Posting from my Heart

This is my first mobile posting and since my Sunshine says I don't post enough I'm figuring maybe if I try it this way I'll be more diligent about it. So happy reading! More to come later today.
~Ms. Sunny Dee~

This message is made possible by the power of my Pinkberry

Counterfeit Love

The Winter always leads me to thoughts of contemplation about snuggling up with a loved one and drinking hot cocoa while making plans for the future.  This of course leads me to a place of contemplation I don't want to be which is simply, why haven't I had that by now?

I think back to the last feeling of being "in love" I've experienced and I would not be the first woman, nor the last to say it started off innocently enough.  We started off as just friends, I never meant for it to happen, if I could take it back I would.  The horrifying part is that there is a small amount of truth in all of those statements, the problem being that there was a definite turning point, something I refused to acknowledge at the time but I knew in my heart the innocence had turned to intent. 

Results that emerge out of any relationship are the result of the relations that happen within the boundaries those two people establish.  The first time was the only truly accidental time, every time after that was precalculated and predetermined with no misunderstanding of what would happen when we got together.  Each time the intensity grew, as did our will to continue along a course that never should have been chartered in the first place.  It’s no mistake that as our secret grew so did the ability for our boundaries to dissipate within our interactions with one another. 

I stand before you today as the Woman at the Well, the Woman with the issue of Blood, Bathsheba, and eventually Blind Barthemeus.  I sacrificed the morals and values I’d grown up with, I sacrificed the belief system I’d been raised under but I also sacrificed my self-worth, my belief in true love, the power of knowing I am beautiful, worthy and well-loved.  I sacrificed normal relationships under the alluring ruse of a clandestine one that would never come to be anything more than what it was. In the closet our lust and fraternal agreement we professed that there could be no love truer than ours.  For five years I lived a life riddled with lies that I believed, promises that could never be kept as well as a convenient escape from reality that I could call upon whenever I so desired.  I gladly embraced a myopic relationship that allowed me to believe I could walk away whenever I wanted, that allowed me to believe I belonged to someone, I mattered to someone. 

I am not proud of this time in my life. I am not proud of the actions that I performed during this time of my life and furthermore, I am least proud of the results of this affair that consumed five years of my life and nearly led to my destruction.  I am not proud to say, that out of the same mouth I proclaimed to want to be a mother, a wife, a sister-in-law, a lover, and a provider I tore a family apart, leaving only the fragile remains of my own soul in the rubble of destruction I created both in what I did say and what I did not say.  The two most powerful words in the English language, you may be familiar with them, yes and no.  I used them both inappropriately, I used them both to destroy myself and others.  I reversed their importance, using them both in the exact opposite way they should have been used.  I underestimated their importance, misunderstanding the lessons they each prevented, bypassing the opportunity they presented. 

Getting to the point: I find myself still alone even after all this time because of an ever residing sense of  loving but feel unworthy to be loved in return.  Of wanting you but also wanting more for you than to be forever tied and bonded to the woman I stand before you as.  I want you to understand that who I am isn’t always who I was. 

Six years ago I went to hang out with a friend, innocently, at least that’s what I tell myself.  Looking back I realized there is nothing innocent about a single woman getting on a plane, flying to another city and spending the weekend in the same hotel room as a man who was in that city on business, having left his wife and child at home.  I wish I could tell you that he was some rich older man with whom I had little acquaintance with and who charmed me out of my panties, but would that make it any different? In truth he was my best friend, the only man in the world I thought I knew everything about, a man whom I had helped through the worst of times, celebrated through the best of times and loved immensely as a friend.  So, however it is that I ended up there, my immediate intentions were innocent.  My choices were not as much so.  We talked, we talked and we talked some more. In addition we drank, but it’s not fair to blame it entirely on the combination of ethynal alcohol filtered over coals and conversation that led us to what we swore would be only a one time thing.  What’s more is that we sobered up and at that point we consciously began to make choices and continue on a path that would eventually come to ruin a huge part of my life, rob me of who I was becoming at that time and who I would eventually become.  Sober, but still lost in that atmosphere we continued to make a mistake.  

For a short period of time even after we had landed back in our own hometowns and thus back on Earth we admitted that we had operated within an abyss that would never be possible to recreate.  In the beginning we swore that if it ever happened again it would only be within that exact same spot above the Bermuda Triangle.  Obviously, a mythical creation of our minds that never existed and thus could never be recreated.  Instead of admitting that and giving into the reality that if we could not recreate it we should leave it entirely we began working to recreate it at every possible opportunity. Suddenly, what was only supposed to happen one time was happening every night, with more intensity and more fervor and more passion each time. In an instant we had lost ourselves to this manufactured passion we had created.  On this next part I want to be clear, for two reasons: one, because I used this as a repeated justification, and two because I don’t want to hide from any form of the truth, even the worst parts.  I behaved in such a way that I will never again be able to trust myself and that has become the barrier in allowing anyone else to trust me either.  For the first five years this was an emotional affair.  We did not have sex although we had phone sex and engaged in many inappropriate texts, e-mails and comments between one another.  Clandestine trips to see one another become commonplace and at one point a necessity. 

Finally, the turning point.  At every point in every affair, whether illicit or honest there comes a turning point, a point when you are faced with a decision that will change entirely the course your own, prevent you from ever turning back and continuing on the path you were once on.  New York was that turning point for us. Before I even went to New York I knew that it would be a turning point for us, mainly because I knew for a fact that if I went we would be having sex.  We both were looking forward to it and dreading it within the same breath.  We even had a conversation about how we had to be prepared for all the consequences of our actions because they would be so different than anything we had embarked upon this far.  The truth of it is and the hardest part for me to swallow is that I wasn’t going to go.  I felt loved, that’s what made me go.  Like I said, it was a turning point.  I have never in any interaction with anyone felt as safe as I did with him, I have never felt so comfortable, so relaxed, so natural with anyone as I did with him.  

Have you ever been in a room and you know everyone and these are your closest friends and people you adore the most but you still find yourself hovering next to that person, because with that person nothing can go wrong? That’s how it was with him.  Even in a group of our closest friends I never wanted to be far from him.  Not because of the affair but because with him I was just me.  A me that I have not seen since and sometimes wonder if I’ll ever see again.  Never again can I get lost in someone who will end up getting lost in the truth that we’ve been working so hard to get away from.  So, I look away, I cancel bonding time, and I put up what I believe to be an impenetrable shield but which most easily see through.  I want so badly to be in love again, to be loved and to allow myself to relax in the presence of love.  I want to stop running from love and I want to start running towards in and I want to relax in the arms of the one who loves me. 

Work, Cultivate, Protect

I had all plans of making it to Red Hook yesterday and then the snow began to fall, prompting me to stare at it in awe as it landed on the Brownstones and cars across the street.  I watched one young man stand in the snow screaming to an unseen heartbreaker in one of the Brownstones, "Wanda, why you gotta ruin my life!". 

I decided at that point to head to the warm movie theater and watch Morris Chestnut and Tarij P. Henderson in "Not Easily Broken".  I'm glad I saw it for many reasons, although I didn't enjoy it the way I was hoping to.  Yet another movie about Black relationships that just can't seem to get it together.  He has big dreams and career aspirations but can't reach them, she's a breadwinning Female Powerhouse who provides the luxurious lifestyle they live.  He spends too much time with his boys and not enough time at home. She spends too much time letting her Big-Mouth Mama emasculate her husband and not enough time letting him be the man God designed him to be.  Which brings me to the point of this blog:

"When God created Adam he gave him the job of being the one to work, cultivate and protect. In the old days women saw their men as conquerers, as heros.  Somewhere along the way that changed and women became their own heros." -quote by Morris Chestnut's character "Dave"

I’ve been like the rest of any number of woman across the nation, bouncin’ along in my nearly paid off car, headed to my nearly paid off house, letting my independence scream through my speakers at all who dared to look my way.  If any questioning, threat of questioning, or even just look of questioning came along I’ve been the first to point my index finger high in the air and spew from my mouth all types of intelligent information about how I’m an Independent Woman and proud of it and (now my hands are on my hips) I’d go on to run down the ways Independent Woman don’t get the respect they deserve for being so Independent (ending with a pointed crossing of the arms and the smug look). You would walk away shamed to silence and I’d hop back into my ride, turn my music back up and head off to that second job so I can pay my bills on schedule. I’ve been a bad broad. 

            Then I looked at myself one day, I mean really examined myself and it’s not that being an Independent Woman is a bad thing, it’s the I-don’t-need-no-man attitude that has been detrimental to us as a gender, society as a unit and is working to emasculate men daily.  Now I understand, not everyone is waiting on prince charming to come rescue them out of deep sleep with a gentle kiss to the lips.  In fact, let’s go back to basics, wasn’t Adam the one sleeping, the one who awoke to find himself complete when he found the love of his life gazing back at him? Wasn’t it Adam who said “Finally!” as soon as he recognized the woman God had created for him? No one is denying us of our Independence, even in the Beginning there was a point when Evie Eve needed to be molded, shaped and formed without the active interaction of Adam.  We just have to keep things in perspective, if our Adam has yet to awake, that can simply mean we are still being worked on. But Ladies, Adam is not going to sleep forever, and when he does wake up his first task will be to name us, and I don’t think he’ll be calling you Ms. Independent. Admitting that we long for the moment we’ll be able to say, “I’m Adam’s Eve” doesn’t strip us of any of that Independence. Even with Adam and Eve side-by-side as the first dynamic duo we’re suffering because of the Fall, just imagine if Eve had seen Adam sleeping, decided he ain’t but a lazy good-for-nothin’ bum, kicked on her Gucci heels and set out to permanently be her own Boss.  Just imagine…

            Independent, yes. In isolation, no.  Sometimes it’s difficult to separate the two.  Being an Independent Woman is a combination of environment and the way we’re wired.  Generations of women before us have created family systems for themselves that consisted of a husband, two and a half kids, a dog and a white picket fence.  Each generation of women gaining more independence than the next, trickling down to us.  I realize that my white picket fence might be a rod iron-gate outside of a brownstone, my two and a half kids might be five and my husband and I might be equal partners in breadwinning in our household but the point is that no amount of stoic proclamation of my independence can detract from the basics.  Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him Lord (1 Peter 3: 6). Sarah, the same woman who has also been described by bible scholars as a risk-taker of the first order, a woman who said good-bye to everything familiar to travel to a land she knew nothing about.  A real flesh-and-blood kind of lady who lived an adventure more strenuous than any fairy-tale heroine. [i] Sound familiar? Sarah was an Independent Woman. 

            So, I turned my music down a little, lowered that finger, took my hands off my hips and began to gain perspective on the Independent Woman that I am.  Sarah needed Abraham, she was not needy for him.  We spend a lot of time complaining about the negativity that surrounds a woman that says “I got this” but in part it’s because we don’t fully understand how to balance our Independence ourselves.  We’ve gotten into the habit of treating relationships like they’re some kind of game, the closer you try to get to me the more Independent of you I strive to be.  Yet, on my lunch break I’ll be watching a couple walk hand-in-hand through the park, wondering why that can’t be me, hasn’t been me in five years.  I brush off the romantic side of my nature with the justification that I’m an Independent Woman, I don’t have time for all that. Deep at my core I know that I am not a woman who can survive in isolation, nor are you, for it is not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18). Of course we know God was talking about Adam but let’s not white-out the next part of that very same sentence, “I will make a suitable helper for him, a companion.”  I’m not going to go too far beyond the scope of my understanding, but let me venture to say this: it was not good for man (Adam) to be alone so God created a suitable helper (Eve) for him, not for herself.  Doesn’t that mean, it wasn’t good for Eve to be alone either? Hmmm… yet, it’s only too obvious she wasn’t mindlessly trailing along in the Garden behind Adam because she did have time for an entire conversation with another man and was convinced into following his agenda.  But, that’s a segment for the next edition!

            The realization I’ve come to is this: we are Independent Women.  However, we are also God’s creation and He created us in His image, one woman for one man.  Adam was sleeping Ladies, God did not consult him to say, “How would you like her? You can have it your way and from now on we’ll just call this part in history Burger King®.”. Yet, when he woke up Adam was instantly in love with what God had created for him. Eve wasn’t a shock to Adam, he was prepared for her, just like your man will be prepared for you, Independence and all.

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[i] Spangler, A. (1999). Woman of the bible: 52 stories for prayer and reflection. Florida: Zondervan.