'Cross My Mind...

I recently posted, briefly, about a love fizzle I experienced.
Though it didn't last long, and ended because we couldn't or wouldn't rise above our differences and focus more solidly on our similarities, it was one of the most insightful, encouraging and memorable relationships I've had. Possibly ever.

What made the difference between me and this man and all of the others is that love was the undertone of everything. I'm pretty sure if I put my ego to bed and called him right now, we'd begin and end the conversation in love.

And for me... I still love 'im. But I know that we were together for a reason and a season but not a lifetime.

Lovingly, we communicated always. From day one, I was reminded of Erykah Badu's Next Lifetime "Your energy, feels so damn good to me..." Even in disagreements, we voiced our opinions without yelling or insulting and we quickly recovered. And what I cherished so much was his positive ways and peacefulness.

Lovingly, we encouraged each other to pursue our dreams. He's a musician and producer and I a woman of many trades. It's easy to want to consume the free time of your partner but when a dream is in the making, you must give each other space, and we did that continually.

Lovingly, we blended into each other's families, friendships, and everyday activities. During our time together I was reminded that loveships are not supposed to be hard. There is not supposed to be a struggle. In love there is no competition to outdo or overdo, just do.

Lovingly, we parted.

Today I miss him a little more than I have since we parted. This morning I must have been on autopilot as I picked up the phone and began to dial his number, only to remember that we are no longer together in a loveship.

Now I could have followed through with the call just to see how he's doing and to make sure all is well. It's not as if he hasn't run 'cross my mind often throughout the days since our last conversation. As strongly as I feel, as much as I miss our daily interactions constantly, and as passionate as we were, I know that it is best for me to exercise self-control, use sharper judgement and keep the ties disconnected. Because ...the reality, honestly, He was not good for me, and I was not good for him.

I just remember what we used to do.

Telling The Truth

“Some people say that I’m to open they say it's not good to let them know everything about me and they say one day they will use every little thing against me but I don't mind maybe they're right that's just how it is and I got nothing to hide.” -Life is Real by Ayo

Growing up my mother always told me that I will say the wrong thing if I talk too much and sure enough I caught enough slaps and hits for saying something out of turn or for talking too much in school.

I talk a lot. I am not ashamed to tell my business, especially when I know it can benefit someone else. I talk about my relationships, particularly with my friends or co-workers and don’t let something go down in my relationship because I will run and tell them how HE done made me mad. I talk about the good in my relationship and CB can tell you how I make her ear bleed and her stomach queasy with my love and lust stories.

I talk about my family, the good family and their funny stories and I tell about family gone bad. That cousin who in 1985 made Christmas bad for everybody by stealing everything from under that tree and selling it all for crack.

I talk about my financial situation, when it’s good and when it’s bad. When my people see me pull out my change purse and pay for my whole meal with dimes, they know I’m low on funds. When I’m not eating lunch and drinking tea that I borrowed from the office pantry, I’m in a financial funk. I have no problem explaining why my bag is so heavy – it’s because I have to run to Commerce (now TD Bank) to the penny arcade!

I just really try not to hide my truth.

I remember the time when I saw an interview with Alice Walker (I’ve spoken about this before) but what resonates within me is her candidness. She spoke of how she was blinded by her brother, the abuse one of her grandmother’s suffered, abortions. Me and DC sat their astonished and we both left saying that we wanted to be that truthful, that open.

* Some days my pendulum swings between id and ego erratically.
* I used to say that I’m jealous but I realized recently that I’m not. I choose my new quality - Guarded.
* I am mostly frugal but when it comes to jeans, costume jewelry and bags, I will splurge.
* I am a stickler for time but I am always late or rushing.
* In relationships, I love hard and I give my all. I’m usually not jealous or guarded when I’m secure in my worth.
* I am Ms. Independent with my girls but with my man, I am putty.
* I am a procrastinator in ALL things.
* I am a ride or die friend. If there is any way to say or display my loyalty, I show and prove.
* I love my family. I’d give a lung, kidney, bone marrow, and blood, whatever is necessary to save the life of anyone of them. Yes, that even goes for that crackhead cousin of mine. And I want to always be close to them, which explains why I didn’t move all over the world like my brother and the truth is, they need me as much as I need them.
* I’m selfish with my food. Food is sacred to me and when I sit down to eat and I know my food is going to be slamming, I do not want to look over and see some hungry eyes but… I almost always spill my food and on my clothes. (That’s probably the portion I should have shared).
* I look for errors and if anyone around me says a wrong word or uses a word in the wrong tense, before I can think about it, I am correcting them. The other day my supervisor said, “Who stealed it?” Oh we all fell out laughing as I said “Stealed, stealed!”
* Speaking of words… I tell anyone around me… please be careful with your use of words because I take everything literally. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it.
* I am a church girl but I got a potty mouth. :O It’s bad of me, I know. It's no secret that I get my sailor's mouth from my parents. My mother tells me that she likes my profane flow but that my mouth and face just don't go together. I AM WORKING ON IT!

That's simply skimming the surface...


Ayo (Joyful) ~~ Life is Real

The Romanticism of the Affair: This Woman's View

Every woman I know dreams of running off into the sunset with the picture perfect Morris Chestnut, abandoning all sense of reality and responsibility and living happily with every single one of our needs met. Who wants to deal with the everyday things such as work and worries, obligations, children, washing, cooking, cleaning and providing for someone else? And don’t let that person or persons be unappreciative because then we start to resent everything, all of the time. We all want to be selfish and free at some moment and sometimes “me time” just won’t do. Along comes that suave and easy going person, the one who says all of the right things and treats you to something sweet every once and again. Here they come and they have no baggage, they ain’t mad at you at all, all they want to see is your smile and sit for some light conversation. They are so cool and oh so nice and ooh you just seem to notice their nice white teeth and their big ole booty and their big, strong arms and they’re not the teeth of the man you see at home and their booty is way better looking than the one you see everyday and the way they make you feel is so great and such an amazing distraction from the monotony of the home front. Who will deny themselves? Why cheat in the first place?

Know that...

• If there are problems in your relationship or marriage, make it your focus, foremost, to find out where the problems are stemming from instead of allowing yourself to be distracted by the new and sexy other.
• No one is responsible for you cheating except for you, no matter how boring they are, no matter how much weight they gain or lose, no matter how badly you just realized the cooking is, no matter what. Cheating is a selfish act and your partner is not the source. You have to dig deep within yourself to find out why you want to stray.
• Statistics show that the result of the affair will not lead to happily ever after bliss. Of course I do not have statistics but hey, look on the net and you'll see it for yourself. Affairs are most often diversions from the tedium of home life.
• The grass is not greener because there will still be dirty drawers and socks, nagging and complaining - that is if the affair turns into something serious. Whatever it was that you needed distractions from will eventually surface once the fun and new wears off.
• The feelings and emotions of being in love are like a drug. If you don't interject some common sense or reality to them, they can become just as dangerous. - Lovingyou.com

Also, know that...

• You are not his girlfriend just because you two sleep together and y'all talk about everything and he treats you nice. And you probably will not be his future wife because he is probably not considering divorce. Men usually cheat because they want variety, more sex or something different that wifey won't do.
• Affairs are not the answer or the remedy for the deficiencies of emotion, affection, or anything else lacking in your relationship or marriage. Yeah, women cheat for emotional support, seeking more romance, affection, or because they are lonely. Most women will find that the cheating partner will provide all of that and some very memorable moments in the beginning but trust me, it eventually wears off.
• Men love to chase and once he's satisfied his curiosity, it's usually time to return home until the next bout of boredom and then the chase begins again.

If you think relationships are hard, marriages are even harder. Everything you do once you say "I do" affects your marriage - your children's stability, insurance policies, cars, bank accounts, pension and on and on and on. There's a lot to undo if you think that running off and escaping from all of the evil and wrong doings of home is the answer. Save all that for day dreaming. In the meanwhile if there is anything going on in your marriage that can be rectified, exhaust all means to do so. It will be worth in the end, even if the marriage dissolves. At least you'll know that you did everything you could to make your relationship or marriage better.

The Other Woman

Before I begin, please know I do not support cheating in relationships nor extramarital affairs. I even consider kissing cheating... but I was once the other woman...
I told myself that it wasn't that bad because I knew AJ first, actually he was my man just 16 months prior to him getting married. For me AJ was the big love of my life. We all have that one where everything is just right... my parents loved him, his parents loved me, my nephew called him uncle - it was a match in heaven yet in May 1998 we broke up. Our beautiful relationship was no longer working. By then he changed jobs, began working as an NYC Corrections Officer and the job was changing him. He was always smooth and sweet but after the academy and working on Riker's Island, my sweetie was showing signs of hardening and was slowly becoming desensitized. I wasn't the model girlfriend anymore either. I wanted to hang out with my girls more and more and even though everybody was pushing us to get married and I saw the glimmer in his eyes, I knew I was not ready and he would not be my husband.
But relationships rarely end so easily and we still hooked up for impromptu love sessions until I realized his lease on his apartment was up in November 1998 and he wasn't renewing it. He moved from his apartment and was living with someone else. That was when we really broke up and that was in December 1998.
When he came back in my life, just a month after getting married, it was supposed to be a one time thing. We still spoke on the phone. He would call me late or night or from work. I was always unaffected by him and his pressing to see me. But early one Sunday morning, he called and to make a long story not so long, he arrived at my house exactly 28 minutes after hanging up. What happened that day started a year long tryst.
We met at my house and sometimes he picked me up for a quickie in the car. We hooked up about twice a month, his wife usually wasn't home so if he left it didn't look like he was deserting her. I thought then that our rendezvous wasn't bad as far as affairs were concerned.
About 6 months into the affair, he called about 1 am to tell me that he was going to be a father. I was pissed and hurt. Women like to play games like men play but eventually our hearts do enter the picture and gradually heart break ensues. Everything I wanted with AJ was happening with another woman!!! As the months progressed I grew less and less emotionally attached to him and as much as I enjoyed the loving once, it wasn't that good anymore. Plus I was moving on to meeting someone else for myself. His wife eventually started picking up on his actions and ordered a copy of the phone bill. She saw my phone number and saw the times at night or early mornings that he called. Though I had the number due to caller ID, I never called him. Somehow she even got my job number.
One day he called me at my old job, they wouldn't forward him or give him my new number but they took his pager number and told me to page him. His wife had his pager that day and called the number she saw in the display. She already knew the number because she had been prank calling me once a week for about a month, yet I didn't know it was her. I was dealing with another knucklehead who wasn't ready to settle and I thought one of his dealings found my number and wanted to harass me.
When she returned the call, I had finally gotten through to him. He was on one line and now his wife was on the other. I hung up on her about 5 times and she kept calling me back. She wanted the truth out of me. She wanted to know why.
I told one friend about this affair and that was my limit. The one friend I told was DC, my ride or die. She doesn't judge me, she holds my hand, wipes my tears, she tells me she's proud of me, she tells me when I mess up but her friendship never changes. I digress...
I wouldn't tell his wife anything because then I would have to face my own actions. I started crying right there on the phone with her. She started crying too as I tried to hold the story in and be mean to her but slowly I spilled my guts. Before we hung up I wanted to clarify things on just one issue... I was not about to be the deranged and crazy ex-girlfriend who wouldn't let go. When I realized that he moved into her home in Queens, I was done with him. It was always him calling me and coming around me. I told her that I was sorry. I knew she was pregnant and this was just unnecessary stress that I brought on her.
I forgot he was on the phone and he stayed on hold for the entire 30 minutes plus that me and his wife spoke. When I got on the phone with him I was so drained that I just laid my head on my desk. It was the most unprofessional behavior I had displayed ever. He asked if I was fine and I told him I was but I was planning on the bottle of wine, which I would purchase at lunch and the after work session I would hold at some bar with DC. He apologized to me for everything that went down and I apologized to him. We both felt awful and we officially-officially ended things there.
Yet...
We kept in contact. We talked often but we didn't meet up for sex again. I loved AJ in a special way and even now he has a special place in my heart. I was big on this issue that I was not the one making moves on him but I was the one answering the phone at 1, 2, 3 AM. I was the one who let him in when he knocked on my door. I was the one who climbed into his Cougar and took off for parking lots and dark isolated areas. And even then, before he left his wife, I was the one still picking up my phone when he called to vent. Whatever I thought I wasn't doing by not having sex with him, it was still upsetting to their relationship and it took years for me to figure that out.

You would think I would have learned....

Ramblings

I couldn't be happier to see the weekend approaching, along with an extra day off this coming Monday but today I am so tired. I love my co-workers but as they leave outta here, I'm happy to see each of them go.
I'm mostly tired because I stayed up late last night on a phone call that I didn't want to have. I was on the phone with the hun and we talked about our respective days, how we were looking forward to a restful weekend with each other, and our future...
Now I love my partner, we're great together, I see a future for us but I like being focused on the right now and right now is a little slow, routine, mundane. We're both to blame for the standstill. I know that I don't communicate my feelings and my wishes a lot, mostly because I find myself defending why it is I like the things I like and want to do the things I like to do. For instance I like to spend a lot of time alone. I think it has to do with years of being single and by being alone I'm not as attached. Although I think "me time" is healthy, perhaps I take it too much.

My baby wants me to move in.

Recently my girlfriend had a terrible experience of living with her significant other with no contract (marriage), no security and her name was not on the lease. She's now on someone's couch and her belongings are all over the 5 boros in people's homes. Needless to say, I'm apprehensive.
We've been together for almost 3 years and I don't see why we need to rush. We're beyond the dating phase and we've settled comfortably into togetherness but there is still a lot of we have to learn about each other. I've co-habitated before and the last thing I want to do is return back home to Mom because I made a bad decision again. So I want to be positive and secure before I make that type of move. I would actually like to be married, but that makes me breathe heavy and feel anxious inside so I know I'm not ready for that either.
What makes things come together for me is that I was walking today on my lunch hour and I bumped into a guy I knew a few years back. We were cool, went on 1 date but we lost track of each other. I was in grad school then and busy, busy, busy. But I saw him looking delicious, even in the rain and we stood, talked, exchanged numbers and I was thinking... "Am I ready to fully commit?" Heck nah! I'm so afraid.
I choose to not live with my honey because I'm flexible, I'm free. I could disappear when I want to, no questions asked. I lay up and I'm sloppy and I have no one to complain about me. I have space, a lot of it, and I know to move in would mean me getting rid of a lot of my stuff and I'm not ready to part with them. I'm just not ready. I don't see the rush and I don't feel the ticking countdown on when it's appropriate to live with someone. Who cares if it's going on 3 years or 30 years.... Wow, that was a good vent.
I don't have the slightest feelings for the delicious man I saw in the rain today and I love my baby strong but I'm more interested in doing couple things like vacationing than settling down into the non-marital monotony. I like not seeing honey's face a for a couple of days and relishing in the moment we are together again. I never had the little girl fantasies of being married and having children, although I will admit that I'm a better and balanced person when I'm committed than when I'm a bitch-on-wheels single woman.
I look forward to this long weekend and just being...