Happy Birthday to My Bay-Bay

I claim him. He's mine. Forever more until the day my God allows us to cross paths again to mend my heart that's been broken since age 9. All I know of his death is that he died of a massive heart attack on the steps of a friend. The rest is history and to be quite frank, doesn't even matter. The family came to a consensus not to tell me about his death until after the service. They knew I'd loose my mind. Oddly enough, it wouldn't have mattered one way or another. But what about my heart? And mending it? Impossible feat.


I'd just seen him the night before his death. He kissed me goodnight. And when I woke up the next morning, a copy of Aladdin was laying on the bed. Yet another gift from Bay-Bay for his Nurl-Nurl.


Yea, that man, is all mine.


I don't write about him often because the tears flow with ease. And I don't talk about him. It's impossible for me to tell you just how much he meant and means to me without a snotty nose, red tear stricken eyes, and much heaving. 


February is a super hard month for me. February like holidays and family gatherings remind me that who I miss more than words or even these tears can explain, isn't here. Furthermore, it's our birthday month. He the 19th and I the 28th. The perfect Pisces pair.


At 7, he insisted on a birthday dinner at Red Lobster for me, with the family, for my first time. And I tell you, I was the happiest little girl watching the lobsters in the tank as he explained to me that those lobsters soon will be someones dinner. 


I pray that I make and have made him proud, because life has never been the same since he departed. My grandma yells at me to this day because I don't call her like I should. And I know I'm wrong, but he's not there. Someone else is there in my Bay-Bay's place. I should still hear his hearty, boisterous laugh in the background or the horrible cinematography from his Sci-Fi flicks. I remember spending summers and nearly every weekend with my grandparents riding around in his white van with the burgundy interior and blue U-Haul floor cover in the trunk. Uncomplicated and true, true love.


My ex use to yell when we argued that "No one will ever love you like me". No sir, no one will ever love me like my grandfather did. The only time I cried over him was he I knew I'd never walk into my grandmother's project home and see him stretched out in bed, or ever see his beret hats or white button up shirts stretched over his protruding belly. He, was love.


And the amount of tears and snot I've blown in his remembrance, I will and pray to the high heavens for another day with him. Just to tell him one more time how much I love him. I didn't know how to as a child, but I'm sure he died knowing that there was one little girl left behind, would grow up with a broken heart because he wasn't there, loved him more than what her childlike vocabulary could express.


This year makes 16 years. And there isn't a year that goes by that I don't acknowledge his birthday or day of death. But then there are the days between: Christmas, Thanksgiving, my birthday, rough days, good days - that I don't pray for the closure that now as an adult woman, I never received as a child girl. I know he's gone. And I know that he physically is not coming back. And I know, at least I feel as though he is OK. I saw him a dream a little over a year ago, first time in over 10 years I'd seen him in something other than pictures. And he sat wearing his blue beret hat and white buttonup shirt stretched tightly over his belly. I woke up sweating, walked into my living room, hoping and praying I'd see him there. But he wasn't.


My mother is getting married this summer and Lord knows, as joyous as the day will be, to look into the audience and not see his black face all dressed up glowing and full of love, it will be harder than what I can tell you. But we'll make it thru, because I know his spiritual presence will walk us down the aisle. 


Sunday is his birthday. I don't know how old he would've been. I just know I have to say happy birthday to the skies, thru my tears, and let him know that this now grown woman misses him just as much if not more than the girl child he left behind and that my love, to this day is unyielding and unmoving. 

I Love My Life, What About You?

the fact of the matter is we only get one life to live to either do it right, or not. so why not love what you have and make the very best of it? you know how they say there's no use in crying over spilled milk? well, there's no extra time to sulk over what's passed. leave then there and open your present.

and this is I guess life's basic logic at the end of the day, when it's all said and done. a lot of us, spend more time than we ought to wondering what would happen if we had done that differently. it doesn't matter anymore. get over it. let it go. move on. make your next trial run, the successful one.

I spend a lot of time thinking about life and what it has to offer and what's to come and what I want and hope and wish and pray for. There is no time to look back unless it's for reminiscings sake. The past is fun, it's where our futures use to lay. It's where our dreams were first cultivated and given the breath of life. But, the present is a present, so why negate it on what was and what use to be?

life as we know it right now at it's current moment and time may not be what we envisioned it to be. it may not contain the people we thought it would. but it's the life we've been given, so honestly, why not make the absolute best of it? why not give yourself permission to smile at yourself because you've been given the opportunity, the chance, the right to live life better than yesterday? yes, things can get worst. things can as we say in my hometown, shit just got real. it's true. but things can and do get better. life is not stagnant nor is it bad forever.

love your life because it's yours for the length of time you're on this Earth. don't let the past, what use to be, have that much power over you that you're not able to see the beauty, the glory in right now and what's to come.

Artwork

{ #GOODmusic } :: Brandy, "I Wanna Be Down"

#classic

{ #GOODmusic } :: Anthony Hamilton, "I'll Wait To Fall in Love"

my feelings exactly
to the tee,
could not have been expressed more perfectly.


I'd fallen in love with this song, it's lyrics and chorus in a matter of minutes and had not even heard the full track. This is just beautiful.

***

Anthony Hamilton

I'll Wait to Fall in Love

from newest album Back to Love

Best Hands of Your Life

Me and my Mommy :)

I thank God for having not blessed me with your presence yet. Because He knows that your mother-to-be is not ready for you, as she wants you to have nothing but the best. She, I, want you to be loved endlessly with no beginning nor end. I live for you even now though I have no clue when you are coming. I have no idea who you will resemble, or even, who your father will be. I pray, for you, and I, that he is strong, and that he is his very best.

Your mother now fights to no end to be her best person. She fights to mold herself into someone that today, she currently is not; to be someone that you will admire and love. Someone who when you set your eyes upon her, your own heart will warm, and eyes will shimmer because you'll know that you've been placed into the best hands of your life.

I have nothing to offer your right now. Nothing but positive words. My hands are clammy from fighting with myself so much that they've forgotten that they themselves have the ability to soften and be gentle. My heart weeps daily as she cries for freedom from her past. She wants herself to be relinquished from people, places, and things that she no longer belongs. So she writes, pours her heart out onto blank pages as she fills them with the honest foolishness of her young life and the sincerest dreams of what is to come. A dreamer is who your mother is. She dreams of life at it's best. Life at it's most gentle times. She dreams, wishes, hopes, and prays for a life for you that is noteworthy and God-fearing. A life that is well-documented and rejoiced over. A life that when you're my age, your battles nor pain will not surpass my own. For you, I desire nothing but the best. 

And while I am still learning this whole life thing, I look forward to awaiting and delivering your arrival. I've already decided your delivery will be a natural one, with no drugs. Spartan right? Even now, I feel the need to be aware of everything that pertains to you. I just know that I want absolutely nothing but the best for you and will see to it that this is what you're given - even now, when you have yet to announce your forthcoming or your arrival. 

Even now, you have been and will be placed into the best hands of your life.

School Girl Crushin'

Cheesing from ear to ear
there suddenly seem not to be
enough words
or verbal expressions
in the English language
or
the emotionally readable expressions
for you to understand
to get
to comprehend
this school girl crush thing
that I've been experiencing.


and it's not necessarily bad either.


Eyes flutter at the thought
stomach balls up at the sound
goosebumps conjoin at the touch
flashbacks and flashforwards
of what's to come
and what's passed
all take over me
because of you
and I existing
someway
somehow 
someday....


and it's not bad at all -
wouldn't change it for the world.




***

Mr. Blue Collar Blues

His hands were coarse, rough, and stubby; they were made up of hangnails, clogged cuticles, and dirt. She cringed at moments when he touched her. She cringed at the sight of them. She cringed and her teeth would grind at the thought of them being so close to her that she could see the veins pulsate underneath thick layers of skin. Thriller flick type shit. She was accustomed to soft, well manicured hands; "cleanliness is next to godliness" is what he use to tell her, and she held onto this thinking that became a belief.

She felt as though her dreams were being murdered by these dirty limbs of his. Her thoughts would drift off to old dates and times when cleaner hands, more gentle hands, less selfish hands ruled and rocked her world. Hands that nurtured her thoughts, wants, desires, and her dreams. Plush lips and white teeth, soft words and intelligent conversations. She couldn't wrap her mind around how she had gotten herself somewhere and with someone who didn't complement her.

A white collar girl. That's who she was attracted to; this is the type of woman she grew into. Business suits, ties, and briefcases. Low cuts with aviators. They wear their confidence in their eyes and in their walk. They worked hard in the boardroom and played harder in the bedroom. Monday through Friday men who mingled at after work happy hours and played at swanky hotel suites.

Still, for the life of her she couldn't figure out when, where, why or how she ended up here, with him, Mr. Blue Collar. Mister who works long days to try to make ends meet with a little bit of something left over to last until his next pay.

She'd awakened one morning, facing the ceiling, eyes quivering and mind racing, thinking. Love is all that was on her mind. Successful love. Rocket ship knock me off my feet sort of love.

All she wanted was a love that was true and enduring. A love that lifted her off the earth's stoney surface just as easily as the autumn wind shuffles falling leaves. She just didn't want these hands who would provide that desire, those wants. She wanted the hands she missed. The soft hands who worked effortlessly and selflessly. The hands she admired. She didn't want this with him. And she knew it. His hands, she thought, were just a glimpse into just how much dirt he'd done and would do if she continued on this road.


So she got up. And ran. And would have run forever if need be to get back to her Mr. White Collar. Mr. Clean with the well manicured, healthy, clean hands and the bedroom eyes that read her better than her favorite book. She ran away from Mr. Blue Collar Blues because his blues was just too much for her to bare. So before things got so deep that she couldn't escape, she ran. And never looked back.

Anthony Hamilton, "Best of Me"

Back To Love

Why I Stayed,

No one knows why I stayed but me. We reach a point in life and specifically in certain relationships where we've grown so comfortable with the bullshit that we wind up convincing ourselves that to start over defeats the purpose. So we stay. I did. I convinced myself, with his help of course, that I didn't have the patience or the time to meet and get to know another person and their habits, attitudes, likes, and dislikes. To learn someone new again. Who has that sort of time? So I stayed. "We not gettin' any younger T." So clearly, I was getting too old to seek and find and learn a new person too. I stayed through the cheating, lying, verbal abuse, and sheer laziness. I stayed through the excuses, schemes, and blaming everyone else for why you're where you are in life. I stayed. I stayed through the threats of if I can't have you nobody will, through the threats to knife up your wrists with our kitchen knives, stayed through blocking the door so I couldn't escape - to stay and wallow with him in his misery.


I stayed because I was the good girlfriend playing "good wife".


But eventually, that shit got old. Real old. And it started to stink and to wear me down. There's but so much encouragement that I could give when what I really wanted to say was "shut the fuck up and get up off your ass. no one owes you shit, not even a good fucking morning sunshine". I began to spend my days off at my mother's for a piece of peace of mind. I grew tired of my brain always working and working the majority of the time to keep him functioning.


A weary woman is not a happy woman no matter what she says. If she claims she's happy, she's fucking lying.


I was tired of redoing resumes and hearing the dreams of how to make these moves and build "our" legacy. Build a legacy when you don't have a leg to stand on. The irony was appalling. But my being so comfortable and being OK with it because it'll change, things'll get better was just as disgusting. As much as I was tired of working 16 hour long days at work to catch up on the late rent and past due bills, coming home to take the trash out, do the dishes, and straighten up the living room while he was stretched out in the bedroom, I'd convinced myself that this was as good as it gets. I stayed because I had already prepared myself that this was going to be my life.


Oh yes, I stayed.


I continued to make excuses and enable the behaviors. But, if I'd said or did what I really wanted to, my day and quite possibly, my week, or months to come would have been severely fucked up. My level of miserable would have been beyond 100.


I stayed so I wouldn't have to hear the bullshit. So I wouldn't have to be threatened with what I wasn't going to do and what he was going to do. The threats were just as empty as the promises but it took me a while to realize such.


I stayed, because while he didn't have a leg to stand on, I'd lost my original backbone and needed one rebuilt.


Don't get me wrong, there was love. Insurmountable amounts of love. But the shit was fucked up. I fell in love with who I thought he would grow into and he fell in love with who I was when we met. I fell in love with thinking I could mold him into who I wanted him to be versus who and what his reality was. It didn't take long for him to show me his real face, but I didn't believe what he showed me, so I stayed. And grew angry at him for my knowingly mistaking him to be someone he wasn't.


My mistake was taking my frustrations out on him for not being who I imagined him to be instead of admitting such and leaving well enough alone from the rip. Instead, I stayed thinking I could change this boy into the man I wanted.


And don't get me wrong, he put it down. On the regular. But I got it and other bitches got it too. Yet, my simple ass stayed thinking shit would change. And eventually it did. But, a cheetah doesn't change its spots like a zebra can't transpose its stripes. And change, well that bitch was a few days late and several dollars short.


Believe what you see when you see it. That, is the difference between now and later.


The love we shared was limitless. There was nothing we would not have done for one another - other than leave. We both knew we were both better apart than we were together, but we weren't strong enough for each other or ourselves to let it go.


But eventually, the weary woman wanted to be happy without the weary or the drama or the pain. She wanted to be with someone who she could genuinely love for them and not for her thoughts. She had to own up to the fact that lost trust and non-belief alone was more than enough of a reason of why she couldn't walk that well trodden road yet again.


I stayed because change was too scary. Because I misconstrued a lot of things for love when it wasn't about love, because sometimes, love just isn't enough of a reason to hang around. It's frightening to see the person you've shared your life with stand before you threatening to cut their wrists if they can't have you as if you're their property. There aren't enough words to explain the sheer fear of thinking you can't move on with your life because that person won't allow you to do so.


There are a lot of things that love is, but equally, there are many things that love is not.


I apologize for staying around longer than I know I should have. I apologize for not being the stronger one sooner to let it go so repair could have began earlier. But life is about learning and I pray that you've walked away with just as many lessons as I have without holding an embittered heart. Love is worth fighting for. But love is also worth letting go for individual repair versus combined destruction. We stayed thinking time really does and would heal all wounds, but not if you're not brave enough to stop patching up scars as if they don't exist.


To finally have let go is honestly one of the best decisions I've made to date. My individual happiness means the world to me and I honor it just as much as I honor the love we shared. But, the truth of the matter is that it was time. We'd taught all we could teach and bought to the table everything in our power, including the messiness. This was nothing more than a good ass chapter that had to come to an end.

Wrecking Brain

I can tell when a particular best friend of mine is up to something, just like she can tell without seeing me when and if I've been crying. So, when she called me the other day, asking a million plus one questions about a particular someone, I knew, with no proof, that either she was up to something, or, she knew something or some things that I didn't. And when I say asking a million plus one questions, this was like a police interrogation - but not as intimidating. And in between our laughs and my not being able to stay still, I knew what it was all about and where it was coming from. Without her saying so, I was given an outside view of what I've always kind of wanted to know.

And when she asked the question I've quietly asked and answered for myself, I cheerfully answered yes. If asked, the answer is and would be yes. For a long time, the answer has always been yes without a shadow of doubt.

Sitting on the phone with her, I wrecked my brain while trying to pick hers to no avail. And as much as I figured that I had it figured out, I just wasn't sure - and still am not.

She said to me, as if I didn't know, "you know sometimes we look and it's been sitting there right in front of us all along". I know just who she was talking about and what she was saying, but, I wanted to know why? And where was it all suddenly coming from is what I couldn't figure out. Were there truth to her questions? Had she heard it all from the horse's mouth and was just encoding it so I couldn't repeat it verbatim? Hopefully, this won't end in the world may never know like the age old question of "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?"

I hope, for my own sanity that I'll be able to get to the center of it all because by all means, it's been a long time and all sorts of emotions are bound up like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

If I took my own advice I wouldn't be wrecking my brain over my best friend's hidden messages or your sometimes cloudy disposition. If I took my own advice, I'd be at the center of the tootsie roll pop already. But clearly I'm not.

It's been said that good things come to those who wait. And I hope, this, is a classic example of such. I don't expect a fairy tale ending because in the world we live and function in, fairy tales don't exist. But the sheer feeling of a love so transparent that it becomes contagious will do. 

Anthony Hamilton Do You Feel Me

American Gangster soundtrack