#awkwardblkgrl

(Reblogged from come correct)

I hate small talk.

You've never heard of my hometown and I know nothing about yours. Our majors are like foreign languages to each other. We might have a hobby or an interest in common, but it's probably not going to inspire long in-depth conversation. You will, at best, make me chuckle lightly or do that laugh-like thing where I blow air out of my nose. I will smile at you, but in my head I am giving you major side-eye and wondering how to stop talking to you without seeming rude. The next time I see you, I will give you a high-pitched "Heeyyyy!" and maybe one of those fake hugs where you try to touch the other person as little as possible. Because now you have fallen into my least-favorite of relationship-zones. You are an

acquaintance.

I hate acquaintance-ships. I hate the superficiality and the asking "How have you been" when I don't actually give a shit. I will feign sympathy if something unfortunate has happened, or tell you how awesome x-really-cool-thing-that-happened-to-you is, but...again, I just want to get out of there. It's not really anything you did; I just don't know you well enough to really want to have conversations with you. 

The problem, though, is this is a bit of a cyclical problem. I find acquaintance-ships to be so generally awkward that it's hard for me to put enough time/effort into them for them to blossom into friendships. And it's not that I don't like having friends--I love my friends! They are the most important people in my life, always have been. They put up with all my crazy and I <3 them for it. They're also generally pretty great people. But like, I know that other people out there in the world are also probably pretty great, and that I might like to be friends with them. It's just, this whole making-friends process...

"If I could skip the painful small talk and introductory conversation associated with meeting new people and transition directly to comfortable repartee, I would make that happen. If there was a cerebro-type machine that plugged into your forehead and installed a fundamental understanding of every human being on the planet so I never had to meet another person, could know everyone on earth, could merge with the vast collective human spirit, I would purchase this machine obviously." -- Brad Pike, Thought Catalog 

Getting to know someone is generally something I abhor. Before Princeton, it's not something I ever really had to do. I've gotten a little better at it since being here, but it still just makes me uncomfortable somehow. It's easier in a college environment, I guess, where you're around persons X, Y, and Z so often that you can kind of get to know them without a lot of the introductory awkwardness. But my days in this blissful environment are numbered. And out there is the real world, man, where people just have to move to new places and get to know people. So, like Brad, I am going to suffer through this awkwardness so I don't become a ...plant lady, I suppose (I don't really do cats pets). Soon this, too, will be me:

"In the end, meeting new people will improve my social skills and probably my overall humanity as well though I will hate every moment of it the way Voldemort hates love notes and birthday parties. It will be a harsh painful exercise, but I’ll get through it somehow. I have to get through it. From now on, the only people in my life will be new people." Brad Pike, Thought Catalog 

I came to the realization last night

while having one of the wee-hours-of-the-morning laying in bed chats with E that I've missed greatly since we were roommates sophomore year, that I have changed my mind. [M, another former roommate, will tell you this is not uncommon in the least.] Even more accurate a statement, I suppose, is that I have recovered the good sense my damned-fool-blinded-by-love-and-hurt self had obviously lost. I am thinking clearly again now, though, and I don't want to be friends. What's more serious, I don't even want to want to be friends. Maybe he doesn't either, and those things we both said were just the things you say...we mentioned this at length in multiple communications, but I have no understanding of when he is being sincere. 
And I'm not even mad at that. All I know is that I felt like my world was falling apart because there wasn't a single section of my life that he hadn't affected. I couldn't wrap my head around losing him completely. He said he couldn't either, but actions speak louder than words [Yeah actually I can't stand by that oft-true cliche in the context of this situation...] inaction speaks louder than... I have already lost him. And yeah, I was a hot-ass-mess about that for a while, I'm not even gonna front, but...I'm not even trippin off that anymore, because something more important happened between then and now: he lost me. He has lost whatever hold he used to have over me, whatever it was that said I needed him in my life. He has lost my affection. He has lost my desire. He has lost my remorse. To an extent, he has even lost my interest.
I never stopped following his blog, so I know how his summer is going and all that jazz, but I noticed a while ago that I don't get excited when he posts something now. I read it, sure, but I've stopped wondering how he's doing. Today I kind of even skimmed it, more excited to move onto the other unread items in my blogroll. I've spent a lot of time in the past month and a half wracking my brain, trying to find a way to imagine being at the club together without it being so awkward I just want to leave. I was basically unsuccessful, but I've realized that at least some of the awkwardness is coming from trying to find a way to be friendly. I don't want to be all antagonistic or some shit, but I don't want to make small talk with him over lunch either. There are lots of people I have no meaningful interactions with in my club...I just wanna add him to that pile. Feigning a desire to interact that I just don't HAVE is the awkward part. Reservedness and polite interest I think I can handle. And anyway, they say fake it til you make it, right? Game plan accomplished.

"Loving someone that doesn’t love you is the most impossibly pointless endeavor anyone can ever find themselves sucked into and usually, when you finally pull yourself away you realize that you learned nothing, gained nothing, and lost – for a time – everything." --SingleBlackMale

I don't usually #blackgirlproblems, but this is SO TRUE

"Yeahhhhh...you know when you're the only people of color in the room and everybody looks at you to see if you're going to start a race riot over some shiggity?" --OneChele over at BougieLand

^Let's not even talk about how many times this happens to me. Except scratch person of color and replace it with "Black/Brown" person, because this happens to me when I'm around a bunch of Asians as well. 

Awkward Sidewalk...

It looks so innocent...

I have a confession to make--I think sidewalks, the kind that aren't particularly busy, are an incredibly awkward social space. You're walking along, on your way to or from the train station, say, down a quiet little street that you rarely see other people on, when suddenly someone appears near you. There are two ways this can be awkward, as I will try to demonstrate:


Awkward Sidewalk Situation A:
___________________________________________
       ---You---->
                                         <----Them---- 
___________________________________________


Do you make eye contact with this person, or do you pretend you're so incompetent at this walking thing that you have to stare at the sidewalk the whole time you're in his/her vicinity? If you make eye contact, at what point in this approaching-each-other spectrum do you initiate eye contact? How long does it last? Does the empty street or the building you pass twice a day every damn day suddenly become very interesting? Do you alternate between looking at them and looking at the monotony of the street? If you do make eye contact, do you smile? Will your smile be interpreted as a random act of kindness or a random act of creepiness? Do people still smile at strangers or is that just something I never let go of from my Wawa days? If it's a guy, will he think you're hitting on him if you smile? Would it be REALLY WEIRD to say "Good morning?" Do you feel like an idiot when they don't smile back? Does that influence your actions the next time you pass someone on this lonely little street? 


Awkward Sidewalk Situation B:
______________________________________________
 ---You-->
                   ---Them--> 
______________________________________________


Am I the only one who feels like a sketchball when walking two or three paces behind someone on the sidewalk? I especially feel this way at night. So what do you do? Awkwardly pause to let them get a little farther ahead of you? Do you pretend to tie your shoe or check a text or something while you're pausing? Or do you walk a little more quickly so that you can pass them? Will that person think it's strange that you're like, power-walking in the middle of the night? Will you make him/her feel like a sketchball if you turn the tables and now he/she is walking a few paces behind you? 


Sidewalks, man. They're awkward.

HOLD THE MOTHAFUCKIN PHONE

So in recent weeks I'd heard a lot of buzz about this miniseries called "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl". Occasionally some of the blogs I read would post about it, and I would wonder whether this few minutes of my time was worth craning my neck awkwardly at work so that my headphones could reach the computer tower which is far as fuck from the monitor for no identifiable reason. The answer was always, "Eh, I'll go back to it when I get home." But then I would get caught up in other unread posts and other unwritten posts and Scrabble on Facebook and talking to my mom and forget all about Awkward Black Girl. 

I decided to remedy that this morning. BEST DECISION OF MY WEEK. This shit is FANTASTIC. The episodes keep getting longer and her life keeps getting more and more awkward and I LOVE IT. I don't always agree with her (for instance I love spoken word...but not that wack shit they were forced to sit through) and have no qualms about actually eating on a date, but I see a lot of myself in her. 

And I know from all the blogs that I've been reading that the creator of the show is having some funding issues, so I'm thinking about donating ten bucks or so. Every little bit helps, right? On the funding page she has a little description about why she created ABG, which starts off like this: 

"Why ABG exists:
Television today has a very limited scope and range in its depictions of people of color. As a black woman, I don’t identify with and relate to most of the non-black characters I see on TV, much less characters of my own race. When I flip through the channels, it's disheartening. I don’t see myself or women like me being represented. I’m not a smooth, sexy, long-haired vixen; I’m not a large, sassy black woman; an angry Post Office employee. I’m an awkward black girl.
And I’m not alone."

I had two very clear and very interesting reactions to this little introductory snippet to the reason for the show. Reaction number one: I, Maya Reid, of sound mind and body, must confess to you all right now that I have NO PROBLEM identifying with and relating to non-black characters I see on TV. Characters of my own race can be a little more touchy, because I don't see very many black characters--I see "real" black people on reality shows I refuse to watch, but as far as characters...as a kid, Sister Sister was my SHIT, I wanted to be the girl the Famous Jett Jackson liked, and it is still my dream to one day be as bougie as the Huxtables (without any of Bill Cosby's egregious classism in real life). As an adult, I was ALL OVER Girlfriends (like a black Sex in the City, for those who don't know) and still watch reruns regularly, and I can see bits of myself in The Game's Melanie and Nurse Hawthorne and her daughter. I liked the ambition and double-life led by the main characters in last fall's quickly-canceled Undercovers. Huh, that actually seems like a decent number of black characters I can relate to/identify with. But that wasn't my point here.
My point was that I see just as many bits of myself in some White women on television (Bones, Annie from Community) and even in men (House, Reid on Criminal Minds ). Until I came to Princeton, I spent my whole life relating more to White people than to other Black people, and I was okay with that. But the second biggest gift Princeton has given me (the first being a free $200,000 education) is the knowledge of and camaraderie with Black people who are LIKE ME. Because honestly, I'm pretty sure I didn't think that was possible growing up. I had stopped looking for it. 
But they're out there. I've found them at Princeton, and I've found them hailing from all over the country at Yale's Black Solidarity Conference, and I have to say, it is comforting, I suppose. Reaction number two: Based solely upon the legions of women responding to the series, and the fact that it was all over my blogosphere and even my friend C was talking about how much she loves it, THERE'S AN ARMY OF US. And that...seems like it would feel validating if I was still looking for validation. And it is refreshing to have another character to add to the people-who-look-and-think-like-me category. I think my favorite thing about this webseries, though, is the fact that race is often confronted openly in a way that doesn't ever happen on television. And THAT is something I can identify with.   

Compliments

Sometimes it's really hard to be sincere. There's this guy I know, and there's something I want to tell him. Don't even go there--this something is not romantic in any way. I just want to give him a compliment; I just can't figure out how to do it in a way that's a) not socially awkward, and b) that he won't laugh it off like I'm kidding, because I'm seriously not.

He impresses me. Hell, he downright amazes me, and though some of the brightest minds in the country are here, very few people are overall amazing to me. He pushes himself harder than most people I know, in every single aspect of his life, and everything he touches is golden. He's also nice and sweet and I just, I want him to know that I think this highly of him. I admire him.

I have this other friend, who I love equally and admire almost equally, who commented the other day about how I observe too many things about him, things most people would never notice. I wanted to say I watch him because, while it might seem like I'm always trying to change him, I sometimes wish I could be like him.

But people don't say these things. It's a shame.