BeliefAndExperience - Whats In Your BAE?

"No one wants a desperate woman !!!"
~Judge Gregg Mathis

DESPERATE:

Adjective

1. Reckless or dangerous because of despair, hopelessness or urgency
2. Having an urgent need, desire, etc
3. Leving little or no hope, very serious or dangerous
4. Extremely bad; intolerable or shocking
5. Extreme or excessive
6. Making a final, ultimate effort; giving all
7. Actuated by a feeling of hopelessness.
8. Having no hope; giving in to despair. 

Ooooooh, the way Judge Mathis said that word burned me and he wasn’t even talking to me.  The sound of that word alludes to someone being ‘less than’, whatever the sport. If someone describes you using the word DESPERATE, it’s hardly ever a compliment. Or at least for me, I’ve never heard it used in a complimentary way; perhaps sarcastic, but definitely not as a compliment.

In writing this blog, I tend to listen to music, directly in my ears (through headphones) so that each song is that much closer. Today, as I got ready to write this blog, I had to switch from my homegirl Trixie Whitley to something more ‘somber’ so to speak so that I could channel the words that were on my heart to share.  I went to the playlist that I listen to about 98% of the time, Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than That Appear and strolled up the 400+ songs to find a stopping point. As I type, I am listening.

The chosen song: Sam Smith, Life Support.

It’s perfect for this blog, but it’s a single song. Sometimes, I listen to a single song on repeat until I have finished writing, but not today. As usual, my playlist is on random.  The song just went off and the next song that came on, that is playing right this second, is Leela James, Falling.

Lets get it.

Desperation.  ….so much I can say about it. I wonder how much longer I would have continued to the road of hopeful tossing myself in rings of fire, hoping to come out on the other side WEARING a ring.  Even if it meant me being burned, I have always been so willing to GIVE ME in exchange for a stolen reciprocity that I’ve just never experienced.  As I listen to Leela sing these words over this love-melancholy beat, I can see myself walking down the aisle.

I only want it to happen once.

I can see him, although his face is a blur.

I can see his silhouette, staring at me for the first time in 24 (or more) hours, in this dress, fitted, long, WHITE (pffft) and probably a hint of some color, definitely some lace …..i can see his eyes watering at the mere thought that the woman walking peacefully up the aisle is about be his, for the rest of ever.  I make my way to the front, my family and friends looking on with tears of happiness in their eyes because they each know how much it probably means to me to be living such a moment.  I stop, take his hand and in a second long pause, life covers us both in the glow of God’s happiness. His tear leaps off his chin, falling onto the pocket of his suit, as his hand takes mine for the first time in the wedding.  We turn, face the preacher and begin life together.

It’s a chapter that I never thought of in great detail as a kid, but I never thought I would get in my late 30s and not have anyone. Today, I’m not sad about it. I’m not upset. I’m not even numb. I’m just, what I am. I still want love, someday.  But I’m not sad, TODAY, that the story I just made up has never been my reality. I’ve spoken in great detail in this blog about wanting to be loved…..i started trying to better appreciate those WHO DO love me.  But let’s run it back some.

Before today,

Before now,

Back when last year was still happening. This time last year, things had gone sour and I knew it, but still I held on.  The Justin Timberlake concert was one year ago from yesterday. So approx. one year ago, I was texting someone, in an act of desperation to hold on,  trying to bribe him to let me give him more of me by saying I had a piece of Tennessee Whiskey Cake in the car that I wanted to eat together.  He never responded. I text him early into the concert.

Odds are, he was probably with the woman who is his girl now.

I on the other hand, was still playing my role: Desperate.  I didn’t expect him to text me back. I checked my phone several times in the concert to no avail. I waited and hoped and even after arriving home more than 45 minutes after the concert was over and hours after I text him, I still would have been willing to go to him if he had’ve just  text me back. He never did. And after such a wonderful concert that left my heart yearning for a piece of any one of the songs JT had sang,  I went to bed: lonely. I wasn’t lonely because I was single. I was lonely because there was someone in my life who didn’t want to be there and I couldn’t stop him from leaving….but I was still hanging on. Being desperate.

Let’s hit a couple of those definitions.

1.       Reckless or dangerous because of despair, hopelessness or urgency.

Reckless became everything I was. Fucking without a condom because ‘we share this deep connection’. LMAO. That’s what I told myself. It still amazes me that I got out with my coochie unscathed and still intact.  One of the first things I told him one day while we were having a talk about sex was that I didn’t like to share and he shared virtually the same sentiment (before I did ironically), so there was a part of me that foolishly, recklessly and dangerously hung on to that sole conversation as more reason to believe that it was just me.

Hopelessness or urgency – Yeah…the first time we had an extended conversation I knew I would love him. I knew there was nothing I could do to stop that, but I pretended that to not be my reality. It was tho. I feel in love, in like, in lust, in need, in an urgent desperate hope that he would answer that burning question in my heart: will you love me back? He didn’t answer or love me back. My ex prior to him, who I’ve discussed in this blog before, gave me a damn space heater for Christmas and a tape dispenser made as a shoe for my birthday. To say I was hopeless is an understatement. When I left him, I knew I deserved way better than that. I knew I deserved for someone to care, to give a damn longer than it takes for their ego to be satisfied in some wordly way.  Prior to him, one ex made me beg for a bracelet that he never bought, another one bought me a bracelet and spent the rest of our relationship cheating on me and trying to kill me. I was hopefully hopeless, but in an urgent state of need for companionship that was reciprocated from that which I would be willing to give. I gave…too much of me....

and i want to get this straight because I know I'm always talking about money this and money that, and the reason being is because that part of our story ASTONISHES me.... I just can't believe that happened, BUT-
I mean way more than my money and body...I gave my  trust...my belief IN...what fucking little was to give, i gave...
not because I was so DESPERATE that I would project what I wanted
-and i did do that..i ultimately did project like a mf-
but
I'm a woman who possesses submission.... I let the man lead.
I only 'projected' after he lead me...
and he lead me...he kept leading me...he was never honest, never once. He was a coward.
that is a fact, it's ok,
I accept I followed a deleted tweet....get it ? 
But I gave him the places and spaces in my head and heart that should be reserved for that man who would see me at the end of the aisle that he brought me to after proposing
in a helicopter
in New York
flying high, over the waters, above the buildings,

night time....
we land somewhere....a rooftop....things are set up
i don't know what else because I don't know what he would do. ...but he would do that much, because he would know THAT much about me,

he would know what that would make me feel like and he would want THAT
and he would see me at the end of that aisle in that swan Very  Wang dress and his eyes would water....

The reservations HE deserves, were being foolishly
DESPERATELY
given to, or TOSSED at, depends on the angle, a man who wasn't willing to appreciate the closet two beings to me; the dogs-
- Problem House! o.O

for all that I gave.....I've received a year's worth of ass whooping, emotional fallout and bankruptcy ....emotional bankruptcy
depletion...resistance...anger, hurt..prolonged sadness
extended thoughts of revenge...
I've lived in a strange bubble after this one....
because, he just didn't have to hurt me that.
...And say sorry and shrug that shit off #LikeMoneyAintAThang

                6. Making a final ultimate effort; giving all & 7. Actuated by a feeling of hopelessness.

What the hell made me go soooo fucking hard for dude????

He NEVER went hard for me. The most this nigga did was pull me in for a wet kiss and hug in front of the patrons at Different Peace of Mind the night of the erotic show, when I wore that LOVE dress for the first time. He just wanted to show anyone who was there who was getting that. I liked it. I believe I  talked about it before in this blog. I did. If it was done today, I would like it. I want someone to look at me and be so happy and so proud and honored that THEY are the chosen one for me and vice versa that they want to pull me in and let the whole world know it is me and them against all odds. But that’s not what that was. Idk what it was to be honest…I still don’t doubt that we did in fact share a connection that was special and deep seeded. But it was probably me doing more of the connecting because I wasn’t against it from the get go.  That nigga was Bad Religion for me.

I just turned that on btw.

But what made me go so hard for him? Especially after giving the boot to a man who was just as fine, with a better apartment, car, options, more money…….where he lived reminded me of New York …..but he was the same person as this nigga.  And I didn’t like it with him, so I gave him the bounce skate……but this fool was able to finagle his way into my heart and life in a way that made my internal desperation rear her head in ways that depleted my finances, pride and made me look like the biggest fool this side of the open mic.

It was just so unfair. It felt so unfair that he would lie so blatantly to me the ways he did. In hindsight, all the shit I believed , I now see what the lie was and know why.  But I knew for a minute. Two months. I found out about what he had going on…I pulled that contweet thread up. I saw all those fucking pictures on IG in NOVEMBER. IT wasn’t until them filler flowers appeared on New Years Day that I couldn’t let myself be made into a fool like such anymore. Nigga took my power –

But actually,

I handed that shit over to him like brand new car keys…..

I had given up before we met. I had doubted me finding and keeping and being good for love long before I could remember his name. I had given up mentally but not physically. In the physical sense, I was still going, still believing, still holding on to the thought that someone out there was looking for me as much as I him.  And for whatever freaking reason why, I thought I finally landed right next to him.  We would stare in each other’s eyes and idk what he was looking at and thinking, but I figure I was projecting my hopes/thoughts/feelings into his cornea and receiving what I put in. Lol. I wanted to believe that there was hope for me even tho I didn’t necessarily feel it.

I had spent 7 years with a person and left with a ring I had to buy myself. 

I had watched ex’s move on, get married, have families and it just started to look like that whole common denominator thing …. :/  

Is it me? Whats wrong with me?

I felt like if someone else could see the Light within me, then maybe it would re-awaken that part of me that was slowly dying off.  That part of me that still believed in things….the part that believed in the beautiful.

Hurt people hurt people huh? Well, this hurt woman wanted to love someone and I’m not saying I didn’t or haven’t hurt anyone, ( I didn’t hurt that clown cake tho), but my goal, my main focus was loving someone else……

……hmmm

Actually, my main goal was loving someone else into loving me.
I thought I could high heel, out poetry everyone and speak into existence love for me, from him. That is not true. I was not the muse of the women who speak in my poems….

“I am too much woman to be loved via a measuring cup”

I wasn’t her.

“I ain’t nobody’s cut”

I was his cut and that was it.

“Momma don’t play chess when the king is missing”

I did.

I played chess without a king, turned into a pawn and couldn’t have found a Queen if I were living in Buckingham Palace.

By the time we were months into talking to each other, I knew this was my final attempt. I had built up enough stamina to give it a go. He made me want to. I was ready. I was willing.

And unfortunately,

I was desperate.

* Daley, Love Somebody now playing *

I was desperate for a man to show me, me from his eyes and it be beautiful.

I was desperate for a man’s love in a companionship way.

I was desperate to just have my somebody.

I was desperately wanting out of the chase, the search, the disappointments. …I didn’t think he would disappoint me. Idk where I even pulled all this foolish optimism from…..

But I had it.

And I desperately wanted it to be something he liked about me. I tried to be every woman when I’m just januarie. 

I tried desperately to be BAE.

Not knowing he already had her….

The only person I never tried to be was the woman in my poems.

Somehow, she got lost in the shuffle of desperately seeking (a) bruising.

And that I got.

The woman who stood before many people, starting back in 2012 and said “I am too much woman to be loved in a measuring cup.

I am not a bruised muse in heels…

I be wife, of ruler, in stilettos”, turned out to be the opposite of who she wrote life into. She was bruised. She was a muse to be used up and she set herself up for all of it. If ever there were a time I placed my heart on an auction block and then dipped over to a nigga’s table to hold up his numbered sign for purchasing, this was it.  Everything I did and said was from a desperate place. A place of almost giving up. Everything came from a conscious woman no doubt, but a woman who was on her final grand challenge and her final run of belief in someone…..

A woman in despair, who did not want to believe that there is/was no one for me.  I wanted it to be him. I NEEDED it to be him…or so I thought. I needed him to look at me say something to make me experience him. I needed him to see what no one else saw…what I did NOT need was for him to come in and destroy what was left of me….Instead, I experienced broken trust, misuse of my emotions and ironically enough, after shelling out money-by-pound to him, a year later (this time last year I had just promised him the money that he would go on to buy filler flowers for his bae with), I am about to file bankruptcy. Not because of him…..because of some shit from my 20s, coming through and doing an unhealthy cleanse on my credit score that I worked so hard on. ….I’m just noting the irony tho.

“Thank God I am a woman…NOW’’. ….because desperation almost made me an infant again.  And as the sun begins to set on this cold Thursday afternoon and I prepare to take my sleepy ass to this second job, I am loving the reawakening of the woman I am.

Belief - I AM too much woman to be loved at a measuring cup. 

And - 

Experience - You will not experience ME just because you a man. 

I will never again let someone take me for a ride outer space and drop me off on the nearest condemned planet before darting back to Earth to save the woman who always had his heart.

I thank him for the lesson he gave me and for the way he opened me up to love him and as a result, learn about ME, as a companion.  I could have done a couple few things better to him I guess, but truth is, someone else had his heart before I ever knew his name. I never stood a chance. And if he were a whole of a man instead of the broken person he turned out to be, he would have told me that before he crushed what was still standing.

While it is true that I finally feel the most at peace with this since this year started and while it is also true that this dude HUMBLED me in a way I could have never expected to be humbled, I know me...i know there will always be a part that feels 'something' towards him. ...something less savory than love but not as crucial as I hope you die a painful death. So fuck you #MuseWeasel20144012

. I'm so Crown and counting that a three letter misspelling of an infantile word and some $4 gas station flower were never and could have never been enough for me....for I AM too much woman, to be loved in a fucking measuring cup.  Being a part of the play For Colored Girls has exposed me to myself in some other ways as well.....every little bit counts. 

 And for the rest of my life of loving, I will always remember you as the man who showed me a mirror in a way no other man could have done.

Sometimes, lies are the key towards unlocking the desperation gates and flying off. <3

Just in time for #TrixieWhitley – The Engine. Now Playing.

~januarie