Never Fear. Love, Always.

i’m not sure what made me say that but sometimes my most honest things are the exact things i swallow because they aren’t sweet or tasty or pure or positive vibrations enough. but it’s the truth.

i do not exclude myself when i say people. because sometimes, reluctantly, i’m only human. it disgusts me sometimes because i strive to be so much more but that is the arrogance of man and the fall of satan.

sometime’s enough really is enough.

but what of the people who take everything personal? what of the emotional reactions? what of the quiet competition? the suppressed jealousy? what of the projections? what of the attempts to insult, to manipulate, to spread fear?

at some point my defense mechanisms, my counter attacks and my preventive strategies became habitual symptoms of my humanity.

i could have played nice. i could have stayed polite. i could have stayed sweet. i could have chosen to never become the mirror and expose to people either their shallow truths or deepest lies. i become people’s discomfort because i got tired of being their comfort zone.

lie to me. use me. manipulate me. deceive me. front on me. discriminate against me. talk about me in front of and behind my back, and in different languages.

i’ve been called paranoid. i’ve been accused of creating self-fulling prophecies and i can see where this could be considered true. you cant slick talk on the day of judgment and your movements are either dove-like or serpentine.

i can lecture myself to death. i can recognize myself as the cancerous cell. the one who never misbehaves. who fucks up everything and gets on everybody’s nerves. but the truth is, people love you, they absolutely adore you, when you are being everything they thought you are, would be or could be. they begin to despise you, resent you or even reject you when you begin to resemble the realism within themselves that they feel better off hiding.

i am everyone’s exposed secret. including my own. what people mistake for lies are usually me playing to my dumbest. if you do not bring my your truths, what do i expect you to do with mine?

i have fears. huge gaping fears that have nothing to do with the ones people project on me. like right now, i have a fear that maybe everything i’ve always wanted was based on ideals that weren’t my own. i have a fear that this love that i am falling into can actually be the pain that i feel in the future. that my joy could betray me as such. so i try to focus now. on the now. on the you.

on the very you that brought me out of this darkness. not directly, but you know how they say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel? well i kept going through that tunnel and you were that light.

i fear that America has done so much to make me more of itself, and i have failed so miserably at both being American and non-American that i have nothing but this empty middle place i call a rebellious free spirit of a self, making her home in Jamaica because she feels safer in the jungle, wiser in the sun, and closer to God where he can so easily see and correct her mistakes.

i don’t want to complain. i dont want to be angry. i dont want to cry. i scoff at these human emotions as if my deepest healing hasnt appeared in them. i am acting as if the rivers that run across my face dont contain history.

i’m not sure why i came here. when i’m at peace, i read. when i’m at war, i write.

it’s no coincidence that it’s been a while since i’ve written anything about love or fear. or fear or love. or thought about essays or books or anything. i feel the pressure of catching up the present on the past. my life. the startup. the relationship. the breakup? the distancing from that one thing i claimed to never fear and seemed to love always. the orange as the new black. the trip that made me because it damn sure isn’t going to break me. the days on that couch and the one day i woke up and realized i had lost something i actually wanted.

so here i am. because i am at war. and when i at war, i write. when i am at peace, i read. and as much as i want to fill my head with things, if it isn’t solutions or revelations for this thing on my mind, i cannot focus on it.

empowerment. disempowerment. this is everything that i once knew could come but did not know i would be oscillating between at the same time. creating something that will empower so many people, myself and my business partner and bredren included. but at the same time, losing something that meant so much to me. your time. your attention. your affection. your approval.

i want to say how dare you and type all these ugly and not so pretty whiney and bratty things but you deserve so much more than that. just like i deserve so much more than the silence and separation you have forced upon me like someone who does not even care about who i am or how i feel. 

do i mean nothing to you? is this like that one time you told that girl that even if you died and she was the only one who could bring you back to life, to let you die, because you never wanted to see her again? is this another one of your paranoid fantasies come to life or did i really fuck up? the fucking uncertainty.

i could listen to the most beautiful songs in the world, like this one, and they can no longer mean anything. you’re not creeping up in my yard, and on to my porch, and into my living room, and into my bedroom, and onto my bed, and inside of me and that is some fucked up shit to think about considering that is exactly how it was when i came back and you did all this 2 days before we were allegedly to see each other. and i’m supposed to write some beautiful eloquent shit about never fearing and loving always and rubber bands and trusting and going to the movies and getting pedicures to do something with myself instead of waiting and wondering and worrying and questioning myself to pieces.

analyze it to death or imagine it to life. baby, i choose life.

i don’t want to analyze you. i want you to have your freedom. i declared it and stood tall, as a beautiful if not befuddled black woman on the verge of knowing that everything i feared has come true. would you look at that? the queen of never fear is facing her fears head on because that is what i chose to focus on.

dear universe. if you are listening. i was wrong. bring him back. i surrender.

guess i finally found something or someone that i would die for because i swear i would love to die to the woman who lost you. to become the woman that you actually need instead of coming up with all the ways to get you to become everything i never had without realizing that you already were in so many ways.

you and i on a balcony or vacationing or dining or on a private jet. you deserve that and baby you deserve so much more and i found myself about to call you baby so many times and i held back, i hesitated, i said that i wouldn’t and i swore that i wasn’t. but i was. and i pretending that i wasn’t awkward and i pretended i wanted or was curious about other things to keep my mind occupied and off of how much i wanted you and missed you.

dear universe. i know you are listening. please forgive me. i repent.

nobody’s perfect and i definitely fit that description. but you made me want to be something more than what i had been fine being - whatever it was i needed to be for whatever reasons in order to make whatever needed to happen, happen. i was fine with drifting along and floating in and out of reality and the present just to confirm or reject whether it was what i wanted and not taking any responsibility or accountability in the creation of it all outside of cutesy complaining and annoying emotional anarchy and fickle financial floating.

that love we made, do you know what that’s for?

the deepest of my thoughts and emotions and feelings are buried deep within the sexual chemistry, volcano, the eruption of everything i was becoming that i wanted to share with you. to be stopped short of that is a new form of cruelty i did not even know existed. astral blue balls. a sort of deep spiritual longing of wondering if and when i will ever get to see what missing you can truly do. and i wonder if i ever really enjoyed sex or was i just faking my way through most of it. and then i remember that i really enjoyed it with you and it was because i was actually making love with you, using all of our fucking and fondling to really get to know and appreciate you as a person and as a man and as a being.

there was something i meant to tell you or show you or a way i was meaning to fuck you and i feel like i won’t get to do that now. you can call me impatient but what does this all mean? all i know are your comforting and curious extremities. your consistency of which i got used to and began to take for granted, and your mystery and distance of which i was fine with since it awarded me my privacy.

there it is. all of it. all of what i feel spilling all over the place and not as neatly as i would like. and all without a guarantee on return of investment. there is something that i want to know now more than ever and that is that we are getting ready to either get back together someday or that i should prepare to wrap everything up neatly as an experience in life and began to move on with mine. and if it is someday is it a july someday? a summer someday? a 2016 someday? and here i go again. and there it is again. the fucking uncertainty.

at least i have chosen to express some of it here. here it is for me to read. to remember. to realize. to reason with and react better next time. to respond to. to relate to. here it is all of me in all of the forms that are too embarrassing to share with anyone else, let alone try to admit to or wrap up into a curt conversation in which you realize that i am still everything that you need and want and end this silent war. i know that deep within, you felt something for me. you still do.

here is the proof of the existence of my emotions. this is my way of letting you know, that yes, i was hiding something from you. so much. but like most of the things i care about the most, i was hiding anything that i thought would cause you to run away and that is exactly what you did. whether momentarily or forever, you are not where you said you would be. and you’re not here. with me.

oh, baby. where did we go wrong? and all the romantic r&b songs we both seem to love -- you openly, and me fake stubbornly. all of my stubbornness was fake because all i wanted to do was surrender to you. over and over. from sunrise to sundown every day that our lives permit. how scary is that?

and here i am, pouring out all the fear i kept and held inside. all of the love i denied and held back. everything that you knew and everything that you sensed and none of your illusions or assumptions because i cannot admit to crimes i did not commit. my innocence will overwhelm you even more than my love will. and i still long to overwhelm your sense. and perhaps this is the part where i imagine it to life because all i can think about is you. all of you. even the part of you that is holding all of you back from me. did you know that i can feel you breathe inside of me? that part of your love still lives inside of me?

i am not afraid to get colorful. to get creative. to get real in expressing my love for you. here it is. here it is safe, and far away from either of our self-sabotage. here is the head full of poetry and the heart like warm coffee. here is the metaphor of a woman who is falling in love with you, this man of freedom and separation and service and sacrifice and your secret life. and mine.

i love your brokenness. and mine. why?

because i realize everything i accused you of, i hold inside too. i am of the same devil and demon, searching for God in behaviors that i cover with love. my multitude of sins. wanting not to hurt but doing so anyway because i am afraid.

and i caused all of this. i pushed you away. it old you constantly that i did not like you and did not want to talk to you, and now i tremble within my own awareness and fighting off sadness and anger that you may feel the same. everything i teased and taunted you with is now coming back to me and it hurts. i wanted you to be tough for the both of us, so that i could be gentle for the both of us. so that perhaps neither of us could ever get hurt. jokes on me.

and whether you are doing so intentionally or just intently, it hurts. i won’t pretend that it doesn’t and i won’t cut my words short. i would let them run and run and run like my feelings for you when i forget that my head is absolutely smashed with overthinking about everything that is happen in the stark reality of your absence, in which you so calculatingly thrust upon me and walked away.

touche. i knew you were cold, but forgot how much frostbite stings.

i wish you could have waited. i wish i had answered your calls and your questions. your text. me and all of my wandering and waiting and forgetting to remind people of what is actually happening. you are the upsetting force in my life and ignore how much i may have actually upset this entire thing.

so where does that leave me? where does that lead me?

and did you leave me? or are you leading me? and if so, where are you going, or where are we going, where am i going with this?

it’s really out of my control. how you feel is not my problem...

i would love to brush this off and shake this off. i have to apply the imagination and actually put out there what i want. it’s a risk, yes, but so is pretending that i want nothing. they say when you find yourself wanting everything is because you were dangerously close to wanting nothing. so what is my everything?

i want you. man oh man do i want you. like seriously. i want you. and i want this startup to blow up and change the world. i want freedom. loyalty. acceptance. commitment. wealth. riches. prosperity. investments. a beautiful home. joy. great sex. amazing views. business travel. family vacations. a big belly. a loving husband. i want everything i thought i could never have and i want it starting now. i will work for it. i will wait for it. i will fight for it. i will surrender for it. i just want it. i want it all. i want whatever it was that i told myself i couldn’t have so i started pushing it away. i want it all back and i want it all right here where i can see it, and feel it, and taste it, and hear it, and experience it. i want my life back. i want my destiny. my purpose. i want God’s will to be done in my life.

i want all of the love and none of the fear that causes me to self-sabotage. i want all of the romance and the love and care and the nurturing and none of the nastiness and negativity and neglect that causes things to fall apart. i want all of the success, the direction, the creativity, the imagination and all of the beautiful elements that come together to make life meaningful.

i want to stay close to God and keep those close to God, close to me. i want to help bring people closer to God. closer to love. further from fear.

i don’t know what happens next. i don’t know when i’ll hear from you, or what i would say if i was to reach out to you. i don’t know what God has planned for our lives and i don’t know what happens next. the beautiful uncertainty.

(SOULECTION)

Remind me why we met again? Remind me why I found myself subconsciously and then impulsively cutting off the other 2 in my top 3, knowing that you were my #1 pick the whole time. Remind me again why you even signed up for that dating site. I know it wasn’t for reasons as deep as mine. Remind me again how you found me. Remind me again what you first asked me, and if you ever found out whether or not it was true. For you, at least. And at most, I wish you would remind me again who you are, because in light of my longing and in the darkness of my desires, I keep mistaking you for the one.

Remind me again why there were always one too many. Whether at once, or crowding the corners of my mind. All eagerly awaiting to get past the bouncer of my spirit into my heart. Or maybe they were just there for the free liquor and pussy. I’ll never know. Because now all I know is that I want you.

“You’re alive.”

It’s funny. I feel like I prayed for someone like you, which would make sense, because I often get what I pray for and have no idea what to do with it when it comes. I want you to be my broken patterns, my ended cycles, my new forever.

I’m ashamed and afraid of having such deep thoughts for you so quickly. I know that everything I’m thinking and feeling would scare you away if I ever said it or acted upon it. You tell me to tell you how I feel, that you won’t judge me. But how could you not? How could you not run from the crazy older lady falling in love with you despite your flaws? How can you even respond to long drawn out paragraphs in which I ramble and confess that I’m still close to my ex’s family as I admit that I have trouble writing to him, shamelessly admitting that he is in prison. Isn’t it only the crazy girls who aren’t worth your time who have ex’s in prison? And isn’t it only the crazier ones who admit it, as if you’d not care?

 But what do you care about? Your nonchalance worries me more than your inability to excite easily. I’m the opposite. I’m excited about everything. I’m excited as I write you. My words were coming too fast, so I had to switch to typing because I couldn’t get the ink across the paper quickly enough.

I’m writing this in the first place because you still haven’t responded my text messages from over 24 hours ago. Remind me again why I haven’t cut you off. Remind me again why I never log back into that site, while I stopped searching and stopped being looked for. Remind me again why even lovers of recent past have come back and the all feel like tests, mere ghosts of what I’m letting go of and making room for. Remind me again why I prayed for and over you this morning. Remind me again why I talk to God about you. Remind me again why I never remember to listen to what God has to say back about you.

Remind me again why I came to Broward to see you and didn’t even get to see you. Remind me again when I’ll see you again. Remind me again why I feel so lonely without any type of response or communication from you.

“In your loneliest times, you look for a song to play. Is this okay?”

These melodies seem to understand what I’m going through. These lyrics seem to speak for me when I feel my words don’t make sense. I don’t know who you are, or what this is, or why or when I began feeling.. okay maybe I do remember when. Sitting next to you, beside you, on that couch in Coyo. You thought I was falling asleep. How embarrassing, because I was actually falling love.

I can’t control how low my eyes get when I smoke for the first time since I gave up for trees for lent. I can’t control how far away from my body I get when my mind has decided to obey my spirit. I can’t control how much I space out when the astral begins to speak and the music goes along with it in harmony.

Remind me again why I thought you were claiming me. Remind me again why I swore I heard your spirit (or was it your soul?) confirming my disbelief that someone as quiet, laid back and normal as you could capture someone so talkative, anxious and weird as me. You came at me with zero game, just your presence, and you already got me craving you more than any man that I know right now. Even the ones I’ve slept with, who put it on me and never bothered to take it with them when they left. You erase all of that, and I’ve never seen you hold a pencil or write a single word across my heart, yet I’m yours.

“What makes you so sure about us?”

I feel like I’m quietly exploding. I feel like a never-ending, always-erupting volcano of love for you since I’ve met you. Is this a new record? I know that if I’m falling in love this quickly with your quiet potential, that the end is surely on the way. How dare I even let these words slip out of my mouth? Or even slip between my fingers and onto this blank space knowing that if you ever read them, you would finally know what was behind my neat and sometimes sloppy paragraphs. You don’t even call me. You don’t even text me back right away and I can’t remember the last time you called me beautiful. 

Certainly not since we met. Certainly not since I became real. Certainly not since I talked too much in the car about things we don’t have in common. Certainly not since the day I popped up on you at the party and was just happy to stand beside you because your presence is my drug of choice. Certainly not since I said I only want to smoke with you because I get a different high, and it was the simplest form of loyalty I could offer, even though I didn’t listen to myself. I still never get as high as I did with you that night in Coyo. But yeah, certainly not since that day I walked through that strange new place and quietly and assertively repeated “I just want to see my baby” over & over until I ran into you. Certainly not since I realized my hair was still in knots and I probably looked like a plain jane in a grey dress, the same dress I met you in. Certainly not since I looked for you in the same place and around the corner from your house as I was too nervous to tell you how close I was, but you never came. Certainly not since I posted 2 photos on Instagram to show you what my hair looks like curly since you didn’t get to see it in person yet. And certainly not since my unanswered texts once again had me questioning my worthiness.

This morning, I told God that I believe that I’m still yours. But..

“How are you so sure? What about the expectations?”

I have no expectations with you other than a response. We don’t flirt. We hardly joke. You’re not going out of your way to see me and I may even have to wait 9 months for you to call or ask me out like Meagan Good did, except I’ve already blown whatever limited supply of patience I have or had when it comes to you.

I don’t understand. Here I was, just minding my business, responding to your messages, realizing you were the best person I came across (or, who came across me) on that website. Here I was, just asking you for your Instagram only to find out how attracted to you I really am. There I was, late at night before I had already told you I was going to bed, telling whoever was listening in that empty space, that you were my baby and meaning it. There I was, claiming you as my husband, not even caring if you ever became my boyfriend, which of course you would. There I was, teasing about you falling in love with me and moving in with me. That was the last time I probably even believed it could happen. Is that why you felt the need to remind so intensely? That night?

Remind me again if that was even you. Remind me again what schizophrenia is and how you can tell the difference between the voice of God, the voice of Spirit, the voices in Heaven and the voices inside your head. Remind me again what it sounds like when God speaks to you. Remind me again what your voice sounds like, because the only time you called me was when you were on your way in the Uber I sent for you because I’m used to getting everything delivered, even you. Remind me again why I even like you, why I’d even love you, why I’d even want to give myself to no one but you. Remind me again what spite means, because I feel myself pushing you away just because you still haven’t pushed send. Remind me again what patience is, because I have none.

“If you think we’re moving so fast, baby let’s take time.”

Remind me again why we even search for love. Why or how it even finds us. Remind me again the purpose of marriage, of husbands and wives, and why I event want one. Remind me again what my womb is for, and why, especially during this time of the month, I even have one if I’m not putting it to use.

Remind me again why I like you. No seriously. I beg of you. With every minute and hour that goes by without your response, I wait for you to remind me each time why I’m into you. Remind me again why I even want to see you. 

Remind me again why I felt that way that night, and a little bit the night a few days after when I rushed to end my other date so that I could see you. Remind me again why I paid $10 and bought that Miami rum and that Heineken, just to stand next to you and dance to music that everyone seemed to recognize but my American-African ass while we exchanged smiles and questions. Remind me again why I admitted that I was the only one in my family who knew some of those songs, even though most times I can pass for Caribbean anyway. Until of course you meet my family, or play anything before or after 1990-2000 dancehall or roots or just Marley in general. Remind me why I want you, when you’re so Jamaican and I’m so eager to go back to Africa to remember who I am. Remind me again why I practically dumped the Nigerian, not just that night, but in general so I wouldn’t be tempted to choose my African prince over my Caribbean king.

“I don’t want to lose this vibe.”

I could just... it’s just your presence. Do you understand how frightening is? The only thing that’s really making me fall in love with you is your presence. It’s not your looks, it’s not your words, your charm, your money, your talent, anything. It’s just your presence and how I feel when you’re around. Do you understand how hard it is to fight the very thing that is making me fall in love with you when it’s the one thing I have no control over and even have access to right now? I can’t look at or do or say anything else and say okay that’s it, I’m over him. I have to be in your presence, to get over your presence, but when I’m in your presence, I find myself loving you a little each time.

Do you understand how fucking unfair that is? Would you even care if you did?

“You must not know me.”

I don’t even know you. I don’t even know your last name, or what your life is like, or what these days are like that have you so stuck and wanting to change everything even though you feel you can’t. I don’t know who else you talking to. Who any of your exes are, or who you have slept with. I don’t know what the inside of your house or your room looks like. I don’t even know you.

So how the fuck am I falling in love with you? Again, if you could see how ridiculous the inside of my head looks right now. If you could understand how senseless my heart is being. Craving you as if I know you. Like, how...

“You make me want to switch this, way that I’ve been living. I don’t get it.”

And here I am, sensing I’m the reason you want to make a change. That your life would be better with me in it. That I could inspire you. Push you to greater heights and channel the Most High into you the way that no other woman could. Here I am thinking that an older woman is exactly what you need. Not another mother figure, or a sister. You’re too wise for that. Perhaps even wiser than me. But an older woman to inspire you to greatness. To come and upgrade your life in ways that make you want to do more for yourself, for me, for the future that we are both is sure to come.

But how do I know?

“How do you love me?”

I shouldn’t even feel this way about you. You clearly have things you need to work on and get together in your life. So do I. Yet here I am, writing out my feelings so they don’t haunt me during the day. Knowing you have one hour and 35 minutes to respond to my messages before I either follow up with you or take the L and wait for you to hit me back. Sometime. Someday. Whatever.

“Knowing last time aint the last time.”

I remember one time you said you didn’t know if I would ever respond. I used to take 24 hours to respond to you sometimes. So busy during the day that I end up squeezing all of my responses into the end of the night when I would lay on my bed and finally write you back. How the tables have turned, and now it’s me wondering if you will ever text me back. In fact, look at all that I feel and think and experience while I’m waiting for you to respond to my silly little messages.

there are some days i wake up with joy, other days, anxiety. it’s not that i don’t get or understand how i’m supposed to feel, i just always forget which article or mantra or breath or thought or affirmation to reference and apply in the moment. which scripture, or maybe one scripture is all i need.

yes, jesus loves me. this i know. even the bible tells me so.

but what about my heart? what about that feeling in my chest that goes away with meditation and deep relaxation but who honestly has time for meditation when you are always one missed task or deadline away from losing it all.

the pressure. i know it won’t make me real. but it feels real. very.

i just want my chest back. and everything in it. my heart. my courage. my lungs. my freedom. my excitement. my joy. my boo. my ability to have crushes and attractions and desire relationships and enter them and keep them alive. my breaths which used to be way deeper before i was. my lungs which used to fill up with so much air i had to wonder if i’m even awake. 

they say breathing requires a lot of mental energy which is why very wise and calm people have slowed down their breathing process to almost a halt. they also say that you should take quick, deep breaths when you have anxiety, i guess to keep your mind focusing on something more physical for a moment. but khaled also said they don’t want you to win, so who should i even listen to?

oh, anxiety. no matter how much i try to break up with you, or fire you, you’re here to remind me that you’re not going anywhere and you are here to stay forever. or perhaps i have mistaken you for anxiety when you are actually the opposite and it is i who suppresses you and places expectations on you.

look, it’s obvious that this will be a very popping year. it will also be a very challenging year, and i will learn quickly that my vision is not concrete. that it is an ever evolving presentation from God. the tetris pieces I put together 1 by 1.

if anything i could say would ever help another person, i’d tell the world. every day for as long as i live until everybody i was sent to help is helped. just like clearing the tetris board. every piece in its place and cleared into the ether so that the next set can form and take place. repeat and repeat for as long as you have the skills and stamina and battery life. and so it is.

sometimes i sit down to write and i say why. are you a writer? you know many writers and you are not really like them. not as dedicated, not as witty, not as passionate. about writing that is. which is why you should never call your self a writer or singer no matter how well you write or sing, or even love to, because most likely it’s luck and sensation. end scene.

i have to tell myself these things so i can continue to edit excel sheets and compete with promoters and give away my time like free entry before midnight. while i hide my thoughts inside a box within a website i didn’t build, even though i have the skills and stamina and bandwidth to create my own. 

i have to mock myself a little so i don’t think that i can actually do it. so that i don’t publish the book and (gasp) become a writer. so that i don’t get up on that stage and (clutches pearls) become a singer. so i don’t let these fine dudes get all up in these guts and (wait, what?) become a mother.

because why in the world would any of those dreams come true if they’re so silly in the first place? so pointless, so irrelevant to my initial statement about helping as many people as possible. backspacing even the very contradiction to my statement because while i write essays, books and songs i do not.

and who wants to sing anyway when beyonce and sza and everyone’s cup of tea exists? when rihanna can make people use tidal and every other day there’s a pretty brown or beige something or other on somebody’s social network or stereo or screen killing the game and looking flawless af while doing so.

i would pass out trying to imagine all the books that exist in the world. the amount of books people still haven’t read or never will or swear they will get around to but remain dog-eared, bookmarked or just plain forgotten either on display proudly or privately tucked in away in false absent-mindedness.

and everything i say, and everything you read, and everything we hear becomes irrelevant when that pain in your chest goes away but now your entire head feels like it needs air and you just wish that you could breathe through your ears and your eyeballs because the air from your lungs that comes through your mouth never seems to reach your brain enough and all you want is more air. more oxygen. more prana. more of this life force because something inside of you has evolved past pretending that you love to do shit you don’t give a fuck about, and acting like you don’t give a fuck about shit you love to do.

i guess there are still things i am learning. and i love to learn but it’s the extra classes i didn’t even sign up for that are killing me. yet knowing that this very degree will be my ticket to change the world. 

i am full of quotes and scriptures and inspiration and motivation and affirmation and lessons of the day and strong habits i must develop daily, weekly, monthly and even annually for success. i am full of my mother’s instructions and my father’s silence. i am full of my brother’s longing for something other than this. i am full of the distance between our beings despite him being all i ever wanted.

everybody is evolving. everything is new. even barbie got thick.

...but were we meant to be? were you meant for me?

or are you here to help me find

how bittersweet that the one thing i can do to forget about you is the one thing i always forget to do. the one thing i quietly and secretly love more than anything else. denying myself of the only thing that makes sense because then i’d have to actually admit that i am a writer. a teacher. a healer. a philosopher.

an entrepreneur. a psychologist. and a philosopher. the future, present and past. or past, present and future.

my mind is constantly organizing things for aesthetic, affirmative and attractive purposes. i can’t even come here to write about how much i love/hate you without being enticed into the dance and foreplay and eroticism of words themselves. will writing about you ever be as beautiful as the most beautiful moments? will writing about you ever be as therapeutic as that moment when you released the last of the remaining trapped energy inside of me? you helped me conquer so many fears, including my fear of you.

i wasn’t supposed to fuck you, let alone fall in love with you. i remember how terrified i was when i realized that it could happen, or perhaps would even happy. although i’d like to think i was just being way too high or way too crazy or way too psychotic in that moment to actually be foreal.

you are young. you are wild. you are reckless. you are polyamorous. you are, as you said, a whore. and you may be, as your so-called friends say, the devil.

so now what? did i dance with you knowing you were all along? did i fuck satan himself thinking i could bring the God out of him? did you really take my soul and do i have yours and without love, what the fuck was it all for? is this the good in the bad and the bad in the good? am i the yin to your yang? where the hell did you come from, who sent you and why did you get the best of me while also bringing out the worst? or rather, did you get the worst of me while bringing out the best?  do we even have needs for such extremes anymore?

what i loved about you the most is that you pulled out every secret from its hiding place, but only the ones that pertained to the present. you were so present that you would catch feelings before i even had time to hide them. the fact that you got me to do things i said i couldn’t do like drive with a suspended license or wouldn’t do like give head to someone other than the man i love. because they keep me from realizing things like my need to drive and take myself where i need to go, and my need to let go of the past and reach out toward the future, without self-imposed sexual prisons. i loved the God in you, and i had no idea that i would fall in love with something deep within you. i loved that you were crazy enough to fall in love with me but wise enough not to. that is, assuming that neither or either of us fell in love because who the fuck has the time to figure that out when you’re writing and rushing the process so you can get to the j.cole homecoming documentary fresh off the torrents.

what i (hated) about you the most is that you seemed so destined. so divine. yet so devious. so demonic. the fact that you are a pisces and so in tune with so many different people, including me. that time you zoned out in the middle of a story about your post addictions and called me “bruh” repeatedly, over and over. that time you told me you were my homie, my friend. those times you admitted you would not cuff me and all you had to offer was dick (and heart). all the times you showed me you weren’t shit and i refused to believe anything other. or the times i believed and even saw but still melted into you anyway. i hated that you could meet me and fuck me and tell me all my secrets and still not miss me enough to text me or call me first. i hate that there are men walking this earth who are that cold and cruel and heartless and women like me who are so conceited and spoiled and self-centered that we expect entire universes to shift because we gave you some attention, pussy and lukewarm seduction.

“that love we made... do you know what that’s for?”

more than anything, i’m mad about the sex because it was sacred and you did everything to remind me and convince me and prove to me it wasn’t and i’m beginning to believe that you’re right. i did that spiritually naive thing where i felt like i could fuck up and it would all be part of divine alignment.

point blank, i have no idea what’s going on anymore and this writing did not bring me any closer to wisdom but at least it was my truth. and from here, there a million places we can go with only one destination:

true north. truth. the truest me in truest love with the truest you. trust. the God in me infinitely intwined with the God in you. a match made in heaven that set fire to hell. the reason to never fear & love always.

more confused than i’ve ever been about love, but closer than i’ve ever been to God.

This is about abolishing fear, and relinquishing love into the atmosphere. This is about conquering that which does not elevate you so that everything that does can be victorious. This is about the never-ending path to peace in which you learn that the path itself was peace all along. Mashallah.

This is not me admitting that I need an entire night of sex and a bubble bath to that one girl that I said I would [sorry mom, sorry dad] all night knowing that if the opportunity presented myself I’d be too caught up in some other love affair to even attempt something so sexually rebellious and irrelevant to my desires.

What are my desires? To be loved. To be free. To be love. To be freedom. To be the embodiment and expression and manifestation of something bigger than me. To overcome my ego and frustration and anxiety and to realize that everything I ever wanted in love is always available to me at any given moment.

I took a risk. I told the young man I have no business doing anything with besides business that I missed him and it got me nowhere because miss him, I do not. I miss the power I had over everyone and I miss the sexual attraction. I miss the flirting and the forwardness and the way he made me feel like knowing me was the most fascinating thing in that very moment. Even though he reeks of no goodness in the most literal sense while dripping with reminders from the Most High of both my amazingness and my flaws. 

My frustration is misplaced. Quite so.

Because sleeping beside someone I say is just a friend, even though I’ve been dropping hints like every dime in a dollar, plus some. Thinking that maybe he was placed in my life with his young ass because I know that even I have boundaries, and it appears that he does as well. There is something innocent about our attraction and how it is neither confirmed nor denied. How we toss around sexual references as if they have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Flirting with the conversation itself instead of each other with revelations about needing baes that could come through real quick and flying north for cuffing season because the south doesn’t know how to act sometimes.

I remember everything, for some reason.

Yet I act like I don’t remember you. How no other hands feel like your hands, and no other man has a presence like yours and even the ones who know me well and explore parts of me I thought were unseen still haven’t even fathomed the depths of my mind, body and spirit that you have combed. Dare I say conquer because you’d think your name was on it the way they act like it could never be theirs, like they don’t even know what to do with it.

And it’s exactly that which I used to fear. That somehow, I would never even have a choice of who I would like to be with. That it would always be you, no matter what, and that choice or lack thereof would be making or breaking of my future, knowing that the God I serve thinks higher and better thoughts for me.

So, I trust that everything will work out in the end.

It’s always a man. Or love. Or both, when I’m fortunate. Today it has been a rotating door of making fake plans and then backing out of things with men I don’t really want to be involved with, and waiting for the green light from a man that I like to spend my time with lately. I’m exhausted. I want to be able to play around and fuck around and not take things seriously, sometimes. Because it seems like there is a very small world for the people that don’t, and the dating pool within that world is even smaller. Also, I tend to exaggerate.

I wish I could say it raw. I wish I could take it back to honesty, raw truth and say things like: I like you, and I want to see you. Seeing you is on my to-do list. Seeing you is one of those things I tweet about wanting to do once I make it through my to-do list. You keep saying little cute shit about how you are going to come grab me and we are going to make a movie and come spend the night and I am going to come get you and you have not done so and I wasn’t even supposed to agree to that shit in the first place. Yet I did. And you didn’t do it, so now I feel foolish and I hate feeling foolish and if the decisions I make regarding my trust in your word cause me to feel like that then why wouldn’t I re-evaluate those feelings? That is why liking a guy can be so annoying, because you put yourself at all types of risk when the average Black man is painted as being polyamorous, dishonest, misleading and non-committed. And if you believe in anything otherwise, you are labeled naive by an invisible jury.

Anyway, I am not even supposed to have those toxic thoughts. Supposed. Toxic. All this assumption, wrapped up in a tight ball of confusion and denial because I am rejecting and kicking and screaming when it comes to this attraction in the first place. I am wanting it and not wanting it. Attracting it and repelling it. Praying for it and praying it away. And I am wondering why I am being met with mixed results as if the other person couldn’t possibly have some sort of protection from my indecision and double-mindedness. 

Well, there’s my revelation. But how freaking scary would it be to actually like and trust this person and eventually fall in love. To actually let the thing be without having to critique and analyze and point out so many things, and allowing people to correct their own course of actions. What could this be if I actually let him do whatever he wants, even if it means that I get hurt in the process? And that is usually how things wind up when I’m too busy falling in love with someone to setup any boundaries.

So maybe these emotions are a form of self-protection. Slow down, baby girl. Not everything that looks good and sounds good is good for you. Don’t you know better by now than to be fooled by tattoos and empty promises. Don’t you know better by now that everything you want isn’t what you need.

I am lost in what feels like a distraction and I am fighting it with everything that I have. I do not trust my imagination and am hindering it from doing its work. Imagination has become enemy because everything that does not come into fruition is blamed on imagination and not inaction or indifference. Because it’s all the same, isn’t it? Imagining that something can be real. That is scarier than anything I could think of right now. Imagination has led me to believe some crazy shit and has seemed to be the sole source of so much naive behavior. I have come to rely on imagination for things like event planning or visual arts or verbal expression or anything of the sort. To think of dreams and business models and ideas and creative things that can be done in the world.

Imagination when it comes to love and relationships and even God seems like a risk that may be too big to take in the end. To imagine God and to realize it was all imagination all along. To imagine the future with somebody, and realize that person has been single all along (pun slightly intended). To imagine that something is love and begin to develop genuine feelings around and toward the possibility, only to find out that person has another lover, or a desire for many or none at all. So many paradoxes exist when it comes to union between man and woman these days that I wonder what in me continues to try. It has to be the need and the desire to procreate, to work on my creation with God. 

Otherwise, why else would I endure so much in the pursuit of the right mate? For someone that I could at least invest valuable time in, even if they do not turn out to be the father of my children and my husband. To know that I am spending time with someone who is teaching me to love and trust and know and surrender and finally end the fight against myself to be happy with a man. To know that I am safe and will not be abandoned or rejected and can be myself without expectation or demand and to grow and love and prosper together. So many fantasies, so many dreams, so many crushes I was hoping would at least become boyfriends, let alone evolve into a state of proposal.

And here I am, spilling out all of my tea and feelings and allowing all of my energy to be in motion, swirling around the interrupted, ignored and sent to voicemail thoughts of a man with a chocolate complexion and a mirrored soft intensity whose name I put a bumblebee next to, which means, something, because I realize I have never put an emoji next to a man’s name before. Not even the king’s. So maybe this time I’ve finally put an end to my fronting.

Only to find like most bees, they sting or they are too busy to be bothered with wanting to see you as much as you want to see them. That the minute they even feel like sleeping with you is an option, they will slowly begin to take your time for granted, if not immediately and repeatedly.

And here I am rejecting the man who said he would allegedly pay for my hair appointment, which I will probably need tomorrow, for you. As if that matters. And here I am rejecting the person with whom I should be nurturing some sort of finessed yet completely and eternally platonic relationship for the sake of my biggest client to date. As if anyone even asked me to do that anyway. And here I am canceling my plans with not one, but two homies, one of whom has already paid me for services and one of whom would be willing to, both with a plethora of herb to go around. As if that’s what I really wanted. All for you.

Except, not really, because that would mean that I had admitted to myself how I actually feel. Which I’m not. Just like i turned my phone off and refuse to check Google Voice because i actually fear (and expect) to see no messages from you rather than an actual response (and a good one, which is more likely). That I am still double dutching between my feelings and intentions and desires. That asking myself what I really want is the heaviest question and it’s even harder to admit that it is always changing. That it’s harder to cleanse myself from theories and possibilities and what ifs and why nots. This is the most difficult part of being a genius is that you do not often know how to operate the off and on switch of your own thought process. Or maybe i just made that up.

Either way, I wrote some things and some about you and maybe I’ll check my texts and maybe I won’t and maybe this will be public and maybe it will be private and maybe you will know it’s about you and maybe you won’t. Or maybe someone else will think it’s about them, or maybe i think it’s about you and it’s really about me. I don’t know anymore and i am exhausted because all I wanted to do was like you and you like me and we like each other and do things together and go to places together and be completely fine and natural. I know I projected on to you plans and proposals of what this could be, all because I discovered that we are best for love and completely brushed off the fact that we are worst for work because that is a curtain I am more than happy to hide behind when your straightforwardness leaves me too naked in my ways.

Anyway, let me end this and decide how I want to end this night because tomorrow awaits and who knows if I’ll get to see you before I leave to Cali. Who knows what you will do in Cali with the woman named after a bird and with whom I am careful not to consider too much for once. I guess I can be honest.

And say that I want you in ways I wasn’t expecting. I want you in ways that I would rather keep wanting you. I want you in ways that I would rather spend paragraphs upon paragraphs dodging than to even begin to explain. I want you in ways beyond what make sense. I want you in ways that are hard to deny. I want you in ways I’m not ready to admit. Not even to myself, let alone that very small world. I want you in ways that I have hesitated to pray about because the very thought of them coming true would confirm the want itself. I want you in ways that I am hoping I will forget about as time comes, but only if hope means “no wait, I didn’t mean that” because I’m actually wanting you in ways that I would love to see become reality. I want you beyond words. I want you beyond space. I want you beyond time. Fuck. I guess it’s real now.

oh, lord. what have i done? just when i thought i knew it all. had felt it all. i still love the one i love the only one i think of when i think of who i love. it’s just...

these infinite possibilities are haunting me and maybe now i understand how it feels to be polyamorous and so free spirited you can’t help but almost fall in love, even when the one you will end up with all along is right in front of you.

le sigh. here i am,floating luxuriously in hidden parts of myself, islands of ancient past emotions and feelings and experiences renovated and gentrified to fit modern circumstances and desires. all of me, in this moment, existing.

i’m 3 days away from one of the most beautiful decades of my life.