Big Scary Topic Time!

Three images:

A statistic: "while black women make up about 13 percent of the U.S. female population, they account for 30 percent of abortions performed in the U.S." This may be true--The Guttmacher Institute sounds kind of legit--but even so it results from a lot of systemic problems like the options presented to African-American women by both the heinous conditions of the cycle of poverty and government initiatives like Planned Parenthood, whose agents don't always tell women about all the choices they have.

And a confession that I am not comfortable with: When it came time for the ex and I to talk about protection and whether we'd been appropriately safe, one of my very first thoughts was What makes him think I would keep it, anyway? I legitimately stopped and looked around to see who could possibly have thought that, because it certainly couldn't have been moi. ...But it was. Almost instantaneously. From some place deep within me that I didn't know existed. And it was unequivocally the truth. If by some incredibly unlikely series of unfortunate mishaps happened that caused both of our forms of protection to fail and me not to notice in time to take a Plan B pill and I found out I was pregnant, I who have always been pro-life (having been a perfect candidate for abortion myself) to the point of the most heated of debates with people I love and respect, would not have carried the pregnancy to term. Although there are some who would argue that if all that happened to get me pregnant, I was "meant to have" this hypothetical child, I don't believe in anyone who's up there making up "meant to"s, and in that instant I understood the right to a choice. The right to not have my entire world turned upside down irrevocably. The right to live my life by my design. The right to not be screwed over after having tried to be safe. The right to not be sacrificed to a biological system I never asked for. The right to bring children into this world when (if ever) I am ready for them in every way, and not a moment sooner.

Go ahead and call me a hypocrite. I feel like one. My only defense is that I didn't understand until I could legitimately see it happening to me and could visualize all the other lives that would be affected (ruined?) by such an accident. If we had done everything we could and been failed by that which we relied on, I just...I couldn't give up my whole life, everything I've worked for. I've come so far. I don't even like kids. And I know what it is to grow up and feel like you ruined your mother's life, what it is to have a single mother who wasn't ready for you, what it is to be afraid to get too close to the men your mother brings into your life because there's no telling how long they'll be around. And come on, me, with a kid? I AM A GROWN-ASS WOMAN KID! 

...So why do I feel like such a bad person?    

Confessions:

Small font because I'm whispering this:the hardest part about not hating him is that I have no reason not to still like him.

There. I said it. I know I'm not supposed to. I know this isn't a positive step forward in the healing process. I [think I] know it's a waste of my time. I know all my hardcore feminist friends are shaking their fists and lamenting my lack of pride right now. But silly hearts, they don't listen to heads very well. And my silly heart keeps wondering exactly how wrong it is to continue to be lovers if you aren't in love. K says married people do it all the time. Idk which option is sadder.

But then I remember that everyone deserves relationships that are equal partnerships, in which each partner is getting as much as s/he is giving and visa versa. Everyone deserves equal rankings in the priorities hierarchy. So even though right now I almost feel like if we had just a) listened to each other and b) been straightforward with each other from the beginning, we might have been on the same page the whole time, you can't go from trying to reach grown-person concepts like love and devotion to just trying to have fun and enjoy each other's company. #Lifedoesn'tworklikethat #That'sjustnothealthy

But [insert womp-womps here] #Knowingthatdoesn'tchangehowIfeel  

More songs because music makes the world go round:

 #WhatI'mtryingtobeabletomeanwhenIsayit

(I just mean the goodbye part. He's kind of intense.)

#ExceptmaybeIshouldbesayingthis

#AndwhatIactuallymeanisthis

Even smaller font because I don't even like admitting this to myself: It was easy to say that even if I knew then what I know now, I would do this again. That's still true. It's a lot harder to say that knowing what I know about everything that happened here, I'd still rather not let this go. But, silly little heart, you a) have to stop being selfish, and b) can't always get what you want. 

Continuing the confessions that are really hard to make: I'd never been treated so well in my whole life. That will be the hardest thing to let go of, I think. 

More confessions

1. I am very easily impressed and turned on by men who cook for me. Like, the actual physical process of watching a man prepare me a meal from scratch...*melts*

2. I'm really happy that shit didn't get weird between me and J, and that he still thinks we're close enough friends that he can make dinner for me and J***. 

3. That being said, I can't yet handle hanging out with him and his new girlfriend, which is sad because I think she's really cool. But she came over after dinner and I had no idea she was coming and as soon as she got there I felt like someone had injected me with a giant shot of awkward and I was actually dying to rush out of there.

Confession: As much as I hate to admit this, because it makes me feel like a slut, if he'd played along Saturday night, his first view of my room would have been from pressed against the wall or in my bed. But he didn't, and as such, as I was wandering drunkenly back to my room at 2 AM, I started mumbling to myself about wishing he was with me. 


...I don't know if it was just because I saw him and then got drunk and wanted someone, or if it is actually him I want.

Confession #next: the first time I saw him once we got back to campus, and he hugged me and I felt his hands on the small of my back again, I finally understood what people mean when they talk about their knees going weak.


...It's just, weak from a desire that is specific or generalizable? That is the question.

I like making random confessions on here...

Confession: Vintage arcade games like Pong, Tetris, and Centipede still absolutely fascinate me.

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Twenty-Seven: To the friendliest person you knew for only a day

If you told me your name then, I've forgotten it, but this letter is to you anyway,

You took one look at me and knew I didn't belong anywhere near the 47th Street Green Line stop. You were nice enough to not come right out and say it, though. I think you asked what time it was. I was reading, the same book I just finished, I think, (confession: I believe that, subconsciously, I only read that book because the narrator sounded just like *******. I think it's the whole learned-English-in-Kenya thing; their sentence structure is almost identical in its roundabout elegance.) and I recall being slightly perturbed that you kept talking to me. (Sorry.) You asked if I was waiting for a train, and I told you I'd just gotten off one; I was waiting for a friend. You were waiting rather impatiently for another train; you'd been waiting for a long time already. You made me aware of how much time I spent in Chicago waiting; writing this now, I think about how much of our lives we spent waiting. (This is totally unrelated, by my new favorite random fact is that, according to a Dentyne Ice commercial, the average person will spend 20,000 minutes of their life kissing.) You laughed at how long I thought the trip would take, because the Green Line is 'real fast', but warned that it would take longer if my friend was coming from farther north than Roosevelt. You asked where we were going, and marveled at the nice area our barbeque was being held in. You let me know where the bus stop we'd need to get on was, and about how far we had to go. I wouldn't normally talk to someone sitting near me at a train station, but you were relentless in leading this conversation, and until your train finally came, you were really great company. It was also pretty reassuring knowing exactly where I was going once I left the station, and I think my friend was impressed. You even told me to be careful and to have fun when you were getting on your train, and it wasn't condescending at all because I'm pretty sure you were a few years younger than me...just a LOT more street smart. 


Anyway, I never said thanks. :)


Maya

Confession #next: My father just said that phone calls with me are the only ones he looks forward to. I didn't say anything in response. How could I, when phone calls with him feel like one of my least favorite chores?

I hate saying that, but it's the truth. I think it's impossible for me to see his name on the Caller ID without thinking oh, great. And I don't know how to change that. I don't know how to stop dreading having to talk to him. I don't know how to make talking to him something I want to do. I don't really even have faith that there is a way to find. 

I. love. my. father. I just...don't have much to say to him. There's not much going on in my life for the next five weeks. The answer to all his questions is "nothing", and it seems pointless to call him just to say that over and over again. And I don't feel like listening to him try to make everything seem better than it is. He gets on my last damn nerve sometimes, and I just don't want to have to deal with it.

He leaves me in such a bad mood sometimes. *sigh*

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Twenty-Three: To the Last Person You Kissed

Dear *******,

Confession: I was on a half-hearted mission to kiss someone else before today, because I really didn't want to have to write to you again. It obviously failed, which isn't that surprisingly cuz it had been a damn long time before you.

Maybe this is just the next stage of my crazy overemotionality, but now I keep telling myself I just want to be over you. I hate not being able to say I'm over it. I hate this standstill we've been in. I was kind of expecting it, but I was expecting you to be at a standstill with everyone. So seeing you communicate with our friends and never so much as nod at me, it hurts. And while I can't ask you what happened to make everything change, I just blame myself. And that sucks. So I want to be rid of you.
But even as I type those words I know they're not really true. I just want to think about what happened as a past with a possibility, not as anything that guarantees a future. I'm just not really sure how to do that. I swear I'm trying, though. God, I even signed up for this dumb online dating site to try to find myself something to distract me from you while I'm laying around for the next five weeks.
I used to get all these great signals from you, and it made me feel so good. You made me feel so good. But now I don't get ANY signals from you, no communication whatsoever, and dammit I wanna know why. Maybe this is selfish, but I feel like I deserve that. If it's my fault I can handle that...I just don't want to let this go without at least talking about it. Can we agree to that? Please?


-My

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Fourteen: To Someone You've Drifted Away From

Dear *******,

Confession #1: If I'd just met you recently, I wouldn't be your friend. In fact, I think part of me would scoff at the idea of us being friends, because when it comes to the things that shouldn't be important but totally are, you're totally not on my level.

 But lucky (?) for us, I didn't just meet you recently. I met you what seems like a zillion years ago on the new playground at our elementary school, and truth be told, I didn't pay much attention to you then. A few years later a giant hole was ripped out of my life, and you stepped in to fill it. The rest is, as they say, history. 

I've been saying this for years, but sometimes I really doubt that history is enough to push us through. I know it's supposed to be Breakfast at Tiffany's and we only need that one thing, but I...need to feel like there's a reason we're a "we" now, besides the fact that we have been for the last 8 years or so.

When I first started feeling this way, we used to fight all the time. And I hate us fighting; it's like you're so huge and critical a part of my life and my memory that when something is wrong with "us", little pieces of my whole world come crashing down around me and everything is a bit shakier. I know it's not like that for you, and it never has been. I can accept that. We don't fight as much now anymore, and when we do, it's less vocal and full of cursing each other out and other terribleness. Now we'll just go a few days without talking to one another until one of us assumes we have both cooled down enough to apologize without fully meaning it and keep on keepin on. 

Confession #2: Sometimes I really miss those loud violent fights, because they at least showed that we still cared. Sometimes I feel like this new way is like it's not even important enough to waste the energy, which frightens me.

Confession #3: Do you ever feel like we're faking it? Like we're trying to make ourselves fit into roles we've outgrown and pasts that have grown fuzzy and misshapen? 

We don't do the things we used to do anymore. I can't believe we used to talk on the phone for hours every single day and now I can't even remember the last time I called you. But on the flipside, you used to almost never come over and now I joke about getting you a key to the house. So maybe this is just the natural next step to our relationship. We gain ground some places, and lose ground in other places...maybe it balances itself out. I still love you with as much of my heart as I can spare, and I'm going to keep telling the little voice in the back of my head that sometimes wonders do we even like each other anymore? to  because you're always going to have that place in my heart, okay?

There are things I hate about this place we're in now. I hate that I don't know any of your other friends anymore. I realize it's just because of the way our lives are organized now, but it sometimes kind of makes me feel like the significant other you don't want anyone to know about. I hate that I feel like you're growing up so much faster than me now. I think I did my growing up faster before we knew each other. I hate that there are silences in our conversations both online and in-person, and I find myself wondering if they're comfortable or not. I hate that voice in the back of my head that questions us, and I want to convince it that it doesn't need to. 

Help me out by taking me on an adventure, k? Help me by really being you around me, and I'll really be me around you, and we'll find a new kind of friends to be, since we're not the people we were when we were BFFs.

I love you and I miss you and I'll see you when we both get back to Jersey,

Maya

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Ten (A Day Late): To Someone You Don't Talk to as Much as You'd Like to

Computer fiasco last night=I'm sorry this is late.

Dear ***,

(I can't believe this was) Four years ago, we exchanged handwritten letters--which, being so high school, we referred to solely as "notes"--every single day, and without ever agreeing to do this, we both kept every single one. 

Confession #1: I don't have all of them anymore. In a fit of trying not to be so ridiculously emotional and sentimental, I sorted them down to the most meaningful, the ones nearest and dearest to my heart, and tucked them into my high school memories box. And then, after kissing my fingers and placing them on the top of the shoebox, I picked the remaining ones up and threw them into the giant trashbag that most of my bedroom went into last summer. It was a horrendously painful experience, and I wrote a poem about it after...I felt like I owed it to you. I really and truly hope you no longer have all of mine, or I'm going to feel like an ass for the rest of my life.

Confession #2: I think that I have written 28 poems for/about/relating to you, the vast majority of which were written in the span of about a year and a half. I won't claim that they're all good or even that they should all survive into the future, but they're there. And I'm pretty confident that no one's ever going to beat that, so feel special. (Heh. Feel special. That's what I was always trying to get you to do, right?)

Back to this letter thing though: four years ago, that was our relationship. And now almost every day I sit on my computer and look at your name on my buddy list or my skype contacts and I want to click it and say hi to you. I really do. But I never know what would come after hi, how've you been? And the one thing I hate more than not talking to someone is trying and failing to talk to them...it would make me think about all the things in our friendship that have died since those days. And that would be sad.

It's weird though because I feel like on the RARE occasion that we're both free at the same time and can hang out, then things aren't as weird as I expect them to be. We can sometimes fall back into this semblance of how it used to be, especially if we're in a larger group, and it makes me really happy. 

So I guess the point of this letter was to say hey, I kind of miss you. One of these days I'm gonna say hey, and I hope we have something cool to talk about, because you're kind of a cool person. (Except last summer you kind of started to scare me. I hope that anti-you phase is over, pleaseandthankyou.) I really hope we get to hang out once I get home, because right now you're like, an example of how growing up so often means growing apart, and that makes me saddddd. So let's stop that, k?

<3 (Heh, you're the one who introduced me to <3),

My

PS--Hah, it's funny that I was worried about writing this on here because you follow me, but then I remembered that I used to hand you my diary every day. Oh life.