Words from 'A Woman': You Never Told Me To Stop

“Why would I stop a woman from loving me?”

~David, Being Mary Jane

Ok, let me first start with the fact that I know I am late to the game on Being Mary Jane. I also know all the mixed reviews it has received. I put the MOVIE ‘Being Mary Jane’ in my Netflix queue a long while back but I never looked at it. A few days ago while looking for something interesting in my queue, I scrolled past Being Mary Jane and stopped. I noticed it no longer said movie, it now said ‘series.’ So I dove in and was hooked instantly. In just under a handful of available time, I had watched all 8 episodes. Today, I watched the finale of season one and during the confrontation between David and MJ, I took a particular moment of pause at something he said. After declaring her ‘ride or die girl’ status, Mary Jane began to list a few of the accommodations being with her had gained David, including folding laundry, cooking and exchanging ideas, to which he replied:

 “I never asked you to do any of that” (#Oh.)

 of which she stated

 “You didn’t tell me to stop, either”.  (#IKnowThatsRightGirl!)

And then he flatlined the conversation with:

 “Why would I stop a woman from loving me?” (#OH. OH. Ohhhhh…….).

This slice of the conversation felt like it was once removed from my rib. I was too familiar with her desperation and her declarations. Her words were fleeting acquaintances of mine, like most of the cousins I have. I recognized her statements to be the intruders I opened the door for. In the past, I had sipped tea with those very same ideas of love, relationships and retort; and I knew this conversation from my own delusions of love grandeur, particularly with #MuseWeasel. The groceries I bought, the rent I helped to pay, the kissing in front of his child; to ME, those were ‘high regarded’ happenings. Things that would only happen with someone ‘special’ or things I would only do with/for someone special….i listed them out one by one in hundreds of angry and hurt facebook messages, typed at 90 miles per hour, to which his response was similar to that of David, if not verbatim. “I never asked you to do that”.  

NoteToNiggas: ‘ DRY BEGGING’ is only UN-equal to actual asking/begging because of the it’s level of Cowardism. Yup. I said that. #Carryon.

And just like Mary Jane, an appalled januarie York responded with a firm and imperative “You never told me to stop, either!” #ForTheWin

It wasn’t a win tho. And in those moments of those personal conversations, not just with #MuseWeasel but all the men I have dated and had similar talks with, the best possible response back to me would have been “Why would I stop A Woman from loving me?”

None of them ever possessed enough courage to say such in return. But I know they thought it. That wasn’t just a line from a television script; that was an idea taken from the book of true life.  

It’s a wide open, random shot in the dark type of statement.

“A Woman”- not to be confused with “Mary Jane’’ or in real life “januarie York”.

Not to be specific or particular. …’a woman’ refers to anyone, everyone and those in between. “A Woman” is as random as a toothpick in the box at the counter. It’s open to whoever you end up with or whatever you grab. There is nothing special about ‘a woman’, but there IS something special about that statement. Men don’t marry or fall in love with ‘a woman’. They fall in love with (**insert name**). Wedding invitations declare they are joining (his name) and (her name); not (his name) and (a woman).

 Insert a name in place of ‘a woman’ and see the difference. Use your own name or mine, or Mary Jane’s…or use the pronoun, YOU.

Her: ‘You never told me to stop.’

**Him: Why would I tell YOU to stop loving me?

**Him: Why would I tell Mary Jane to stop loving me?

**Him Why would I tell januarie York to stop loving me?

**Him: Why would I tell ( **insert your name**) to stop loving me?

Feel any different to you? As for me, it takes on a completely different meaning when a name or an indicative pronoun is used. It sounds direct. Like ownership. It sounds like he wants that particular love, that particular woman’s love and when an actual name is used, it sounds like that woman’s love is the most influential love on the universe and who wouldn’t want it!!!??? It’s direct, much more so than ‘a woman’, which sounds as if it could be abruptly interrupted and replaced at the drop of an unseen hair follicle. As long as you are just ‘a woman’, he will keep both his wide receiver helmet on and his catcher’s mitt wide open. Two different games, but dual contributions. He will keep looking to catch ‘(insert name)’ who will be the one to which he reciprocates, all while openly receiving all the benefits from ‘a woman’. #Polidicks

“He who is loved, RECEIVES”. ~me

LOVE feels good. Love is sexy. Love is ugly in its beautiful. Love means to be taken care of in every possible aspect. It means to have a protector, even if you hope to never have to (or never would) use them as such. It is the reality that someone sees you in a light that no one else can see. It is a source of power that elevates each of your chakra’s, love is God, we are of God, we ARE Love, therefore, LOVE, in it’s acted out form feels good. Damn good… It is a spiritual connection to God and the Universe and to be able to see these connections in another person. Love is seeing you in another person... Love is a mirror…. It feels damn good to give it, but it can be life-altering to be a recipient of it.

When we love, we give whatever it is that we have. We give our bodies, our minds, our spirits, energies, calendars; we give our all, our tries, and our benefits of the doubt. When we love, we give our pushes and pulls and compromises. Our pulses. Our questions and answers. We explode and expand in the direction pf love to make more LOVE rotate between the axis of ourselves and another person. Love is giving. It is an action physically and mentally and when someone loves you, you receive all of that. The trick to maintaining that reception is reciprocity.

This is where things tend to get difficult.

I somehow have missed the part of Being Mary Jane where they dive into her relationship with David and where it went wrong. Perhaps that was in the movie I never watched. By the end of season one, he’s pretty stern on not getting back with her and he’s in a new relationship.

When he responds to her with his question of why, it might sound harsh or cold hearted at surface value, but this little Hollywood gem is the thing young teenage girls who are stirring around in puberty need to hear before they start dating.  This is what grown ass women still repeating and making the same mistakes with the same man of different faces need to hear. This is what mothers need to tell their daughters because they have learned the hard way and this is what fathers tell their daughters and then teach them how to avoid. This is what every man needs to say to the woman that he needs to say this to. He knows who she is better than I do…………

A man will not STOP you from loving him.

So often we as women are so heart-bent on keeping the man we love or not giving up on ‘possibilities’ that we insist on loving them into loving us. I did that with #MuseWeasel. Despite what I knew was beginning to unravel, I insisted that this be worth something. That even if it didn’t turn out to be something grand, that it would still be valuable to both of our lives that we ever interacted. I wanted to make us better people by loving him into loving me and that’s not how love works. I gave him (and others) wifely duties and freaky fantasies along with qualities of the token ‘ride or die chick’. I did these things for two reasons:

1.      I genuinely wanted to. #Dickmatized

and

2.      Because I was trying to insist on him loving me through my love for him. I tried to be the whole damn food chain, not realizing I was a guppy swimming for love in a broke ass shark tank. I was convinced that I was showing him HOW to love me AND that he would fall IN love with me at the same time. Two birds with one stone of cupid’s face….. O.O

When the bridge connecting us collapsed and I reminded him of all these things I had done and how special they were, I am not quite sure what I expected him to respond with, but I kind of really wish it were that very statement. The hindsight version of me believes that I would have ‘caught’ something from it, but technically by the time we had this conversation, I’m not sure what difference it would have made that is any different from me hearing it on a TV show a few days ago.  

“Why would I stop a woman from loving me”?

If you’re giving him money, he will accept the opportunity to lessen his financial load, even if he doesn’t like you because “Why would he stop a woman from loving him?” Receiving love feels damn good.  He will indulge in fuck-games for sport because sex feels good and “why would he stop a woman from loving him sexually?” He will give his grand minimal contributions to keep you making it rain on him with whatever you’re pilfering from yourself to give to him because “why would he stop a woman from loving him?” It feels good to have someone have your back, even if you don’t want them. It feels good to have someone stroke your ego, call your name in foreign love languages and push you towards greatness, even if you are not interested in them. It feels good to receive love & it’s subsequent forms of affection. It is egotistically orgasmic.

Now, when the time comes that he has found his better half in another woman (because remember, he will still actively be looking), he will start to slowly wean himself from your umbilical love until he is detached….sometimes this means he will purposely sabotage ‘the situation’ just to get YOU to do the dirty work. He knows how you feel about him and he knows why you are doing what you are doing…..but what he can’t allow himself to do is be disciplined enough to NOT accept love from a woman because “receiving love feels damn good”. And it can be helpful. So rather than stop things before they get, as Facebook would say ‘complicated’, he indulges until he wants no more parts in it, then he either falls so madly in love with another woman that his balls grow up and he comes clean OR he will become purposely sloppy and trip you up in a trap that you can’t ignore. The latter is a coward btw. Both are, but at least one grows balls.

If his interest in you doesn’t turn a corner that it too high for his dick to reach, the only conscious act he will do with you is receive benefits. He will parade his availability and his dick to other people until he becomes involved in a chase that entertains his mind, his heart and lastly his dick. And while you are on the sidelines in a tiny cheerleading skirt decorated in an apron, fixing breakfast and writing checks and sucking dick upside down and trying to find new ways of making a continued valuable impression minus an engagement ring or even the title of Girlfriend, you won’t realize that he is accepting of these things because and only because….receiving love feels good. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, this is happening:

‘why would he stop a woman from loving him?”

Especially a woman who is ADDING to his life.……many men won’t stop that from happening. He repeatedly accepts because receiving love feels damn good.

It felt good to #MuseWeasel. He told me this at different times and only in this hindsight I’ve been served can I see behind some of the things he said. But he told me that I made him feel good. Hell, of course TF I did! I talked to that nigga like he was Royal. I addressed him as King or Gorgeous or Handsome at all times. I fed his spirit and uplifted his most stressful moments as best as I could. I admitted to not having the answers when I didn’t but I still gave him pieces of my Castle in hopes that he would see Buckingham in his own reflection.  …why would he have stopped that? Why not, when he’s feeling low, reach out to the woman that will leave him feeling like he ‘The Man’, so he can be large and in charge when it comes time to talk to #BAE. <Whoever she is. 
So what if he's not really interested in his accidental sidelining cheerleader…

She.

Makes.

Him.

Feel.

POSSIBLE!!!!! . ….so he kept coming for more. ..until more was no more….

I believe this to be a behavior we have all indulged in at least once in life, myself included. I think I have been a recipient of love-benefits while knowing good and damn well I we wouldn’t go much further or that I wasn’t interested. I guess my only salvation is I was much younger and wasn’t so much as ‘pretending’ as I was allowing. I’m trying to clean up my version of participating in this asshole-action but shit is shit, even on a bed of roses. It still stinks. I have a poem about that very idea. It’s called Bed of Roses…I’ve never performed it and it’s at least 5 years old. But I digress. Shit is shit is shitty, so for the times I’ve done someone else like this, I apologize to myself and to the universe.

May I have finally finished paying my karma off!

Lack of reciprocity will create a monster in dying need of affection.  If you choose to continue to tra-la-la all through an imaginary field of flowers know that you are simply pacifying his needs...you are not 'creating' a love story…..he, on the other hand, is just letting himself be covered in the beautiful that is ‘received love’.  The only way to control this type of situation or prevent it all together is to:

***Not be so quick to wife a nigga in a pawn’s clothing. You can’t be wife to someone who won’t even agree to date you. You can’t be girlfriend to someone who doesn’t want you but just wants to reap in benefits. You have to find balance and taming of thy heart. You have to listen to yourself and your instincts and use your spirit of discernment to the utmost degree. Otherwise, you will go blind and broke trying to fit your circle in a triangular square.

2.    ***  Let go when letting go is the only option. Don't kill yourself fighting. 

3.    ***  Jump ship naked and promise yourself you will not be Captain Save A Nigga anymore….don’t save him from his bills, his stress or himself….let him be an adult and do that shit on his own. The ‘right guy’ will not look for your saving skills nor will he Dry Beg and pretend he don’t know what that means. He will solve his problems and seek to fix any of yours that he knows of. He will bring a throne to the throne – not his carseat.

4.      ***Know that a man will NOT stop a woman from loving him. He will not cease her actions or cut her off when her benefits to him are stellar. He will continue to let you pamper his ass in whatever you provide to him (sex, money, time, affection, etc) even when he knows he shouldn’t. It’s hard to stop someone from making you feel good. We are all guilty. It’s not a man thing. It’s not a race thing. It’s human nature to want to feel good and receive more of it, even when we are still searching for the missing key. But do NOT base any portion of your relationship on the fact that he has not 'stopped' you from going in the deep end of the waters....you ain't supposed to even be IN the waters....relationSHIPS are supposed to float. Know that. 

Blogtrack:

“When you’re out there doing what you’re doing

Are you just getting by???”

~Pink, Try

While I am guilty and have repented for enjoying being a recipient of someone’s love tokens who I didn’t want, I have spent a great deal of time, most notably the last time, dishing out affection by the pound in effort to gain the reciprocity.

The last time, as we all know by now, I lost all of me in the folds of desire …..i kept going, harder and harder with each phone call and every visit. I over did myself for someone who I knew would only do me….and ultimately he did me in.

If only he had have just told me to STOP!

Better yet…..

If only he was strong enough to not let “a woman’’ love him.

Blogtrack;

“that don’t make it good for anybody

Don’t wanna be in love just with anybody

Tired of being just Mr Anybody

So baby come with me, let’s just make a body…………”

“…..Maybe we’re just playing house

Just cause it feels good

Just cause it feels good……” 

~Playing House by Active Child

Lesson learned tho. Part of loving yourself and putting yourself first is knowing that you don't have to COURT, SAVE, BEG or LOVE ANYONE into you. Either they do or they don't.

And as I continue to peruse the halls of my indefinite single life and try to get my resting bitch face under control, I will never forget these lessons I have received. They have made me such a greater woman and this I know for sure. Jill Scott played in my truckie yesterday and I remember the days Pre-Blog when I would listen to it in tears on the way home from work....i would wonder to myself would I ever heal, even though I knew I would. It just seemed so far away....i had not been stopped from loving and giving love and now that it blew up in my face and played out on the beast that is social media and i felt exposed and depleted. 

Jill Scott, When I Wake Up
" To much on my mind....
here i am thinking again
all lost in my brain
but i know i should get up and get out of it
i gotta keep moving
but here i am lost all upside my brain
can't stop thinking, reminiscing 
can't stop. can't let go.

but when i wake up
and one day, i will do it,
i have let you go
and everything I went through will be beautiful" 

I used to suffer through this song but I would let her voice soothe and remind me that I would indeed wake TF up oneday....and it will have all been beautiful. I kind of didn't believe it would ever be beautiful...but she was right.

I"m finally there.
yesterday, i smiled and sang along to these lyrics several replayed times, with an empowered sense of freedom and self ...."I have let you go...and everything i went through was beautiful." 

Yes. It was beautiful. It served me. WELL. And he's been let go of. <3
#MuseWeasel is the last time I will be a woman who needs to be stopped because she can't control her love/like/infatuation.

And it was most certainly the last time I will be just ‘a woman’ to another man. 

Nigga!!! I"m JANUARIE YORK.<<I mean this with absolute unrelenting, healthy confidence. I need no co-sign or lawyers to prove to me that I am somebody of great importance. I could very well be the ONLY person in the world who believes JANUARIE YORK is the greatest januarie York alive...and I don't care. I am januarie York. Some call me jY. Some call me Kennie j. Some just call me Ken, or Kennie and family calls me Kendria. Whatever you know me as, know this:

  I was never born to be just 'a woman' in ANY facet of life, but especially for a man, his love or his bowl of sewn semen oats. * tips hat * 

BlogTrack:

"....bird ass niggas

i don't mean to ruffle yaw

i know you waiting in the wing, but i'm doing my thing

Where's the Love?" 

~Jayz, Heart of the City