratch art piece, and in the vein of true Indian henna, my work was ornate and complex. It took considerably more time than my classmates' flowers and simple patterns, and I wasn't done yet, but wasn't going to compromise my project to finish on time; you can't rush art. [The piece later went on to be featured in the County Art Fair #I'mjustsayin] This explanation didn't come close to being acceptable to my mother though; she grounded me, said I was not going to perform in the band's Winter Concert which I had a 12-measure solo in, and took away my TV, computer privileges, books, and library card. I had to go in to school the next day and explain this to my band director, while I was sobbing and so ashamed that I couldn't look him in the eye. He told me he'd suspected things were bad at home, but never anything like this. He took it upon himself to speak with my art teacher, who reluctantly allowed me to take home the tools I needed to finish my project and then wrote a note to my mother saying that my grade was an A, which my mother reluctantly accepted and let me be in the concert.

Example B: 8th grade. My school had become so overcrowded that some genius (read: idiot) administrator decided to implement a one-way-hallway policy designed to facilitate faster commutes from one classroom to another between bells. Students caught going the wrong way in a one-way hallway were subject to detention. One day, I left my sneakers in the locker room after gym. I realized this as I was halfway down the one-way hallway on my way to Health class, and tried to turn around and go back, but a teacher yelled at me. I told him what had happened and he said to go to class and ask my Health teacher for a pass to go to the gym. I went to class and the Health teacher said I had to wait to the end of the period, and then he would write me a pass explaining why I would be late to my next class. Needless to say, by the end of that period, my sneakers were nowhere to be found. I went home and explained what had happened to my mother, and said I needed new sneakers--I'd only owned one pair. She told me I should have been more responsible, and that she wasn't going to buy me new sneakers. So, every day for the rest of the marking period, I was unprepared for gym class. I tried to participate when I could, but usually my teacher made me sit on the bleachers because I didn't have the right shoes. And come the end of the marking period, I got a C in gym, with the comments stating that I was unprepared. My mother screams at me for hours, grounds me for the entire next marking period (about 10 weeks), again stripping my room of everything but a bed and a dresser and taking away my computer and library privileges. I wasn't allowed to celebrate my 14th birthday--no cake, no party, no gifts. But at least she bought me a goddamn pair of sneakers.

Example C) Freshman year of high school, Geometry. Barely squeaked by with a 91, the lowest grade in the A-range. She told me it was unacceptable. Confused, I said, "But mom, it's an A. Look at the scale!" She said it wasn't a high enough A.

Example D) My senior year of high school, once I was already accepted to Princeton and had decided the rest of my high school career was meaningless, I wasn't doing too well in AP Calc II. I may have had a C at the interim-reporting time. My friends lamented having gotten their interims, and I was legitimately afraid to go home because I didn't know what my mother would do to me. I'd never had that kind of grade in an academic class before. I rummaged around the house until I found a spare mailbox key, prayed to a God I didn't believe in, and thanked my lucky stars when I found that she hadn't checked the mail the day before because my interim was still in the box. I very sneakily removed it, left everything else undisturbed, and destroyed all evidence of its existence. She never asked about it. I'll never tell.

One of the reasons Remember the Titans is one of my favorite movies (besides Denzel) is that the team overcomes every possible obstacle to actually achieve the supposed-to-be-impossible requirement of perfection. They gave me hope that even in the darkest moments, even when I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't, even when I wanted to run away or give in to her threats to send me to live with my father, I could take it. WILL. YOU. EVER. QUIT????? NO. WE WANT SOME MORE. WE WANT SOME MORE. WE WANT SOME MORE!!!!!! It was probably somewhere around this time of my life that I silently declared war against my mother. The time for trying to reason with her had long since passed, so I put my game face on and said Bring it, bitch. Every impossible standard she threw at me, I worked my ass off to reach. It damn near killed me, but I did it. I shattered everyone's expectations...even her own, I think. I hated her for it, every day for so many years of my life I hated her for it...but look where it got me. I can't say it didn't work.

And now, as I keep saying, I am a grown-ass woman. My mother no longer has that kind of control over me--I made sure of this as I worked to change the tone of our relationship once I went to college. She tried to give me shit about having a B in Spanish my first semester, and I made it clear that I wasn't having it. I guess having an above-average GPA at the (then-) number one institution in the country was enough for her, because the battles ceased. 

At least, the ones with her did. The problem with being exposed to something so regularly for such a prolonged period of time, however, is that you unconsciously begin to internalize it. I have different standards than those she demanded that I meet, but I still hold myself to them as rigorously as she made me. I am still disappointed by B+s. I still over-involve myself and then drive myself damn-near-crazy trying to give my all to every single commitment I have. I still can't do anything halfway. I still can't leave my room/house for the day without checking the mirror. I don't like to call myself a control freak, but I panic when something happens in my life that I have no power over. Every time I stumble or misstep walking down this crazy path called life, I become an emotional wreck. My tiniest mistakes are blown into epic proportions in my head, and instead of looking at an obstacle and instantly thinking up ways to turn it into a stepping stone, I sit and cry and feel like my entire world has come crashing down around me. Every time something goes wrong, even something that I had no control over, you completely overtake me and leave me a crumbled tear-stained mess on a floor or in my bed. I always fall back on you, instantly looking for ways to blame myself, always wondering what's wrong with me that caused this to happen. A mistake temporarily ends me. It's so easy for me to ignore all my accomplishments and feel like a total and complete failure when something goes wrong, because though I'm now sure she didn't mean to, she made me feel like a collection of mistakes, rather than a human being who is allowed to err. I don't know how to limit myself, which is as much of a curse as it is a blessing. I cannot wage war against myself as I waged war against my mother, because my goal is to love me in every way that I can. That means getting her, and the way she presumably DOESN'T EVEN FEEL ANYMORE (and probably never felt), out of my head. 

These are self-affirmations:

I am allowed to make mistakes. I cannot learn without them. The world will not end if I have to backtrack a little bit. Not every misstep is a failure. The sun will rise even if I don't have a small success to offer it. The pinnacle of perfection is simply being myself. That is the only end-goal I need.

Take your ass on home, atelophobia. You are not welcome here.

Respectfully not yours,

Maya       

INSANE WHIRLWIND OF EMOTIONS cannot begin to accurately describe the past two days.

Extreme sadness. Hurt. Fury that almost scared me. Fear separately. Deep confusion, or maybe simply a profound lack of understanding.



All of those feelings are done now. Well I'm still sad that it's over, because I wanted to snuggle into this and stay there for a long while, but I feel nothing like the overwhelming _________ I was feeling. I feel surprisingly good right now. I feel like nothing was as bad as I'd thought/imagined/suspected/worried/feared. I am not a bad judge of character, and I would like to come out and publicly say to all of you who know me in real life and know the other person involved in this situation--he is not the villain here. This situation doesn't have a villain. It has two good people who made some bad choices and that's it. #theoppositeofpubliclyflaming


I'm not gonna list out all the terrible things that have been running through my head. They don't need mentioning, as they're all either flat out wrong, unwarranted, invalid, or have been deconstructed to the point of my being content. It may have felt at first like the world was ending, but up is still up, down is still down, and I don't think anything permanently damaging happened here. 



I have, however, learned a lot. And the things I have learned can be listed:

1.  It is entirely impossible to undervalue honesty, especially when you know the truth is going to hurt. 
2. Wanting to mean something is entirely different from meaning it. Changing your definition of something so that you can mean it isn't being honest either. 
3. Relationships are based on a lot of assumptions. It's probably a good idea to talk about things rather than assuming you're on the same page about X issue.
4. It actually shocks me that these words are about to come out of my mouth, but maybe it really is the thought that counts. Intentions mean something, even when they lead down unpredictable and hurtful paths. Sometimes people deserve the benefit of the doubt even in the most unfortunate situations.
5. Anger is actually an essential part of the healing process. 
6. My friends are awesome. But I already knew that.
7. Pain does not automatically negate all the previous joy a situation gave. Hurt does not erase prior happiness. I'm not saying "don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened," because I think that crying is a healthy part of LIFE in general, and it's important to be unabashedly sad when something makes you sad...but when it's all said and done, everything good that happened still happened. And that's what you should focus on. 
8. Your world should always be bigger than one person. I think I forgot that mine was for a little while until the support came rushing in from every direction while I was freaking out and I remembered that I have a whole network of people who love and care about me. 
9. Love is a nuanced, nuanced thing. It has so many layers and components and meanings and strivings. It varies from person to person and situation to situation. There are lots of things that love is. There are also lots of things that love isn't. And I'm still learning the differences, I think. Maybe we all are. 
10. Don't underestimate the benefits that can come from actually talking to someone who hurt you, instead of just festering in your own emotions. Every story has two sides. 
11. Analysis of every tiny detail of a situation is pointless and futile. Analysis of what major mistakes were made and what should have been done differently in those specific instances is an opportunity for growth that should not be overlooked. 
12. It is evidently possible for me to open up to my father under times of complete and total duress. It is also evidently impossible for my mother to let me open up to her during such times. This is unsurprising. Maybe I should be less freely open with my mother and talk to my dad more. 
13. I have no regrets. None. I might even want to change everything I've ever believed about exes and want to try to be friends. And on that note, I will pick a song:

And I'd choose you again...

I've got family on the brain.

Throughout the course of my time at Princeton, quite a few people have been confused, surprised, and possibly even appalled by the degree to which I don't really associate myself with my family. Their reactions have always just provoked a general wondering about how strange my family is, but it hasn't ever really bothered me until I realized last night that my boyfriend seems...displeased by this. My family is not really, nor to the best of my memory has it ever been, a cohesive unit of any sort. My friends are much more of a family in that regard than are the people who are related to me by blood or circumstance. "By blood or circumstance"--see, my family is comprised largely of people who I'm not actually related to by blood or marriage--people who are attached to other family members of mine by blood on the side that isn't related to me by blood. For example, there's a large group of people in Atlanta and the surrounding area that I used to be related to by marriage: my ex-stepfather (whom I abhor) and his family (they aren't all bad). I haven't seen them since I was nine, but I'm Facebook friends with some of them, and the real question here is at what point does someone stop being family? My ex-stepfather is not related to me. I like to pretend that he never was. Most of his family, I am skeptical of considering them to be my family. But his first son, who recently re-entered my life, has never and could never stop being my brother. 

Let me explain my family a little. My dad's side is the easiest because there are four of us. You think I'm kidding. I'm not. My dad was the only child of only children; my sister, my niece, and I are his only living relatives. My dad and I haven't lived in the same household since my mother left him (they were never married) when I was an infant. He lived in the area and I saw him once or twice a week until I was 9, when he moved to Detroit (and later to Florida) and we began a ritual of seeing each other once a year or so. When I was a kid my dad was my best friend, because the time I got to spend with him was my only reprieve from my home life. But as I got older, I began to resent him for moving halfway across the country and leaving me behind, and our relationship became further and further strained. Eventually we talked about this (he found a poem I'd written about this on an old blog) and things have been...gradually improving since then, but he still gets on my nerves sometimes. I love him to death, though, and I know he'll be there for me when I need him for as long as he can...that just doesn't really translate into us being able to carry out substantive conversations on a regular basis or me really feeling comfortable with him knowing the intimate details of my life. I'm not sure how much that will ever change. I have never really been able to shake the feeling that, try as he might, my father does not know me. He's never met the majority of my close friends, he missed all the little day-to-day bits and pieces of me growing up, and now those day to day details are mine, not my parents'. 

My half-sister and my half-niece on my dad's side live in California. They used to live in Maryland until about my sophomore year of high school, and I was closer to them then. I once semi-ran away from home to their house for a week over the summer, I think it was the summer before my freshman year of high school. I should explain that my half-sister is 41 and is less than two months younger than my mother. Her daughter is 18, only three years younger than me. But she's been __-going-on-40 her whole life, because my sister treats her more like a girlfriend than like a daughter. While they could serve as a neutral place in times of great need, I have never really felt comfortable around my sister and her daughter. I feel very...different from them. They're divas with long straight hair, they wear tiny designer clothes and my sister owns a BMW convertible, they live beyond their means, they are very very religious (like read the Bible together aloud before bed religious). I have always felt a need to be fake when I am with them. So my sister and I call each other on major holidays (I think the record length of time we've talked for is about 4 minutes) and she sends me pictures of milestones in my niece's life and we call that a relationship. My father wants very much for us to be more like sisters. I...as bad as this sounds, I love them, I just don't think I like them very much

So growing up in my house, I consistently lived with my mom and my younger half-brother and half-sister from her marriage to my now-ex-stepfather. I've never really thought about my brother and sister as half-s, but for clarification purposes now it's important. My mom got married when I was three, my sister was born when I was four, and my brother when I was five. I don't have a clear memory of the first time their father was violent towards me or my mother, all my memories of it seem like they were routine already, the shock factor wore off when I was very young. He left for the first time shortly after my brother was born. He came crawling back shortly after, and my mom took him back, promising herself that if he ever left again, she was done. When I was in fourth grade he was cheating on her and she threw him out of the house; he went to live with the woman he'd been cheating with. My mom lay crying on the kitchen floor the morning after he left and I turned off the scrambled eggs that were burning on the stove, called the school pretending to be her (using my best grown-up voice; remember, I was 9) and got us excused for the day, and sat with her stroking her hair as she was crying. She vowed that we were done with him, that we were going to start over and made lots of other wonderful-sounding promises/resolutions.They were separated for nearly a year, we moved to a better house in a better neighborhood and my mom established herself as an independent woman and I really thought the worst of it was over. And then he came knocking on our door one day and she took him back again. And at that point, for a really long time, I gave up on my mother. I didn't even respect her as a person. I hadn't realized how complicated these issues are, or been really aware of how much my mom was struggling on her own with the three of us. I'm so sorry I ever felt that way about her.

He left for the last time when I was in middle school. I can say nothing other than the fact that until recently, that was the greatest day of my life. That man was a tyrant, and I've finally gotten to the point where I can admit that he was abusive (rather than just hot-headed and violent). I'll never forget the following Christmas: he had promised my brother and sister that he was coming back (he moved to Georgia) for Christmas to see them, and then called on December 23rd to say something had come up and he wasn't going to be able to make it. I hope I never have to hate another human being like I hate him. By the end, my hatred of him was thinly veiled--nowadays I don't even try. But I fear that my openness about my feelings towards him drove the initial wedge between me and my siblings. That wedge got wider after he left, because I had to assume basic responsibility for them after school until my mom came home from work, and my brother and sister never believed my authority as caregiver was earned (possibly because they could tell I didn't want it). Regardless, beginning even when they were still married, because the way their shifts at the casino worked, one of them was home, cooked a meal, and went to sleep while the other worked and then they switched, I was the one who taught the kids to tie their shoes and write their names and get ready for school in the morning. I was the one who checked homework a lot of the time. The divide between us got greater as the two of them joined forces against me. And it got even worse as my mom started making more and more comparisons between them and me as I excelled in school and various clubs, etc. I would hate me too if my whole life all I'd been hearing is "Why can't you be more like Maya?"

It dawned on me recently that my brother and sister have grown up into being real people. In my head, I still think of them as my little brother and sister, like they're kids. But they're not. The problem is, I don't know who those people they've grown up into are. We've spent so long being at odds that we don't remember how to play nice. I try to hang out with them and my sister usually just shuts down (it's like pulling teeth to get her to hug me, but sometimes we can talk about boys or college or the SATs for a little while), and my brother and I try to do something together but inevitably end up fighting (usually just verbally now, it used to be very very physically). I feel like I lost my chance with them. I feel like we're going to grow up to be like my mom and her siblings--two of them live less than 15 minutes from us, but she only really sees them on holidays (if my aunt even wants to come downstairs for holiday dinner) or when she needs something fixed and calls my uncle over. She and my other uncle don't even call each other on their birthdays. 

I think I explained it once as I'm part of a family that actually flees to various corners of the country to get away from each other. It's not actually that drastic, I suppose, but we are very spread out, and fairly isolated in our spreadedness, if that makes sense. There are 8 people related to me by blood in the state of New Jersey. 1 in Florida. 2 in California. An unknown number in Kentucky because my mother's father (whom she has never met) had other children who live there (and presumably have children of their own). I have never and will never meet any of them. An unknown number in and around Savannah, GA where my family seems to have lived since we were slaves. My grandmother was the first to leave when she took a job with American Airlines in Philadelphia shortly after my mother was born, then moved to NJ when the casinos opened in Atlantic City. This seems to have caused a giant rift in the family: from what I can gather, my grandmother has four siblings and only ever speaks to one of them. 

My grandmother lives 15 minutes from me, and her youngest children, my mom's little brother and sister, as well as my uncle's 11 year old son all live in her house, but we don't see them often. I haven't seen my grandmother in months. I called her on Mother's Day. And I love my Nana--she's one of my favorite people in my whole family. But I would feel entirely strange calling her out of the blue, when there is no specific purpose. I go to her house for holiday dinners or random family dinners and when the adults sit at the table and talk politics/history/gossip, and the kids run downstairs to watch TV and play video games, I sit by myself in the living room and read. This has always been my position. Besides my rediscovered ex-step-BROTHER, there's no one my age in my family. My brother and sister are 16 and 17, but out of habit and circumstance, I suppose, they hang out with the younger kids downstairs. I'm a loner in my family. I've never really quite felt like I fit. It's the same feeling I used to get when my mom would shake her head at me and say, "You're your father's daughter" and I could tell it wasn't a compliment. 

Long story short, there is a long legacy of my family simply breaking itself apart. We're there for each other in times of need--I could write an equally long post about all the things we're done for each other when help was needed, but all that day-to-day lovey-dovey family-game-night eating-together kind of stuff? It's not us. The first time I can ever remember my mother saying she was proud of me was as she was hugging me goodbye on move-in day freshman year at Princeton. It made me cry because I'd been working for those words for as long as I could remember. Our relationship has gotten so much better since we've been in separate places; sometimes I marvel at the fact that I laugh and joke on the phone with my mom like we're friends, or that I told her about my first date with my boyfriend, or that she's finally stopped yelling at me about grades and why aren't I trying harder. But when we're close enough to be in each other's hair again, we remember how much our styles of existence really just clash, and the animosity begins again. I spend most of my time at home sitting on the couch in my living room, because my sister has claimed our room as entirely her own and I frankly do not feel welcome there. I try to convince them to play games or watch movies: my sister is unresponsive, my mother says "maybe later" or tries and falls asleep, and my brother leaves halfway through because we get into a fight. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, right? 

I haven't seen the vast majority of my extended family in 7 years. That's a third of my life, and arguably the most important third. To a degree, they've become vague concepts in my head, shaped by the (usually bad) details I hear about their lives when the grown-ups are talking and shaking their heads. I'm sure I've become the same to them, the girl that goes to Princeton (and all the assumptions that come with that. Idk how true they are.) 

I think my family is why I'm not big on families. It's too easy to become a part of my family and too easy to lose that status. I am so sick of establishing familial connections to people and then having them snatched away--I will miss my mom's ex-boyfriend (who lived with us for 6 years and is arguably the closest thing to a normal father figure I have ever known) for the rest of my life. I may have gotten my brother back, but we'll never get the 7 years we'd lost each other for back. My family is transient. It changes so much I can't keep track of it. I don't even have my older sister's address. We're...not close. I recognize that it can be different, but I think my family was the first thing I ever learned to strive to be independent of, and I'm not sure I can ever shake that feeling. I don't know how being part of the kind of family that eats dinner together would feel: comforting or trapping? And I don't know if any changes I made could ever effect my family's overall structure. I suppose that's no reason not to try though, especially with the 8 of us in NJ. I should feel like I know my family. 

Moms are so adorably over-protective.

So I moved into my new house in New Brunswick today, and my mom is like, FREAKING OUT. She made sure all the downstairs windows were locked and checked the locks on both doors and tested my doorbell and turned the porch light on when she left at 6pm. She's not comfortable with me living by myself at all. She thinks the grocery stores in my neighborhood are too sketchy for me to shop at by myself, and in my head I'm thinking, if you could have SEEN the places I worked at in Chicago. But alas, it's probably good for both of us that she hasn't.

Anyway, as we were hanging up the phone tonight: "Sleep well, Mom." "I'll tryyyyyyy." *rolls eyes* "Mom, I'll be fineeeee." "What time do you think you'll get up in the morning?" "Why, do you want me to call you as soon as I open my eyes so you know I survived the night?" "YES!"

Moms. You gotta love 'em.

Yo, this actually happened to me last week!

http://thefreshxpress.com/2010/11/no-country-for-smart-girls-do-we-dumb-down-for-date/

 I was playing Scrabble with my mom and her new guy. Dude had been runnin his mouth for weeks talkin bout how his name is Paul but you can just call him Scrabble King *gags* and how we need to brush up on our game before we play him. So I mean, anyone who knows me knows ...I had to set the record straight. So he drew the closest letter to A (a friggin H) and got to go first and he made COAT on a double word score for a whopping 12 points. My mom made something for 13 points, and on my turn I make JOG with the J on a triple letter square for 27 points. Dude gives me this hella salty look like just because he thinks he's the shit means I can't show him up. I say, just as cool as you please, "I think I've made it clear that I don't like trash talkers." So the game goes on and in the end I blow him away, but he gets my mom by 10 points or something. Mommy makes him bow to me and call me Scrabble Queen *additional gagging* and he mumbles for the rest of the night about how he guesses it's okay for the Princeton mind to beat him, but at least Mommy didn't. And the next day, she was going off about how she's so mad we didn't both destroy him.

Now maybe I'm just unfamiliar with the flirting/dating ways of legitimate adults, but this does not seem like FRIENDLY competition to me. And dude needs a reality check if he thinks he can regularly take us.

Sigh, I was really hoping he'd be a legitimate opponent. But seriously, it's a game.

Thanks, Giving

I always chuckle to myself when folks call this Turkey Day

I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve always been a ham kind of girl.

I always wonder when folks call this Thanksgiving Day

who exactly I’m supposed to be thankful towards

For Jesus is someone else’s Lord and Savior, and I don’t

praise Allah either. My thanks are jokes to Life’s daily

demigods and I’d like something a bit more substantive

than thanking my lucky stars. The Universe just sounds like a

cop-out for people who don’t like the sound of God.

So who am I thanking?

My mother, for bringing me into this world and damn near

breaking her back every day to give me every inch of life she can spare?

The ex-stepfather I abhor, because if he hadn’t walked into my mom’s life

mine would have been displaced, my friends and family misplaced, a family

of two and two alone gone back to Georgia, my mom’s first home?

Georgia, where my family has lived since before we had a choice.

Should I thank my too-many-greats-to-count grandmother for surviving the passage

in the dank disease-infested bottom of that ship?  Or my grandfather

of the same generation for liking what he saw up on the auction block

enough to sneak away from his wife in the middle of the night  and

sell his daughter away when she was born with blonde hair and blue eyes?

Blonde hair and blue eyes, like some of my closest friends,

so should I thank the late Dr. King for taking the glory from everyone who’d

dreamt before him?  Chris Hall, my high school’s English Department Supervisor

for making me realize the dreams I’d dreamt weren’t lofty enough, that I was calling

a sledding hill a mountain when I had the tools to tackle Everest? Chris Burch,

my first sweetheart, for teaching me that sometimes it’s better when dreams don’t come true?

The admissions committee member that tossed me into the right pile, for reminding me that

sometimes, they do? Nene, for seeing what I was repressing and getting me involved?

India.Arie for reminding me to Slow Down and appreciate the Little Things, like

whoever instituted a monthly Soul Food Night at the Princeton Quadrangle Club?

Under chaos theory, tabula rasa, and the idea of alternate realities, should I thank everyone

 with whom I have ever crossed paths, for without them I might not be me? All six billion, eight-

hundred-eighty-four-million, thirty-seven thousand, eight-hundred-forty-six people on the planet,

because the world might somehow be different without one of them? Should I just thank myself,

or include things I simultaneously love and hate, like society and affirmative action, like my father? 

The power went out as we were warming the candied yams. I used my laptop as a flashlight during the

candles-and-matches-hunt, and as we joined hands to bless our candlelit Thanksgiving dinner, I realized

exactly how many people and things and bittersweet circumstances I have to be thankful for. They each

have their own masters, Gods, and engineers, and so today I will simply thank the ties that bind us all.

There's no compromise? my friend asks...

Not when it comes to money, there isn't. You either spend it on something or you don't. It goes on place or it doesn't. 

I was talking to my mom on the phone today. Nothing special, I do this often. But as ebay reminds me that there's little more than a month til Christmas, I asked her today what she would like for Christmas. She told me not to get her anything. RED ALERT: This is NOT how my family works. We don't say don't get me anything to be polite before we say what we really want. Holidays are HUGE in my family. Something is extremely amiss. So I said, what do you mean don't get you anything? It's Christmas, I have to get you something for Christmas. And she very kindly asked that I please don't, because she's not sure she'll be able to get anyone else anything for Christmas. She said to focus on my brother and sister instead, so they can have something for Christmas.

In my Intro to Black Women's Studies seminar tonight, we briefly discussed the not-really-contested fact that the black middle class in America may very well have disappeared by 2020. Yes, by ten years from now. A lot of my classmates were shocked. Hell, some were downright appalled! But me, I can totally believe it, because my mother basically told me today that unless a miracle happens and she hits the lottery or something, my family cannot afford to celebrate Christmas this year. 

I don't know how or with whom to articulate this. I don't know how to say that the family of a girl who goes to Princeton won't even have a tree to put non-existent presents under this year. I feel like I certainly can't talk to anyone here about this. I miss C so much. I could tell her this. She would understand, and she wouldn't judge me, and she would hold me while I cry and be real with me about how she went through this when she was younger and it has to get better. If I'm being totally honest with you about these things, sometimes I feel like things like this, and the fact that I've been on food stamps, and got free lunch for the vast majority of my childhood and adolescence, and know how it feels to have the water or the cell phone cut off due to nonpayment of the bill...these are things that remind me that part of me just really doesn't belong here.

I can't stop asking myself How much of this is my fault? What did I do to contribute to this? I feel like the world's most selfish, most ungrateful bitch. I'm in a fucking eating club. Unlike most people, my parents don't contribute to my eating club membership at all; I pay for the entire thing out of the money I get from the university. But if I wasn't in a club, if I got a meal plan in the dining hall, the extra nearly $3,000 would have gone from the university into my bank account. That's money I could have used to help my mom. I used my Mellon Mays stipend to buy posters and accessories for my room, and new sweaters and boots, and countless other things I didn't really need. That's money I could have used to bring Christmas to my household, single-handedly. Would I have? is a whole different can of worms, but I COULD have. 

Should I have?  Am I justified in being disgusted with myself and my actions right now? I could have been Santa. It's not my job, but I could have been Santa. 

BUT I ASKED HER. When I got my Mellon Mays check, I called my mom and asked if there was anything I could do to help out financially. She asked me to cover the $200ish cell phone bill for the family for the month, so our cell phones didn't get cut off and we all lose all forms of communication with the rest of the world. I said of course, and handled the transaction right then, while we were still on the phone. She never asked for anything again. 

I'm sure it must be embarrassing for her, having to come to her daughter for help financially. But if I have more disposable income than her, I should help, right? Does that mean that if I have the potential to have even MORE disposable income, I should take the actions that bring that about, no matter what? 

But I can't ignore that being in Quad has positively affected my overall Princeton experience SO MUCH. Real family notwithstanding, my Quad family is without a doubt one of the most important aspects of my life. They make me feel understood, and cared about, and loved on a day-to-day basis while I am here. They help keep me sane. I effectively gave up whole parts of my life for them. And part of me is SCREAMING that I am twenty goddamn years old, and bringing Christmas to my family is not my responsibility. I know that a big part of making it in the black community is giving back to the community, but I'm still an undergrad--I haven't made it yet! It's like...you know how when you're on an airplane, and the flight attendants give the spheel about safety, and you're supposed to make sure your oxygen mask is secure before you try to help other people with theirs? Does that still apply if you're sitting in between your mother, brother, and sister?

How can I reconcile what's best for me with what's best for them? How can I take care of myself mentally, physically, and emotionally and not feel as though I am neglecting them? Should I take on the responsibility of helping to keep them accustomed to the hanging-on-by-a-paycheck-but-always-somehow-able-to-make-it-work life we've been living for 20 years? And if so, how can I do that without running myself into the ground and giving up the things that keep me going? WHO COMES FIRST AND HOW DO I JUSTIFY IT BEING ME?   

...Am I a terrible human being for even asking that?