Did You Ever Really Love Me, Stebie?

Ive been asked so many questions, about different friends' love lives, and the advice I give them is always the same ol' song and dance. I always tell people to follow whatever their heart tells them as long as they have thought it through.

The interesting part of the story is that, I have never been one to follow my own advice. I have never been one to take calculated risks, instead I jump without a parachute or a safety net. In love, Ive never been as lucky as I'd hoped to be. Nor have I been happy about it.

But something Ive recently learned or discovered, if you will...

Is that love begins at home. Its not your house, or the material things that have accumulated in it or sometimes not even the people living there. Its the memories that you hold close to your chest for safekeeping. Love is that stain on the living room carpet where you and your cousin had your first fight. Its the smell of your grandmothers perfume. Its the tingle in your spine when you embrace your mother after a long journey (be it emotional, spiritual, or physical). Love is omnipresent. And if you are blessed enough to have that foundation, never ever forget that your roots are deeply planted in love.

I forgot that once... I almost forgot where I came from. And God has a way of breaking us down to build us back up into who he intended us to be. He has a way of showing us that we are home. That we are our own homes, and love starts within ourselves.

Love is not just a feeling. Its a responsibility. An action.

Its a responsibility to yourself, first and foremost. Because you owe that to yourself. You owe yourself the freedom to love and be loved. And often times we get so caught up in the loving part that we forget to be loved by our own selves. We forget that the most important love of all is self love. It can be a battle, but no one is responsible for you, except you. And thats a hard pill to swallow, but a necessary one nonetheless.

So in your endless journey of discovery, remember that love begins in you. Find it in yourself and the rest will fall in place.

Love Rain

The rain fell
It reminded me of you.
You always smelled like the rain...

Like sweet honeysuckled
Dreams drenched in bliss
Coming to fruition...

And
               so
                           I
                                        danced.

                                              I

                           Danced

        in the

R
a
i
n

With angels like
Heaven couldnt
Hardly wait to
Touch my skin.
I felt  f   r  e  e d  o  m
in my fingertips
Passion in my soles
I felt your spirit
Do
       P
         i
           r
             o
                u
                   h
                   e
                 t
              t
           e            
        s

Around my heart
Until the moon
Chased the clouds away
And I felt
Your  smile pour over me

It rained  today.
It reminded me of you.
You always smelled like the rain.

First Time

(No thats not what I meant by first time, but on the same subject...)

You know that feeling when you kiss someone for the first time?

That moment when you feel magic in your fingertips.

Like...

This moment will never fade and you can feel yourself spinning from your pinky toe to your outermost eyelash.

Every muscle in you surrenders to the unadulterated titillation of this persons mere thoughts.

You can hardly breathe, yet somehow you feel more alive in that very moment.

You gain more clarity in that feeling than you have ever cared to comprehend.

That moment...

That Feeling...

I wanna live for that moment.

I wanna die in that feeling.

Ive been chasing that "first time" feeling since my first love, and for once Im discovering it in myself. Although, completely by accident, Ive found  Im finding something in me thats scary, and amazing, and insightful, and potentially disasterous, and magical. Im finding peace.

Last month, I had no idea what my next move would be in terms of career, love, money, LIFE. This month, I still have absolutely no clue. The only difference between last month and this month, is that Im not trying to force anything to happen. Someone once told me "its gonna be what its gonna be" in reference to a relationship. I wasnt able to receive that message at that point, but I think I get the correlation to all aspects of life now. There will be days when shit is just not that great. Roll with it. It cant last forever, right? Take those days, hours, minutes, moments to reflect inwardly. Hey, you might find that its complete and utter bullshit. But what do you have to lose by trying? A couple of minutes?

Figure out a way to find solace in your storm.

Only you know whats best for you. And only you can do that.  So do it. Whatever works. Do it.

You're Being THAT Person, Aren't you?

Once, I had my heartbroken by someone that kissed my collarbone like he had fallen in love with my ancestry. He said my name like he knew who I was, even when I didnt. He held my hand like it was the last dying memory he would grasp onto. He made me safe. He made me whole. He made me new. He shattered me. And everyone thereafter, cut into me a little deeper.

But a long time ago, I told myself that it was time to change things if I wanted to attract the right type of guy. Like most clueless people I affiliate with, I changed. Changed my address, changed my phone number, changed my job, changed my look... But aint shit changed in my love life and I couldnt figure out for the life of me what I had done wrong.  So I started thinking, I keep meeting the same guy, repeating the same actions, and feeling the same way when it doesnt work out. Hmm, what about this sounds wrong? ALL of it, super-stupid. Duh Dont be Dumb! Youre being insane. Litrally.

Then HE came along. The different one. You know the one who sleeps next to you instead of with you for months until you decide you want to ride the steel force, and hopefully it gives you the addrenaline pump that your body has craved since you laid eyes on him. The guy that whispers Shakespeare in your ear, and buys you flowers because its 6:09pm on a Tuesday. That guy. He saved my view of love and relationships. But the only problem with that guy was that he couldnt change my view. Because I hadnt changed anything to begin with, I was the same me. The same clueless me that kept getting hurt.

At some point, when you keep getting your heart stampeded over by the million man march, you have to accept responsibility for the fact that you are doing something SO WRONG! Sometimes you need to step back from the dating scene and just evaluate. Something about you is wrong. But no one ever wants to accept that theyre not perfect for themselves, and our desperate and lonely asses (myself included) will carry out this fallacy of a relationship just to pretend we're happy with our current situation.

Why is it so difficult to change?

This brings me to my latest situation. After taking time to really acknowledge and deal with whatever is wrong with you, you need to let that shit settle. Thats where I went wrong. I recently started/stopped dating this guy who had a way of making me feel like nothing even mattered at all. But when you get the puppy home, theres shit and piss all over your carpet the next day. Thats not how it went but it  usually is. This guy showed signs of being a fatal attraction early on. Its not that he's a bad person, quite the contrary, he's a wonderful person. Just not for me.  He revealed his true character way sooner than was expected, and I was still busy falling in like with the representative he had originally sent on our initial dates. (Theres nothing wrong with that, Everybody does it) What is wrong with this picture though, is that even when he explicitly told me "THIS IS WHO I AM!" All I heard was Beethoven's 5th Symphony. I heard the optimism in his rejection, I heard kindness in his aggitation, I heard "the one" instead of "one of the options". I heard my desperation drip from my ears.

This is not the problem either. 

The problem is I could see it all happening, and I knew I was wrong, but I couldnt stop. Thats when I started to step back (still a piece of me  holding on to that rep from the first date [a rather large piece if we're being honest].) I realized he couldnt give me anything I needed, because I couldnt give him anything he needed. But I still wanted him. Selfish, right?! Well tell them that its human nature... We want what want, when we want it, and how we want it. But when your wants take precedence over your needs, you are in so much trouble...

You are knee deep in a kiddie pool of your own excrement...

Gross!

Dont be that person, nobody likes that person. You dont even like that person. But you put up with being them because youre desperate, or youre lonely, or youre afraid to change, or you dont love the true you that you are. Whatever youre problem is, find it then fix it then let that marinate in your soul for a little bit. You'll be better for it. And when you are, you'll know it. But until you know, sit your lonely ass and figure out your problems.

Moral of the story; Get your shit together, life is not a fucking fairy tale.

Love and Other Drugs

Today, as I watched the faces of people as I walked through the streets, I started thinking about friendships relationships. This was a most dificult subject for me to grasp, seeing as every relationship is different. There are some that inspire thought and wisdom. There are some that I are simply meant to entertain you, distract you even. Some relationships fill a hole or a void that you somehow have refused to deal with throughout time. Others swallow you whole and when your finally digested you dont remember what parts of you are them and what parts are you. And then you have those that truly give you meaning and help mold you into a better person.

I can say that I am blessed enough to have experienced almost every type of relationship there is. I saw one particular couple that made me really smile. The way they embraced each other was so nostalgic to me. It made me recall a particular person that I used to embrace that way. Sometimes I wish that I still could. Dont get me wrong I have no regrets about how and what happened between us. I just wish that I could experience things from her point of view, and her from mine. You know, when your in the midst of a break-up {be it friends or lovers} you cant see clearly in front of you, even if it is the truth. So how could you expect to ask someone to see what youre seeing? Feel what youre feeling? Lines are murky in relationships especially when you have no idea what you want from that relationship or from yourself.

[Without getting too deep into details or too far off the subject: We grew apart. We used to be so close, and somehow we became different people. We once shared everything {as much as you could possibly share with a person who is not yourself. No one shares EVERYTHING WITH ANYONE}But we shared a lot with each other. We were the kinds of friends that leaned on each other, but for me there came a point where I  no longer wanted to lean. I wanted to stand on my own. And you cant stand on your own if someone else is leaning against you. Sometimes you can help people, or offer your support but it gets to a point where you need to let a person fall so they too can stand on there own.]

Some people will come into your life for a reason/purpose. Some people will be there for a season. But every once in a while you have that 1 if your blessed, perhaps 2, that will be there for a lifetime. You cant shouldnt hold onto people who are not supposed to be in your life longer than they are. And those VERY few people who do stay for the long haul. Those people that your soul mates with in a way that you cant understand or control, they will not abandon you. They will soul search with you. Even when they have found their own already. These are the people who will help you to find your true self. But in order to become your true self, the best person you can stand to be, you have to figure out who that person is. Get to know that person. Understand that person. And you only get there by trial and error. Those relationships that stick around through the trials and MANY many errors, are the ones that are worth.

I can say that I have 2 friends that are have stuck with me through that process. They didnt complain, they didnt b.tch about my constant changes, they adapted and reacted accordingly. They supported me. When I was learning to walk again for the first time, they held my hand. They helped me rebuild myself from the ground up and the inside outwards. There were ugly moments, there were things about me that I didnt care for, there were things that needed repair. And they were there for all of it. They have been stapled relationships in my life.

But the most important relationship, that you will ever have, is the relationship you have with yourself. And when you have someone that fits perfectly with the you that you love... Hold them. And dont let them go.

I will leave you with this amazing video that someone posted to my facebook page.

Concrete Rose

I've been paying attention to the smaller details lately. And I've noticed a growth in myself in the past few months... Some have been stressful growths, some have been exciting growths, and others have been painful both emotionally and physically... But ALL of them have been important and vital to my existence. I've been working, A LOT! And in working so much, I've had a little bit of time to myself. Time to look inward and reflect on the things about myself that love and hate. In short, I have been changing for better, or for worse. And no matter what the outcome has been, I have been completely happy, (not content, not satisfied, not ok, not fine, but happy) with myself. Elated even. With that being said, there are people in my life that I feel I am growing in a different direction from. It is not to say that they aren't amazing people or that they aren't progressing in their own individual lives but that our life paths don't necessarily match up right now. For instance, a very close friend of mine and I haven't spoken in some time. I know she's upset with me, but for a few reasons I genuinely don't feel like I need to mend this friendship (right now anyway). I think we have been growing apart for some time, and our visions of our futures just don't fit in with each other. But while I'm slightly saddened by this notion, I'm not at all angry nor do I feel moved to fight this parting of people. The same is true for another friend of mine, whom I feel has been slightly stagnant for some time. While this is none of my business to get into, I feel that a part of me is allowing myself to be stagnant just to save the friendship as we know it. But I am rapidly approaching a point in my life where I realize, some ships are meant to sink, and Friendships aren't exempt from that rule. A long time ago, someone told me that people come into your life for reasons and seasons. Some seasons are long, and some reasons are forever unknown, but others come to the light and run their course. I honestly don't know about some of the people in my life, but I've come to have such a deep understanding of self and profound self-love that I genuinely cannot contribute to the negativity or stagnation in my own hemisphere. I have decided to take full control of the ship I'm on. Its a relationSHIP to my inner self, and I can't abandon that ship. I can't let that ship sink. I've finally learned how to be the captain, crew, and passenger of my own ship. In due time, I will find a place/person to dock my ship, and allow NEW guests to share my life with.

Is This Real Life?

Lately I find myself asking the same damn question, is this REAL life? Let me further explain... The stupidity that I encounter daily, has to be at an all time high this particular season. Now I am not completely innocent of contributing to this intellectual blockade. I too, have my blonde moments, that's so not PC. Which brings me to my next point, I was never supposed to work in retail. Its just not right. My soul says NO! Anyway, the story; so I'm at work, and I'm on the register helping out and blah blah long lines, u know the deal... So any who, this women comes to my register and throws her clothes across the counter! (whispers to the side: Ok so this is the point where RaShanaQuida started climbing to the surface) but I remained calm. I said to her "thanks for waiting, I hope u found everything" to which SomeDumb BlondeBitch (yes that is her first and last name as far as my life permits me to be concerned) responds "just hurry the hell up"PARDON e MOI? (RaShanaQuida is French, u know the hood bitch in me is still fancy) any who, SomeDumb goes on talking on her cell phone, I then ask her if she needs anything else and she says in an annoyed tone "no, just hurry up!" So I PAUSE to ask myself "Is this REAL life?" And IT WAS (dramatic heighten of the voice). So I ever-so-calmly took the clothes and passed it down to another cashier! I said "they can hurry up down there, I don't do the upward hurrying, NEXT IN LINE". Of course now SomeDumb BlondeBitch would like to speak with the manager on duty, and of course you can guess who that is? (so now I'm cheesin like a damn cheerleader on top of the pyramid) and as I heard them ask me to help, I noticed it was time for my lunch break... How convenient! 2 fingas and Hollaback!!!! U know I peaced out... Good night AND good luck!