I got hit on walking home from the train station tonight

and I finally got to say, "[Sketchy dude,] I'm not talking to you because I don't think my BOYFRIEND would appreciate it." I've wanted to be able to use that line of deflection without lying for years, haha. (In fact, random story time: I once used to carry around a picture of my best guy friend in my wallet and tell this creepyish guy in my freshman year world history class in high school we were dating so he would stop asking me out. hehe)

In case you were wondering, he seemed taken aback for a moment, then looked at me again and said, "You right, you right. I wouldn't either...*he keeps talking but by this point I have walked away*" 

Possibly the weirdest thing recent circumstances have changed:

The arrival of my period is now something to be anticipated and internally celebrated, recognized as an accomplishment of some sort, rather than dreaded and seen as a curse. It's very strange for it to suddenly serve a purpose, even if that purpose is to tell me the same thing it's been telling me every 29ish days for the last 11 years. Of course, that yay I'm glad it's here feeling vanishes as soon as the first cramp comes and then I want it to be over ASAP like always, but hey. Gotta take the bad with the good.

"There was no system to soothe the unfairness of things; justice was without scope; it might snag the stealer of chickens, but great evasive crimes would have to be dismissed because, if identified and netted, they would bring down the entire structure of so-called civilization. For crimes that took place in the monstrous dealings between nations, for crimes that took place in those intimate spaces between two people without a witness, for these crimes the guilty would never pay. There was no religion and no government that would relieve the hell."

--Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

Yesterday as I was walking to the Princeton Public Library to get books because I've redeveloped my bookwormish ways, I saw a little girl walking next to her grandma and a youngish guy who was either her older brother or her dad, it was unclear. That's not important. The girl couldn't have been more than 2 and a half or so. All of a sudden she says to her grandma, "I don't wanna walk." And her grandma just picked her up and started carrying her on her hip. And for a small moment I wanted to be a small child again.

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.

My life is such a strange mixture of childhood and adulthood.

I suppose I should expect that, based on everything I learned doing my independent work this year, but the degree to which my lived experiences mirror/exceed what I found in my research still strikes me.
I guess part of this feeling stems from being back home for these past two weeks. It's so easy to feel like no time at all has passed as I slip back into familiar roles with my mom, my brother and sister, my friends from high school, my town as a concept. It's so easy to do all the familiar comfortable old things again: friends' houses that haven't changed in recent memory, the same old mall, the same old bowling alley, the same pink house we park next to when we go to the beach. Home is...comfortable, like a favorite sweatshirt, but also makes me feel as though I haven't aged. 
Except now I can drink...legally. Which means I get to see my hometown/the surrounding area in one new light: that of the local bar scene. I can find out today that I got an A on my JP (!!!) and then hit up happy hour at Applebee's with my bestie for drinks and not get carded and simply enjoy life. I can enjoy an amaretto sour from the bar at the bowling alley I've been going to since I was so little I had to squat and push the ball on the floor with both hands to get it down the lane. 
And that's not the only thing that reminds me I'm an adult. I sent my landlord (!) the check for my first month's rent (!) at the place in New Brunswick I'm subletting yesterday. I'm embarking on the process of buying a netbook to replace my computer that got stolen. I'm a real person, I promise. 
And yet I bought sidewalk chalk and a water gun from Five Below this week. When I went to fill out my I-9 because I have a job on campus this summer, the woman at the Financial Aid office didn't know how to fill out the form because I'd brought a non-driver ID instead of a license, because I don't have one. Sure I'm moving out to live in a house on my own for the first time (even temporarily), but my mom is still driving me and all my shit. 
I just feel so in-between in so many ways. But I've learned that that's how I'm SUPPOSED to feel right now, that that's what your twenties are for, so I guess I'm on the right track. This growing up thing is so hard.   

Where do I live?

On Monday when my friend T and I went shopping, a cashier at New York and Company looked up my account and exclaimed, "My, you're in [the computer database] a lot! What's your address?" I stammered, wondering what was the most appropriate answer. I told her I was a college student, that was complicated. She said okay, Mays Landing, Princeton, or Chicago? I told her to get rid of Chicago, but I chuckled because New Brunswick will be added to that list soon. I really hate incidents like this, where I have to tell someone where I live. Where I am is rarely where I'm from, it's also rarely where I'll be for very much longer, and that makes me feel...slightly homeless. 

Skype: A Double-Eged Sword

Sometimes I wonder if this distance thing would have been easier or harder if we were doing it 20 years ago before the internet and text messages. Sometimes I feel like all these various means of making the distance feel not as far just make it feel even farther. 

Take, for example, skype. Skyping with him makes me simultaneously deliriously happy and really really sad. I feel like I smiled more in the hour I just spent talking to him than I did in the past four days since we last Skyped. He has that effect on me. But while talking to him face to face(ish), seeing his smile and hearing his voice and remembering how much I love his laugh...while all of those things make me feel soooo good, feel like the distance doesn't matter so much...at the same time it shows me just how far apart we really are. Because if I can see him and I can hear him then dammit, I should be able to hold him. Not being able to touch him while I'm talking to him is the hardest thing to get used to. I miss him so much more when all I can do is blow him a kiss goodnight and close my computer screen and ready myself for the next night in my longggggg series of nights alone.

The ability to see him while I'm talking to him is still absolutely priceless, though. I'm glad I have the chance. Even on this crappy computer that I'm dealing with since mine got stolen. Even if we basically just talk about our mundane lives. Even though it makes the desire to feel him nearly unbearable. Because no one else makes me smile for an hour. This sadness I feel when I say goodbye to him again...it's a sunshower. Does not detract from the overall joy.

New Summer Goal: Learn to Do Things with My Hair

I always hear lots of my friends who are natural talk about how much they love the versatility of their hair. Now I'm not down for versatility when that word means heating my hair or hiding it under a wig/weave, but I've come to realize that wearing my hair in the same totally free unstyled way it naturally falls, while easy and convenient and cute...is kind of boring. 
When I first went natural, it was like I'd started a new love affair with the fuzzy black spirals growing out of my head. I was always trying to find the best product, the best technique...but once I found a regiment that worked for me I fell back, only trying a new product or toy for my hair on rare occasions. My hair has become one of my most defining features over the course of the last 16 months since I decided to go and stay natural--people who meet me now, when they see pictures of my old straightened hair, don't understand how that ever could have been me. My curly fro is me. 
And I love that. But I am anything but static and predictable. I love being a wash-and-go kind of girl, but some days that has to leave room for some styling. I want to change it up sometimes. The basic fro will always be there, don't worry, but I wanna...play with it a little. I already have a bunch of combs, bobby pins, and headbands...I rarely use them. But now, this summer, I will have them at the ready. I will scour the interwebs for naturals with similar hair textures whose styles I love, and I will try to emulate them. Maybe I will add my own twists/flair. It's gonna be an adventure!

Summer is here! (I'm backkkk)

I did something totally and completely unheard of yesterday. Something I haven't done since the early days of high school sometime, when going to the beach/pool was a once-or-twice-a-summer occurrence and didn't really warrant any worrying or forethought. Something that even then, was only really done in front of my family, who wouldn't judge me too hard. 

I, Maya Reid, of sound mind and body, wore a two-piece bathing suit. And I'm not talking about a tankini or a little skirted thing--full on bright blue bikini. PUBLICLY. To the beach. In front of people I haven't seen in years and people I'm very close to. And total strangers I'll never see again. And besides being worried that every single wave was going to result in my boobs popping out of that halter top--(d-cup bikinis from dELIA*s are totally not designed for anyone with actual d-cups. Fyi. Anyone know where a busty woman can get a bikini that won't try to flash everyone as soon as it gets wet?), I wasn't nervous or embarrassed. I had brought along my old skirted one-piece in case I felt uncomfortable, but I never even thought about changing into it! And yeah, maybe the other girls who were with me in bikinis were skinny little athletic bitches, but it didn't matter. Because I felt comfortable in my own skin. And it has been a long time since I've been able to say that and really mean it.


I think the single most valuable thing that I've gained this semester/year/a little bit every day is confidence. It's the thing I remember lacking most severely in high school and one of the biggest changes I can see in myself over the last year or two. Emotionally, intellectually, physically...I'm not scared anymore. So what if I cry at everything and get emotionally attached ridiculously quickly? So what if my ideas don't match yours--the world would be boring if no one ever argued or played devil's advocate. So what if I'm not a size two and my hip bones don't protrude from my body like all the bikini models? All that stuff isn't me. I'm me. And I'm happy being me. I love me. And somebody else loves me. There's something about being loved like that that makes me feel beautiful in a way that can't be messed up by a lack of makeup or bed-head or an overabundance of curves--he's helped me bridge the gap between feeling like beauty is something I do and realizing that beauty is something I am. So if I had any haters yesterday, fuck y'all. I'm beautiful. 

A Failed Experiment in Femininity

I did a very uncharacteristic thing yesterday. Well, I suppose it started two days ago, really. I was sitting in class daydreaming about the-booskie-and-I's upcoming trip to Broadway, trying to put an outfit together in my head, and I got the random desire to paint my nails for the trip. Then, instead of stepping back and asking myself wtf was happening to me, like I did when I thought a frilly floral nightgown was cute, I actually went to CVS and bought not only nail polish, but clippers and a file too. Then I sat down for over half an hour yesterday morning and painted my nails, trying very hard to get them just right, and feeling more and more frustrated the longer I spent attempting perfection. Eventually I had to leave for class, so I blew on my nails like I've seen my sister do and headed out the door. 
My fingers looked...foreign as I typed notes in class. I couldn't decide whether it was good or bad, it was just very very different. I kept inspecting my hands, as if trying to make sure they were still mine, during lunch, and K noticed and asked me what I was doing. I told him I'd painted my nails, and J commented about how I was trying to impress my man, or something to that effect. K grabbed my hand to inspect my nails, and chuckled at my apparent inability to do this simple feminine task. Even J said we were going to have to work on my nail painting skills. K said they were "uneven", and scoffed when I tried to describe how difficult it was. Dab and make a line. Repeat. It sounded so simple when he said it.
So I went back to my room and took it off (well, most of it. Some got stuck in like, the crevices of my fingernails and wouldn't come out no matter how much nail polish remover I used...) and began to try again. Dab and make a line. Repeat. But how to deal with the giant glob that comes out on the first dab? Remove. Try shaking excess off before making the first line. Now it looks streaky. Remove. *Gives up*
This painting my nails business just seemed like a crazy new trying-to-be-a-girl endeavor that I shouldn't have been embarking on. I kind of liked the way it looked, while simultaneously recognizing that painted nails did not seem like Maya in any way. I don't understand where these new stereotypically feminine desires are springing from; does simply having a boyfriend inspire some inherent need to be overwhelmingly girly? I'm practicing emphasized femininity, to use a fancy term I learned in class. He obviously didn't initially like me for my particularly feminine ways...this is coming from inside me somewhere, and I don't know how I feel about it.

Numbers are powerful.

It's crazy how a simple date on the calendar can have such strong associations with it, no matter how much time has passed since the occurrences you're remembering. It's funny how much people and relationships and circumstances can change in just a few years. 

It's Pi Day! In high school, this was a day I spent weeks and weeks planning for. I had pi day t-shirts and fell asleep listening to recordings of myself reading the digits to help me learn as many as possible. I designed a two-man three-legged pi race, that I like to believe is still being used today. I was the freaking President of the Math Club. People laugh so hard when I tell them that here, because I've run far far away from math and the natural/physical sciences. 

It's also my friend T's birthday. He eats pie on his birthday instead of cake; he doesn't actually like cake, which seems appropriate. We're not as close as we used to be, but today opens this little floodgate of memories of when we were best friends. We were part of this big group of people that used to be my whole world, and it's crazy that now they're people I see a few times a year at best. It's a little sad. 

So today I'll watch funny videos of Pi Days of yesteryear, and contemplate getting to know my friends again.

I really don't want my whole blog to start revolving around him, but

he asked me the other day when I realized I liked him, and I rushed my answer a little then. I want to explain it better. 

Dear You,
I won't lie; pipe-cleaner heart was a bit of a shock. But it was one of the most pleasant shocks of my entire life, and above that it was incredibly intriguing. I instantly popped into my room and fell back on my bed and twirled it around in my hand and contemplated how incredibly different receiving this felt from receiving another Valentine earlier in the day. This was full of giddy excitement; this required concocting a plan to get to know you better. 

That plan started with inviting you to drink and chill with some fellow Dranglers and I on Valentine's Day night, but inviting you late enough that it didn't seem like I'd put too much forethought into it. K said taking the initiative like that might be bad, but I don't like being told I can't, so I did. And you came, and I stopped cuddling with my gay boys to sit next to you. And then a day or two later you came to Quad to study, and I did something for you that I've never done for anyone other than K before--I left my desk for you, just like I left my snuggles for you, because I wanted to be close to you more than I wanted to lay claim to the things that were mine. And you stayed with me til we were tired, and then you walked me home again, and at my door I hugged you and began to wonder. 

When we basically did a rinse and repeat a few days later, I knew something was officially up. And we were walking back to my building, I was wondering whether three walks home warranted a kiss on the cheek, but I chickened out when we actually reached my front step. The same thing happened at four. Confession: You may not realize this, because it hasn't really happened with you, but I am notorious for being a scared little bitch when it comes to guys. I can hold my own in almost any other situation, but my heart is usually too terrified of breaking to even step out on the ledge, let alone take the fall. I had to fight my heart out onto the ledge for you. I did it because this is...different. But I'm getting ahead of myself now.

But somewhere around that fourth time, the Social Chairs sent out an email saying we were going to have this members only event before the party on Saturday: 80s Prom Date Night. We'd be paired off and compete against other pairs for the title of prom king and queen. And while dates would mostly be random, if we emailed N we could rig the system. And as soon as I read that, I knew I wanted to be paired with you. That's the answer I gave you, the moment I realized I liked you. But it's more complicated than that.

Realizing that I want to do something cute like rig the system is one thing. Actually emailing N to ask her to sign me up with you was another entirely, but I wouldn't let myself chicken out of it, because more than just thinking this would be cute, I couldn't stand the idea of being paired with some random soph and seeing you with someone else. I wanted to be your 80s prom date. So I emailed her, and then I started pretty intensely researching 80s fashion, because despite actually hating the 80s, I wanted to show you that I cared about this. And seeing you walk in with that wig to rival my fro, I knew that being my date meant as much to you as it did to me, and a small part of me was honored. I didn't care that we didn't win any of our events; I was on your team and that was all that mattered. When the party actually started, you reminded me that dancing with you makes me feel beautiful. And when you suggested we slow dance like this was middle school, I almost melted. When I felt your lips meet my collarbone, my knees nearly gave out. 


This was different. And that's a long story, but I'm not done yet. You don't know how much of a mess I was in the 14-ish hours between our two conversations that Tuesday. We'll talk about it someday, maybe. Being a mess isn't the part I want to talk about now. The fact that I pushed through being a mess and retreating to calling boys stupid and blaming myself to talk to you again--that I, miss hides-and-cries-under-the-covers-until-the-world-gets-less-scary when it comes to guys, sought out a potentially crushing experience--that I couldn't be right with myself until I had talked to you again, and figured out what had gone wrong and why, that's how I knew I really liked you. That's how I know this is different, because I avoid conflict with guys like THE PLAGUE. But not with you, even though I was terrified...because depending on when you started counting, it had been somewhere between three days and two weeks, but I already knew that I wanted this to work. It took every ounce of strength and willpower I have, but I pushed myself and fought myself for you. That's how I knew I liked you in a different way that I've ever liked anyone else. 


<3

Moral of the untold story:

A) John Mayer may be a terrible terrible human being, but he's right about one thing: 

Talk it out. Get your thoughts off your chest, or you'll never feel...right. Don't lose the moment before you can fix things.

B) On a related note, don't assume the worst when something bad happens. It might not be as bad as you think.
C) I have fantastic friends. They give great advice, even especially when I don't want to take it (well, about most aspects of situations, at least), and I should listen to them more often.
D) I need to stop being a little bitch about the things that are important to my personal life. I'll raise my voice and scream and yell about like, injustices in the world, or academic problems, or problems in my friends' lives, but I'm usually too chicken to deal with issues in my own personal life with anything but ridiculous levels of (defensive) anger or semi-sincere apology. Now that I've seen firsthand what can happen when I have the balls to be honest about how I feel and what I want, that has to end. 
E) Life is full of surprises, man. 


That is all.

An addition to the list of things I really can't stand...

The malicious invasion of privacy at the hands of someone you considered a friend. Not necessarily even a particularly close friend; even just someone you thought you were cool with.
Princeton can be so difficult when you're a minority in every way. When your entire adjustment process consists of how to stop feeling so conspicuously different whenever you walk into a room. Not everyone--in fact, I would argue that perhaps not even the majority--of such people ever learn how to blaze an appropriate path between self-segregation and self-denying-integration, how to navigate Princeton's cultural landscape in ways that leave them feeling truly happy and fulfilled. I have always considered my friend R to be one of the few that has done this successfully. I have always looked up to him as an example of what I want my experience here to be like: breaking down the posts of the fence separating social spheres, being an example of what it means to embrace diversity without neglecting to take time for solidarity and brotherhood. 
I suppose "They" were right when they said the grass is always greener on the other side, though. Maybe he never actually broke any posts down to make a doorway; maybe he's been trapped on this fence for years, never really getting a foot on the ground on either side. Maybe I am too?
What are you supposed to do when you dedicate your life and heart and soul to an institution and your efforts go systematically unrecognized? What do you do when you construct your life around creating a family out of people you've met only recently, embrace a new identity regardless of its problematic history (and semi-isolate yourself from your brothers in so doing), only to get all the love you've poured into this thing thrown back in your face by a few members of the family you've worked so hard to be an integral part of? This isn't what he was working for. This is not what WE are working for. Regardless of sobriety levels, disrespect is disrespect. Banter is not cute when it is no longer immediately recognizable as playful. Time, love, dedication, sacrifice...these things are too precious to have thrown back at us. 
We are still waiting for the day when the world--when even our friends in the world--recognize that one can be intellectually interested in something without identifying with it; or even that a truly open and spiritually connected human being should be able to identify with the emotions and difficulties of any other human being, by virtue of nothing more than their shared human experience. We are still waiting for tolerance. We are still waiting for respect. We fight for this institution every day, in every possible way...when will it stop fighting us? How can I reconcile my love for this institution with the raw...hurt, anger, and downright betrayal I feel on his behalf? How do I show that I stand with him without marginalizing myself within this family I love so much? Should I even try to keep him from disowning us? Is there any reason to?

Thoughts from the Black Solidarity Conference

What I scribbled down during two particularly hard to sit through panels:
I hate when ppl interchange race and culture. Blackness in this country is inherently multicultural. Some of us were not raised by black communities. A growing percentage of Caribbean or African individuals are grouped with multigenerational African-Americans, and how does that interact with culture? Their culture is linguistic, is international, is full of persons who look and sound and think like them. They are from somewhere they don't want to lose. I can only trace my family back as far as Savannah, Georgia. What does that do to black "culture"? How do we cross those ties to present a unified front, and do we even want to? I like rock better than hip-hop, under most circumstances. I did not know what it meant to dream of fish. My blackness is an identity, but rarely stems from a cultural framework.

 [later]

 I don't know why I keep coming to this conference. I can't reconcile my conflicting understandings of what solidarity amongst black peoples with my own personal strivings and the characteristics of my soul. I go to these lectures and participate in these discussions, but I...I never feel like they're talking to/about me. I don't like saying this; in fact, it hurts me to say this, but I don't really feel "black enough" to be here--not by the normative (and frankly, quite stereotypical) definition of blackness being presented. So many people equate race with culture, race with class, race with mindsets, race with academic interests...black peoples are amongst the most multifaceted, diverse peoples on the face of the planet. There is no way to group multigenerational (my-ancestors-were-slaves-and-slavemasters-on-both-sides-of-my-family) black Americans with recent African- or Caribbean immigrants from a cultural perspective; there is increasingly little room to group even MAAs by culture when you factor in things like class and educational attainment. You are isolating huge pockets of black peoples by equating blackness with hip-hop or the South or underclass values. You are dividing us by talking about giving back to the black communities we came from, because we do not all come from such communities. Sometimes I feel like, while I identify as a black person, not all black people would even consider identifying with me, because through multigenerational oppression and internalization of racist interpretations, the masses of black peoples have stopped associating blackness with school, with the Ivy League, with graduate education, with the academy and the professoriate class. I'm rambling here, but what I'm trying to say is sometimes groups of black people make me feel like as much of an outsider--if not more--than people I'm supposedly not supposed to have anything in common with. Princeton is my first black community. How does that let me fit into "solidarity"? Why does being here make me wonder what the fuck I'm doing here? How can we celebrate diversity in solidarity--the classic sociologist Emile Durkheim says that social solidarity, in an organic and productive sense, can arise only out of diversity--painting a monotone portrait of black collegiate America as is presented at this conference does violence to the concept of solidarity. It makes me feel nothing but excluded, and even worse, it makes me think that whoever is in charge of our togetherness hasn't even considered me. 

xkcd knows my life.

I wish I could define gender, and sexuality, and race, and age, and life stage, like the girl in this comic defines being a grown-up...

smdh

...Ex-step-grandmother's sister, I don't know how to tell you this, but...a) you are NOT my cousin, and b) I WILL NOT BE YOUR FRIEND ON FACEBOOK.

the end.

In Honor of Today

PS, Sorry I stopped showing love to you, blog. We will remedy this soon.