Because of ......

"i'm bored with myself"


 Something I heard myself say last night in conversation with a friend. After smoking a bit and wanting to sip wine straight out the bottle but deciding not to because I don't want to venture down another cover-up highway, I also heard something else:

I sounded like  Rose.

Rose.

It tripped me out beyond my own belief. Who is Rose you say? Rose is the character I play in For Colored Girls (The play coming in december). If you've seen the movie, which the play is based off of, Rose is the character played by Macy Gray.

The raspy cigarette-voiced woman who gives illegal and harmful abortions in a corner pocket of some ducked off projects, presumably set in Harlem.  Her appearance, although short, is powerful. I've spoken on facebook several times about getting to know this character and these words she delivers in her poem.  It can easily go over people's heads because she is the 'demon chick' in the show. Not only does she give abortions, she gives them illegally, in her apartment with stained equipment that she sanitizes with the same liquor she pours in her cup to sip out of.  In her poem tho, she is broken.

She is hurt, abused, taken advantage of......she is CHANGED.
She was made INTO this person that is on the screen being hated. She was not born that way, she did not intend to be that way, she is who she is BECAUSE OF her circumstances; not despite them.

"Because of"
or
"Despite of."

Two different scenarios in our lives. We can be someone BECAUSE of situation or DESPITE our situation.....she was the BECAUSE of ......

She was harmed by men, women, she was raped, she was stolen, she was sacrificed in the name of New York.....she was changed....because of.

In her poem, she alternates between having a direct conversation with Nyla (The young lady there for an abortion) and having direct recollections of her time spent being innocent, which is a separate conversation that takes place with herself, while also having a conversation with Nyla. She drifts in and out of these two different speeds of talking.....she blanks out into her memories to a point that you can see her tasting what she is recalling...you can tell it changed her...it 'made' her....and she hurt because of what she remembers..she speaks of her trust being broken....she talks of being 'in the world' and what that got her....the stomps back into talking directly to Nyla, where she is angered, upset and soaring in her BECAUSE OF glory......

Last night,
after talking for about 45 minutes nonstop about my life and struggles and trials and how one simple fixable problem can open the floodgates to 'everything else', I stopped talking. And in that instant silence I saw Rose in my reflection. I saw her, I heard her, I saw myself, in REAL LIFE, talking in REAL LIFE to a REAL LIFE person, in my own  REAL LIFE way about MY REAL LIFE,

 THAT is how I am supposed to perform Rose in REEL life....
because THAT is who Rose is.
Who i was last night
a woman toggling between good and evil, memories and currency....sadness and anger that wants revenge on everything, no matter the cost to her already stolen soul.....


I heard that naturally
in me
last night
while i was talking.....

and before it could excite me because it means I CAN bring life to this character....it hurt me, because of all the women on the show to me, how the fuck did I end up being Rose?

The situation might be somewhat different and the results of how I have chosen to channel my feelings and save/help/hurt others might not be the same, but i AM Rose and there is no point for me to NOT bring awareness to that, if only for myself.....the way I naturally dove in and out of my memories last night and back to my conversations, there is no open air for me to believe or feel otherwise...
And it seriously scared me.....
andsaddened me ....

Because I am sooooooooo angry and i honestly do not know what to do to rid myself of it.
And i am so hurt.
I'm almost 36 and it makes me embarrassed to say that I feel the ways that I do but these ways are my reality yo.....i am hurting or angry or something about my stepfather....i really am. I am more upset by my stepfather's treatment of me than I am about my father's dismissal of me. But the two of these combined, plus a brother who was never fully interested or invested makes it sooooo freaking hard to stay optimistic....it leaves room for me to believe in my circulation of negative thoughts that these guys saw the bad in me early on and saved themselves by not being emotionally invested in me.....
I want to let it go and for some years, I was ok with it....
i guess, idk, it just gets hard sometimes to keep up the facade i put on for myself.... sometimes, i just give into the idea that i was born to be this sexual  temptress who would bust open her own chest and throw her beating heart at the nearest male who looks like he MIGHT be capable of offering a bigger grain of salt than the last one....then i read what i write, and i know how i feel when i'm on the more positive level of thinking and i think to myself, that is not believable or acceptable....
but damn.

and last night, i told my bro that I am so used to hurting that i don't think I know any other way, so I just live in my past hurt when no present hurt is coming because its just what i"m used to. ...its what i'm accustomed to. ...i. don't trust people to love me unconditionally....i don't trust myself with my relationships with people anymore and i'm doing little to keep them cultivated right now because i am up to my ears in friends and cool people's and family and all that .......

only to still be companionless. ...as if I am not good enough or deserving enough for it....A male friend i've known since i was about 7 or 8 suggested that in exchange for fixing my starter on my truck, which he said is a $125 job, that he would only charge me 85 bucks....
....and a date.

-_-


And in these moments,
i feel like God hates me.
 I know he doesn't. ....he couldn't possibly unless it is the devil posing as God giving me the mounds of blessings that have come my way.....

but sometimes,
man. ...
i just don't understand how God could 'know' that all the men (or at least MOST of them) in my life would never SEE me for anything more than what THEY want. No matter what it is...and not equip me with the insight or discernment or just the STRENGTH.....gosh damn, i feel like such a weakling...

I am doing it, right now,
even in my blog,
in my writing
I am being ROSE.

and its quite the mirror to look into.................cause I know i will never have anyone as long as this is how i feel....and its not about wanting someone anymore ....its about working myself back to the point where I really feel like i DO deserve a great man......

honestly,
I don't believe that no more.
I just tell myself that because that's what people want to believe about Januarie York. Truth is, I feel and have long felt like used up, washed up goods that will never have love in that capacity. And that makes me sad....
because it makes me  Rose....
it makes me sad because it makes me less than that which has sought to kill me....

How come I ended up BECAUSE OF rather than DESPITE OF?