26 years of risk-taking to become the love of my life

*Meditations on love in personal, communal, social layers.

word on the street is essays, like poems, are best listened to

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“The idea that love is just a feeling? That’s crazy… Maya Angelou says love is a thing that holds the stars in the firmament. Like that’s how foundational, that’s how primordial, that’s how essential, love is. It’s more than just a feeling." —Ja’Tovia Gary's interlude on anaiis’s “love & devotion”

“Love is a condition so powerful; it may be that which pulls the stars in the firmament. It may be that which pushes and urges the blood in the veins. Courage:
you have to have courage to love somebody because
you risk everything
–everything.”
- Maya Angelou -

Let’s lay these meditations on like a cake.
First, since it’s been a while, a love poem to grease the pan or 'fore-the-play as they say...

Layer 1: Personally, I’m here:

I've always looked forward to becoming an adult because my childhood was rife with the responsibility of others' —other people's emotions, other people's needs, other people's shiiiiit.

In the last 6 months, saying ‘no’ has come easier. ‘I’'ll get back to you’ and ‘Let me think about it’, are now natural vocabulary. Silence... is also now a most welcome and protective friend.

These ways of responding are new —and huge— for me. People-pleasing, quieting my own desires, staying in situations to keep peace are all psychologically (and subsequently physiologically) risky behaviors. Just because the death is slow does not mean violence is/was not present.

To love myself, I had to cut away the rind of self-abandonment. Only after, could I see myself soft, and ready my heart for the intimate work to be done. To become my own lover, I had to take accountability for myself in ways I was never taught how. I had to choose to be better while people I can’t just cut off from my life (because boundaries are a gate not a wall) stayed the same. Healing necessitates a changed environment, or, at least, a window to look out of to see hope on horizon's sky-stoop.

Oftentimes, when we talk about love, we rarely discuss how we practice loving ourselves. Like actually, what does it take to love a Self? I don’t like talking about self-love in the pop-culture-wellness way of facemask/guasha/yoga/vacation because it feels insincere at best, and prescriptive at worst. I’m into preventative care.

And if it can’t be prevented because the damage has been ongoing for decades, centuries, millenia, my, can we use the two microscopes attached to our flesh sockets and start investigating some shit? Instead of slapping a bandaid onto an amputated limb, can we start committing to the (I know it's hard) work of getting surgically specific (I'm talking urgency! honesty!) about what it’s going to take to really love despite, 
despite, 
despite.

Yeah, risky business indeed. But necessary, wouldn’t you say?

I’ll say, the kind of inner peace that's come with learning to love myself in the ways I have the last 6 months especially, has been an invaluable gift I never knew I needed. Or rather, I didn’t know that to experience the love I’ve always wanted, I had to be able to articulate —clearly and with conviction— what I am about/what I am not about. And to come to know this kind of love, this young, I’m grateful and also fiercely determined to protect this deep well of Romance in my life.

What did Ntozake Shange say in for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf? (my personal Holy Bible btw)

Layer 2: Communally, I’m here:

In the last 6 months, I’ve come to understand adulthood for the trainable beast it is. I say trainable because, although suffused with its own nonnegotiable responsibilities, I'm enjoying my adult life more than I can say I enjoyed my overwhelmingly burdensome childhood. And by burdensome I mean both feeling like a burden and also being burdened by what I call adult baby (grown folk who don't mature past the age of their emotional traumas so they parentify their kids) problems.

There was no time, or rather, room, to come into my own. And when I tried to stretch my soul across the surface of my skin, I was told to watch myself, my attitude, my arrogance. 

What the people who raised me called arrogance is now (has always been?) my unyielding self-knowledge and determination to make a way out of no way. I’ve never believed in ‘no way’, and that’s my Second Generation Ars Poetica, word to Monica Sok.

I’m living the rest of my 20s as my teenage years should’ve been. And with a fully developed frontal lobe, that means this ride will be even sweeter because I’m not making decisions that will leave me in a state of despair (anxiety, avoidance, or otherwise) for weeks or even months on end. 

Every year actually, I make a single resolution. Last year, it was “Regulate my nervous system.” And after 8 months of being off of social media, I can say I feel safer, calmer, in tune with my body. I can track the origin of my thoughts and am clear on why I believe what I believe better than when I was on apps that would constantly inundate me with information and thinkpieces from others who had great, important things to say at times, as well as some (most) who were just posting what I strongly feel now to be noise at best and basura at worst.

This year, my new year’s resolution is just 2 words: “Reset & Rebuild.” Getting into that real R&R, iykwisayinnn. Regulation is and will always be a foundation I (must) return to because I’ve realized, it’s hard to do anything that will contribute to your transformation if you do not feel connected to yourself, if you are not in your body. Not in your head, not in your sexual organs, not just in your heart, either, but in your *full* body.

There are responsibilities that are non-negotiables in my life right now, but I now also have the freedom of choice —a liberty that was denied me for most things I desired as a youth. With this newfound agency, I’m determined to make choices that help me cultivate my best young adult life. 

And as much as I am a woo woo ahh lady *cue Bag Lady x Erykah Badu pls*, I love a good system. I love a pragmatic approach. I love when people are as detail-oriented as me —makes my brain tickle like wow how hot of you to be so organized and a few steps ahead of me. Gimme kith. 

Lolol anyways, relatedly, a sort of mantra that’s been guiding the way I relate to others these days is: “Clarity is the pursuit of control (complimentary).”  For me, clarity is necessary for safety in relationships. Before I had the language to make this clear, even to myself , I was okay with ‘going with the flow’ as you will. But even water… has a body and needs a reservoir… somewhere to flow, to go, you get me.

Growing up in chaos and constant confusion means that I need people to be clear. Clarity, for me, is foundational to trust-building so one of my boundaries around dating these days is, I’m not doing the murky water dance with anybody. Like please go enjoy lapping around in the swamp with someone else, love. We like clear waters and blue skies on this side. Ten queue.

Layer 3: Socially (onto the Icing!), I’m here:

Since we’re talking about dating, let’s complete this last layer with a personal case study of relational growth. Last week, on a regular Wednesday, this man stopped me on my way into the Subway station outside my job to ask for my number under the guise of directions to a fictional cafe. I know the cafe is fictional because I tried to look it up after and couldn’t find it. Anyways, interaction started off weird because he wanted me to take his number. Um sir, you approached me. I told him, “No, I’d rather just give you my number,” because it is not going to be on meee to then text youuu. I’m telling you, men think they are sooo smart. They got the right one, though! *cracks knuckles*

Right off the bat, from the way this man was texting, it was giving incel, and I could tell he was going to be a waste of fucking time. I'm not really surprised, though. At this point, I give my number (tends to be the quickest way out of most interactions) so I can case study and collect evidence for my dating data. Most of the men that chase me down the street in this city to get my number are time-wasters. The last one I actually gave the time of day, I had to block. In my defense, I was 21 at the time of getting to know him, and over a few years time, he revealed himself to be a Yoruba demon (his words not mine). And from that, I learned that when men —honestly, when people, in general— tell you who they are, and what they can/can not do, believe them. 

So I’ve left this man on read because it is clear from his language that he has no intention to be serious. HE JUST WANTS TO WASTE MY YOUTH! BYEEEEE!

After asking him, “Where would you like to take me?” when he said “Let’s meet up when you are free”, the following texts should have been options and "Are you available x date and x time?" But instead he asks me when I’m free, and it wasn’t only the asking when I’m free because to be honest, I’m actually quite unavailable lolol and I’m not making time in my schedule for a stranger who stopped me on the street and is giving me signs that he’s a bad planner: 

—the future-farming with “Togolese girlfriend” was also a great set-up for being ignored. And that is where we are now.

Stories like this, I can't share with certain people in my life (which is why I'm writing it here, you're welcome hehe) —particularly my maman. If I told my mother about this guy, she would say I’m too strict and will never find husband by being this strict and I need to give man chance and (since he’s also white) she'll invent narratives that are untrue about his character. Lolol. My response is usually always a calmer version of Savannah to her mother in Waiting to Exhale (1995).

One of the things I love about being 26 and having a fully developed prefrontal cortex is my ability to clock shit, and take action —immediately. My pattern recognition game, unmatched and undefeated. Unrivaled and uncontested. 

As an eldest of 7, who is also aptly darkskin and socialized as a woman (whew, where is my TROPHY for having this spine of steel???!), self-abandonment was the compass through which I learned to orient myself in relation to the world. Low self-esteem, a byproduct of my kind of self-deprioritization, was not innate to me, but rather something I was given (like a cursed amulet) and came to absorb unconsciously when not presented with any other healthy ways of understanding myself, which in turn, of course, affected how I learned to relate to others. 

Confidence (high self-esteem) is not something I’ve only had to earn but have learned through hypervigilance. I told my friend the other day: “I no longer give people the benefit of the doubt. In fact, I highly doubt people because in a culture that encourages avoidance, most people do not have adequate tools to be kind, moral, or even accountable to others.” 

In such a hyper-individualist culture, I expect to be disappointed more than I expect people to be well-behaved, considerate humans. And that’s not nihilism or negativity, that’s again, pattern recognition and level-setting my expectations. I’m too old to be expecting me from other people. I take people at their actions (not their words, because let’s be honest, folks just be saying shit these days), and I orient myself accordingly. 

Another great gift that comes with having high self-esteem is no longer being preoccupied with why someone has done something to hurt me. The why is unimportant, and not my duty to sort out. The facts are in the action, so I don't need to know why. I need to see, assess, and act accordingly. Leading with doubt instead of benefit (to the other person —woah, self abandonment is that you?!), is a pragmatic and healthy approach to dealing with humans as they are, not as I would like them to be. Another risky pattern I've survived. Which is why I'm going to hold your hand when I to tell you, like I tell my little sisters, darling, if someone is treating you like an option (fertile ground for situationship), that's a green light for you to get up and prioritize yourself like never before —not time to prove why you are worth being one of the options. Only God knows where on the list of options you're throwing yourself. What I'm really saying is...

you say you love yourself... do you act like you love yourself? Love is not a mere noun, but a verb remember? To love is to practice loving, remember?

So yeah, finally, yet right on time, at 26, I’m not naive as once upon a time, Alhamdulillah. Forreal though, seeing and going through serious caca can either make you or break you. Shoutout to pattern recognition. Shoutout to bad bitchery. Shoutout to this code in my DNA that makes me relentless and persistent and a force to be reckoned with. MUAHAHAHA. 

I've learned that the kind of self-love a lot of people yearn for requires an acute sense of awareness AND uncompromising honesty about what is really going on and why things don’t seem to be changing. That’s where the journey begins. And it is a journey, so I'm excited to share more about all the risks I’m still taking to love myself and others (as a practice!) better. Making use of the data I've collected and stored so I don't get olda and olda and keep on making the same mistakes I was making at 19, 21, 23, even 25. 

Not gonna hold you, I feel like after this long ahh essay, someone out there will still be wondering how this led me to becoming the love of my life? Well... DARLIN IM NOT GONNA SPELL IT OUT ABC 123 FOR YOU. You better scroll right back up and read again!!! In fact, reading things several times is good for your attention span hehe ;)

Long essay short: clock your shit, lest you wish to stay stuck on some geriatric smelly.

Some curated parting gifts, for your time + attention (which I know are thoroughly stretched thin these days):

somethin for the lovers, strictly for the lovers, the real lovers —cuz what says ilovesyou more than a curated playlist? 💌

a playlist for Aquarius season before we enter Pisces🫧

some video essays i enjoyed this love weekend ❣️

and [a video of how i stepped into this year... evidence of how i'm stepping into the rest of my newfound joie de vie🌹]

Happy Lunar New Year to all who celebrate🧧,
Ramadan Mubarak to all my siblings ☪️,
et plein de bisous a tous 💋, 

xo, nune🧚🏿