An Ode To 2015, The Year I Put Myself On

I've been waking up early lately, an hour or so before my alarm normally soothes me awake. I'm a very light sleeper, I only need a gentle nudging to lift me out of my forgotten dreams.  Some days I'm inspired to hit the pavement and run, more often than not, I roll on my side burrowing further into the mattress that a boy once called too soft. There are mornings when I curl up in the silence, content with my thoughts, or other days when I grab my Kindle which is always nearby eager to pick up where I left off the night before. Grabbing my glasses, I begin racing against time, trying to take in as much of the story as I can before I absolutely have to arise. I've always enjoyed mornings, (mostly for that for that first sip of coffee), my feet eager to hit my cool hardwood floors, warming quickly as I step under the scalding shower. I like my routines ,and the solace that I find in my new normal. It's amazing how different life can be in 365 days.

This time last year, I was in a rut, still bogged down in that 20-something turmoil of what life should be and what it was. I was mostly wildly unhappy, but I didn't want to complain. (At least I don't think I didn't.) Chatting with people who have a few years on me,  I was told to just push through, that things would inevitably get better, but other voices (two to be exact) told me to do what felt right to me, and that's exactly what I did. In April, I left a dead-end job and a stable paycheck to freelance full time as an entertainment writer. I was done, fed up with people telling me to wait. If I've learned anything in my quarter century of life it's that waiting is bullshit. Admittedly, I do need to work on my patience, but time waits for no one, especially not a young Black woman. Visualizing your dreams slipping though your fingertips is gut-wrenching,  and I was determined not to let that happen to me. Unhappiness for any measure of time is too long, and aside from doing the big chop four years ago, stepping out on fate was of the best decisions of my life. I spent the late spring and summer writing in a  little cafe around the corner from my apartment 30 hours a week. With that freedom, I got to breathe and reflect on the last five tumultuous years of my life. I visited Paris for the first time. I got to live.

However, four months of freedom got to be be rather burdensome on my wallet, so towards the end of the summer, I set out to find a full time position writing, and pretty much snagged one up right away. It's funny how life works because, as soon as I grabbed a full-time gig,  y freelance work also began to pick up. I was being sent to places like Curaçao, Aruba, and Memphis. These were beautiful places that I'd never seen, meeting people I'd never dreamed of meeting. It seems that when you open yourself up to new experiences things just seem to flow in. And yet, the thing about opening up certain aspects of yourself is that, you'll also discover other parts that you want to close.

As beautiful and eye-opening as 2015 was for me personally, I watched people I love and adore experience life-shattering loss.  Though I've been through similar things, it's so sobering to be on the other side, to know that no words or hugs will provide the comfort that they are desperately seeking. Instead, I just tried to make myself present, though I'm not sure I succeeded at that successfully.

& then there are relationships. Romances and friendships; those have shifted too. I'm learning perhaps that that's  because I've changed so drastically. For many years, I felt the burden of being an sympathizer, the buffer, the one desperate for everyone else to get along.  It became too burdensome a title for me to continue wearing, so I sought distance and solitude which gave me peace. I find being around other people all the time rather exhausting, I've found that it interferes with my ability to think clearly. Romance was a another learning curve. I think I've discovered that for me, love isn't always enough. I need plans and actions and a bit of aggressiveness.  Perhaps that's unfair, maybe there will be things I regret in the future, but for now I'm more than enough.

From Dubai to Paris to Jamaica to San Antonio, I went places in 2015 and experienced things I never thought I would, I swam in what feels like a zillion oceans, I've laughed more than I've cried and I loved and let go.  What I've learned most is to trust myself. People often have the best intentions but that doesn't mean their suggestions should be the blueprint to your life. You're the one who has to get up everyday and face this harsh world, so do what feels right for YOU.

With love,

Chocolate Girl in the City.

On the First Anniversary of My Father's Death

Death,” she said, “is a great teacher. It reminds you, almost mockingly, that everyone is stamped with an expiration date.”

 

One year ago today, I got a phone call that I'd been expecting. It’s a strange thing, expecting a phone call like that, expecting death. You can feel it, its been hovering around and you think about it constantly. You try and fight thru it; smile even but there's no escaping it. One year ago today, I sat in a classroom bored out of my mind until I looked at my phone and I knew. It was the third phone call I'd received like that in three years.

 

My dad was a vivacious man, stuck in his ways; some would even label him inflexible. But I understood him. I feel like I understood him in a way that often no one else did. He was stubborn and he expected a lot, but he laughed too, and he danced, and he listened and understood. He never told me what to do, not as an adult anyway. He simply made his suggestions and it was up to me if I decided to go along with them. He always allowed me to make my own decisions, to be grown up. He expected nothing less.

 

I've always thought it was interesting how we don't see our parents as people. During our childhoods they are these powers at be, not really human much more like superheroes than anything else. As you get older you begin to see the chinks in their armor. The cracks, the mistakes, the experiences that have exposed them, and that have worn them down. My dad wasn't easily worn down. (Years ago his doctor informed him that at some point in his life he had a heart attack. He hadn't even realized he’d had one.  He probably just felt a pain and decided to sit down and listen to NPR instead of carrying on with whatever he was doing.)

 

Growing up my dad worked a lot. It was very rare that we got to spend the day with him. There were special occasions, Christmas Eve, New Years, anytime something related to Harry Potter came out. And then there was the summer I graduated from college, the most time I can ever remember spending with my dad.

 

He came to NYC for my graduation; we talked a lot, laughed a ton and walked around what is now my neighborhood. I take comfort in knowing that he's been here, in the area that I now call my home.

 

Last winter I was visiting him in the hospital, he liked to joke and laugh and keep things light despite what was occurring. And he told me two things, two things I'll remember forever. My dad told me about the day his father died. He was leaving for the States and he had gone around the neighborhood to say goodbye to his friends and relatives. By the time he returned home, his father had passed. A couple of days later he got on that plane and came to America. (That tells you a little bit about the stuff I'm made off).

 

And then he told me something else, something that broke my heart. He said, "Just continue to be a good girl, that's all I ask."

 

I have been a good girl, for the most part... I hope. I've made some really big grown up decisions lately and I hope that he would be proud. Or, he would suggest otherwise and then leave me to my own devices.  

 

Its been one whole year since I received that phone call, and I’m very different and also very much the same. Death has been a great teacher, but so was my dad, I wish now more than anything that he was here to give his two cents.

 

Chocolate Girl In the City

I've Been Thinkin Bout Ya....

This has been really plaguing my mind for some time and I thought I wanted to write about it but I didn't know how to start or what to write. So when Frank Ocean published his gorgeously written piece "Thank You's" on his tumblr I thought this was as good a place to start with as any. Let me begin by saying, I love Black people, I love our pride, our culture, our skin, hair, the list goes on and if you know me then  that should be obvious. However, I'm saddened by how backward we can be sometimes. As a Black woman, I feel like I'm walking around this world constantly getting bombarded, judged and poked in my sides from outsiders and sadly often from insiders from the very people that were suppose to have my back  regardless. I can't even imagine what Black men go through. Growing up with a Catholic mother and a Muslim father I am grateful for my parents, they never told me what to believe in. My mother took us a church a few Sundays a month, I went mostly for the music and the brunch afterward with my Big Daddy. My sister and I were taught to pray at night but my relationship to God really didn't form until much later. By then, thankfully I had experienced enough of the world to think for myself, to come up with my own opinions.

My first openly gay friend was this wonderful boy I met in seventh grade. At the tragic middle school that I attended he was one of the true bright spots one of the "real" people in the crowd who unlike me didn't attempt to follow mass or chime in. I struggled with that wanting to be friendly with everyone. I got along with most people and  was really only bullied by one individual. This wonderful boy didn't care what other people thought, already at eleven the cowardliness that plagued me was non- existent within him. He didn't care to fit in, he was tryna live the most honest life he knew how. As seventh grade continued rumors swirled about his sexuality. I asked him point blank one day standing at the lockers. He confirmed that like me he was most attracted to the male sex. I absorbed this news and we carried on with our friendship. I was surprised only because I had never known an openly gay person up until that point but it didn't change how I saw him, I loved his wonderful honesty his was real, a breath of fresh air in the cookie cutter lives of lost seventh and eighth graders.

I remember when I told Mama about him, she was coming to chaperon one of our field trips and I wanted to tell her who I wanted to be in our group. Her eyes widened in surprise, she seemed confused unable to contemplate, it was as if she had never considered it before. I recall that her shock and confusion horrified me. Surely I thought to myself, the person I love most in this world, cannot have such a backward reaction to someone who was a true friend of mine. I asked her then, if she thought gay people should be able to get married. She told me no, that she felt marriage was between a man and a woman. I screamed at her then, one of the few times, I remember yelling at my mother  and getting away with it. I couldn't understand her position, it sounded completely idiotic to me. I implored her to tell me how another persons imitate and personal life should affect her... A week later she met my friend on that field trip and fell in love with him like I had. When we got home that day she sat me down and she told me she was wrong, that she would never wanted interfere with another person's happiness. And then she told me about her best guy friend in college and how years later he came out to her and how it had hurt her that he hadn't been honest with her earlier, how they had both cried on the phone and how she told him that she was sorry he felt that he couldn't have trusted her with his secrets.

This wasn't the last time that I shifted my mother's views on the world with my youth and naivety . The world had shifted radically in the 32 years between her birth and mine and she like in everything she did had enough grace to see it. So with that I want to say, that I understand that older Black people can be stuck in their ways. Lord knows my father is quite ornery about certain things. However, just because you are old doesn't mean that you have to be ignorant. Ignorance is just as volatile as any weapon. I am baffled that these same "older" people can turn their heads when older men are preying on young girls or guys, adultery, incests, bitchassness in any form etc and they can dare part their lips to condemn some other person who isn't hurting anyone. This is especially upsetting because ignorance is what caused so many things that plague our community today.

Whats even more sad and appalling still is those in my generation who have every opportunity to educate themselves, who dabble in all types of activities illegal and otherwise for pleasure, pain a high etc., who park themselves on church benches Sunday morning because their mama's told them to and who hate, bringing more hate into this world that has already made it so difficult for them today. This generation has no excuse.

xoxoxox Chocolate Girl In the City xoxoxxo

My Love Affair With New York City

A city like New York, where everything's moving all the time at this constant driving place. Its like a live in organism, breathing and changing and over time your relationship to it becomes like this incredible romance. At first its intoxicating then instant and then slowly it becomes comfortable and safe. You have this cellular connection to it as if you've known each other forever like your oldest happiness. And sometimes you're on the outs and sometimes you're makings up and every now and then you catch yourself in this transcendent moment when you think to yourself..... Oh my God I'm madly in love with you.... and I always will be. -------(Dawson's Creek)

There's this episode of Sex and the City ("Anchors Away Season 5 Episode 1), Carrie is single again after her final disaster with Adien, she begins to look for the city for romance. She meets this beautiful sailor and he tells her he doesn't understand what she sees in the city. Though he's beautiful and sweet shes offended because New York has been there for her when no one else has.

I must say that I've been on the both sides of that issue. Growing up, I had this romanticized vision of what NYC was, I was drawn to it and once I got into college there I knew that's where  I had to be. Fresh faced and naive, I arrived in the fall of 2008 for my freshman year and my romanticized illusions were immediately popped. I can't blame the city entirely for this, I had personal circumstances to deal with and I had gone to NYC all alone, with no one but myself to lean on. I missed Chicago, so much i could hardly breathe at times. All through my first year of college, I felt that the city, my university and the people surrounding me were surely going to suffocate me. Not one to give up easily, I returned for a second year and because of my incredible roommate and becoming more involved, I slowly let the city in.

My true love affair, didn't begin until last year. My life, though still quite chaotic was slowly giving me a path to navigate through, I surrounded myself with incredible peole and I became intune with the city, slowly embracing what it had to offer. As I return for my final year, I reflect upon those days when I felt lost and sufficated and how I've come so far from that.