Embracing My Quirks

¹quirk

 

 noun \ˈkwərk\

             : an unusual habit or way of behaving

I am an atypical black girl.  I have long curly hair.  I was in band for seven years, and YES I went to band camp more than once.  My ipod on shuffle can go from Nine Inch Nails to Lil Scrappy to a lot of Erykah Badu.  I didn't go on my first official date until I was in my last semester of college.  And sometimes I would prefer to spend my Friday night finishing a great book then having a night out on the town.  Some people used to say that I sounded white, some may say that I still do.  I often get asked a combination of are you mixed or what country are you from.  I tend to want to be alone when I am in a bad mood so I don't bring others down with me too.  I often found solace in dancing and singing out loud in public.  I can strike up a conversation with a stranger and it can instantly feel like we have been friends for years.  My favorite piece of jewelry are my over-sized silver hoop earrings because before I lost weight I didn't have a neck and I couldn't wear dangly earrings.  It may have took me awhile but I am embracing my quirks.  I am loving what makes me, me.

I look around at people who are little bit younger than me. Shoot, people my age and older are also guilty of this as well.  So many people walk around trying to be someone else.  Countless folks are zombies waiting for others approval.  People get so lost in caring what other people think, that they stop caring about what they think about themselves. We judge others just to mask the insecurities that we have in ourselves.

I don't know when it happened, but one day I stopped caring.  Not that I go balls to the wall with my extrovertedness all the time, but for the most part I do and say what I want.  Maybe it is because I lost a parent at a young age and realized life is to short run around trying to look to others for approval.  Or maybe it's just because I realized I was never going to be "perfect" in anyone's eyes.  But I some point I became accepting and happy with my quirks.  I came to accept the reason why I am the way that I am and I have learned how my quirks can help me to help others.

Today I encourage you to embrace your own quirks and to be comfortable with who you are.  Because when you are fabulous no one can take that away from you, except yourself!

Practice What I Preach

So yesterday I wrote this motivational post about waiting on God and remaining faithful blah blah blah, but today I am down in the dumps.  I am not sure if it is because this is the third day that I have basically been in the house all day.  Or maybe it is the billionth day of cloudy, rainy, gray weather we have had lately.  But I just don't feel like this big ball of positive energy.  How am I supposed to help and inspire others to their greatness when I am not even believing in my own?  Why am I not practicing what I preach?

Yesterday I said with confidence that I need not to be faithful and trusting of all my worries and fears.  Today I am back to worrying and beating myself up.  I know that God said that you only have to have a mustard seed of faithful, but perhaps there is something smaller than a mustard seed that we can negotiate on?

Being unemployed really can mess with your psyche.  I know that many of my friends probably think that I watch Wendy Williams and Maury Povich all day.  I don't, trust me.  Some of my other friends think that my time should be spent at the library from sun up until sun down applying to jobs.  Yeah, I don't do that either.  My day is spent as a balance of making sure my mother isn't burning down the house, taking her to doctor's appointments, looking for and applying to jobs, cleaning and doing household chores, and not curling into a ball and becoming invisible.  Earlier, I actually did text one of my friends earlier saying, "I want to curl up into a ball and become invisible."

Today my friend and I are supposed to be creating our vision boards to use for the next year.  We did it a few years ago and it was an interesting process, but I am not sure how much it helped.  I tried to back out of it, but my friend didn't make it easy enough for me not to go so I made a vow that I should show up.  But I am wondering how can I make this stunning vision board when right now the only visions I see are of overeating and overdrinking myself into a peaceful slumber?  I mean how can I have a vision when I have felt so stagnant for the past few years?

But I am going to pull myself out of this funk and I am going to stop having a pity party for one.  I mean I am way too cute to have a party by myself.  And more important I am way too blessed to give up and lose focus on my purpose and what I am supposed to be doing.

So shout out to my homegirl who inspired this post today and inspired me to get up and start practicing what I preach!

Waiting On God

Have you immediately walked into church and started getting teary-eyed?  Yeah that was me this morning.  You can say what you want about God and about churches and about the institution of religion in general.  But when I step into church and the choir is singing and I am brought to tears on that first note alone, there is a spirit in the air that no one can explain to me, except being from God.  When the first tear fell, I knew that this was going to be a sermon that I should listen to.  I was right.  Today's sermon was Waiting on God, and it couldn't come at a better time.

We are constantly waiting for something.  We wait on our friends who are always late.  We wait for our food to be ready while we are at a restaurant.  I wait for my mom to get out of bathroom so I can pee before my bladder explodes.  We will even wait in line for a new pair of sneakers or to save a few bucks on a tv that is probably bigger than anyone really needs.  Yet, how often do we really find ourselves waiting on God?

I have always thought I had the answers.  I felt like my decisions were right.  My beliefs were in check so good things would always happen to me.  I work hard and I will be rewarded for this work.  Life is as simple as that, right?  Not exactly.  Well, not at all.  There are a lot of things that I am waiting for.  I feel like I am always on the cusp of something new and exciting about to happen in my life.  Right when I feel like finally done waiting and I am ready to receive reality sinks in.

Today's sermon reminded me of something very important.  God works on his own timetable.  As much as we want to speed up this process, it is a process.  While in the process we need to become comfortable with ourselves, comfortable with God, and remain faithful that God keeps is promises.  Sometimes in the process things might even get worse while we are waiting.  Sometimes a situation might get worse before it gets better.  In the end though, what we had to go through to get to the other side is well worth the wait.

I just have to remember all this.  I need to really believe what I am typing to you all because it is hard.  Because I get tired!  I get tired of waiting to be in love.  I get tired of waiting for the job of my dreams.  I get tired of watching my mom get worse everyday.  I get tired of waiting to figure out when I can stop worrying about paying my bills everyday.  But I will still wait and I will waiting faithfully.  Because God has really seen my through some doozies earlier so I have been blessed by the power of this work.

So today I am waiting on God, patiently and while I am waiting for it to stop snowing so mom and I get grab some dinner lol.

Who's Going to Fight for Me

This post is inspired by a conversation I had with one of my BFFs last night when I really should have been asleep but I was wired from a late night workout and watching the show Scandal (if you watch the show I am sure that you can relate to Scandal-induced insomnia).  Anyway, in our conversation I was talking about a person who I was recently seeing.  I will the divulge the details of why we parted ways to protect his privacy. I was reflecting on some of my unresolved thoughts and feelings and how I didn't feel enough closure. By the end of the conversation I noticed a pattern in my past relationships.  I always feel a longing for a sense of closure, aka being able to say everything that I didn't like about the relationship veiled as a way of preventing the person who I was dating from making the same mistakes with someone else.  But I know even if I said everything I wanted to, it wouldn't make myself feel any better.  But by the end of this conversation I thought maybe there is an equally important point that I am missing.  I began asking myself who's going to fight for me?

Let me further explain this question.  I have long championed myself as being a fighter.  I still remember writing my law school admissions essay comparing myself to Muhammad Ali and my passion of fighting for others.  My commitment to public service is a reflection of my fighter status.  I fight for my friends, I fight for my family, I fight for my opinions and for my beliefs.

But at the end of the day being a fighter is lonely.  Sometimes I get tired of fighting.  Sometimes I wish life were like the WWE where I could tag someone else in so that I can take a break.  Sometimes, I just want someone to fight for me like I fight for them.

Who's going to fight for me?  This is the question that I often ask myself at the end of a relationship.  So often I feel like every relationship fades with little effort from my other half.  Me, I will fight until I am exhausted when I feel like it is the right thing to fight for.  But for those who I have dated, few if any, have actually fought to make the relationship work.  While I should take it as a reflection of them, I instead internalize their lack of urgency.  It makes me feel that maybe I am not worthy of someone fighting for.  I began to question if there is something wrong with me.  Did they not realize that I am not a hard rock but really a gem?  Did they not understand this fabulousness that they were letting go?

I might be temporarily phased but I am never down for too long.  Those others didn't want to fight for me, and that is a blessing for me.  I know that there is someone out there who will fight for me, I just need to be patient, I just need to remain faithful.

Happy

Via Facebook I was introduced to Pharrell Williams' new 24 hour video Happy.  I had heard about this video before and I hadn't given it much thought.  A 24 hour video?  How?  Why?  Who has time for that?  But this video is worth watching.  In the very least it will change your mood for a few minutes.  I immediately downloaded this song and I have been playing it on repeat ever since.  You know why?  Because no matter how big your problems may seem.  Or whatever or whoever you might feel down about listen to this song and you can't help but smile and want to clap and dance along with it.  Try it, and then send it to your friends.  

Where My Passions Lie

Since this blog has turned into my open book on feelings and emotions I feel like it is important to share with you something that I have been struggling for in the past few years.  To summarize I suppose the issue is that I feel like I am not following my passions.  Let me explain...

When I was younger I always wanted to be a writer.  I started off writing poetry.  I placed second place in a local competition once.  I was even published in the magazine Seventeen.  Shoot, I ended up going to a journalism camp when I was in high school.  I was sure that I was going to be the next poet laureate one day, but I hadn't put much thought into anything besides the title itself.

Some where along the way my interests shifted.  I think that when I saw the movie Mr. Smith Goes To Washington that I set my sights on the White House.  And for many years I was serious about it.  My friends surely remember me introducing myself and saying that I was going to be the first black female president.  My AOL IM screen name was even adia4prez.  While I was in college I always made sure to never be photographed with a drink in my hand as I thought it would come back to bite me as I was being vetted for my presidential bid.  But life happened.  Reality sunk in.  Being president is not easy, just look at President Obama's hair in the past few years.  I am too cute to go gray like that honey!  Of course my dreams of politics were also set aside make my family a priority.  Plagued with unemployment and struggling to take care of myself and my mom's leftovers my once squeaky clean image probably will never make me eligible to run for anything anytime soon.

I went to law school to help people.  I always give this stump speech in interviews and when I meet people about wanting to be Angela Davis but not wanting to get arrested.  I thought that I naturally was going to become a public defender or a community activist that would work for the people with the people.  I have done some of that.  However, much of my dreams have been left unfulfilled.  These days I feel like I am my happiest when I am volunteering at a soup kitchen.  I still haven't really figured out how to satisfy my passion for helping others will not being in line at the soup kitchen myself.

I sometimes have this flashes of greatness.  I tried to describe it to my friend the other day.  I have this flash of where my life is heading and being able to testify about my testimony.  But the flash is just a flash, so quick that I can't really feel it or touch it.  It is like I know it is going to be there, but I have no idea how to reach it, no idea how I can see it again.  I had a flash this morning.

This morning one of my friends I met during my stint in law school wrote me a touching message.  I won't go into detail to maintain her privacy.  However, she starting by compliment my blog saying it was amazing and "ditto" to all the thoughts that I share on dating, unemployment and the such.  Later today I received another email from a friend who said that she loves reading my blog.  A few days ago I received a compliment from a friend who I haven't talked to since high school and she too reads my blog!

So what's my point in all of this?  Maybe all of my dreams have not yet been fulfilled.  But ego aside, maybe I am helping people through this blog.  Perhaps by pouring out my thoughts and feelings on the interwebs that others can relate and know that they are not alone.  Maybe by putting a few words together and sharing them with they world that I have inspired someone else to do something that they have always wanted to do but have been putting off.  Maybe?

I just wanted to end with saying thank you!  I never know who is reading or what they are reading but I appreciate it nonetheless.  I am truly humbled to know that maybe I am actually living my dream out loud in a capacity I had never imagined. Please continue to read, comment, and share with others :)

Letter to My Exs

Dear Exs/Men I Have Dated,

I know it has been awhile since I have talked to you, some longer than others.  I know that you are probably surprised to hear from me.  Actually I am surprised that I am writing you myself, but I suppose that I have some lose ends to tie up.

I just wanted to say thank you.  Thank you for the good times that we shared and thank you for the bad times.  It is because of you that I am a stronger person.  I have begun to understand that I really do want to get married one day and not just have an eternal boyfriend.  And I might even want to have kids.  Because of our time together I know the difference in how a woman should and should not be treated.  I have experienced love and I realize that I want to experience that again with someone who continues to love me back and not just when it is convenient to them.

Thank you for putting up with me.  I know that I can be strange and moody and sometimes down right evil but you dealt with me.  And because you were able to handle it I know someone else can handle me too.  Thank you for always asking about my mother and treating her with respect even if you never met her.  I often worry that I will never find a man who will be able to deal with the responsibilities I have with my mom, but because of you I know this will not be a problem.  Because in my eyes the way that someone takes care of their mother, sister, and kids is a reflection in how they will treat me.  You made me realize that if another man is not doing this than he is not the one for me.

I appreciate the fact that you respected my religious beliefs.  One of you actually encouraged me to start going to church regularly, and I haven't looked back since.  Some of you would ask me about church and what I learned, you even asked for prayer.  A couple of you even came to church with me, which meant a lot.  While others were not as inclined.  The pastor told us today that your salvation cannot be taken away, so I know you will find your own path one day.  But for me, I know I want a man that has a relationship with God and is working on how to become a better person.  Not so that he can get into heaven, but he realizes the love and grace shown by God and wants to return that to others.

Thank you for loving my body no matter what the scales says.  You made me feel as beautiful with clothes on as I did naked.  You encouraged me to eat healthy and exercise not because you wanted to change me, but because I wanted to change me.  I appreciated when we cooked together and we worked out together.  I even liked when you got a little jealous when other men stared at me.  Because let's face it, I am fabulous!

For the past few years I have not had a full time job.  Thank you for not making it a reflection on myself as a person, but merely a circumstance that many people at this time face.  You sometimes paid for me when I didn't have to pennies to rub together and that was not forgotten.

Finally, I just wanted to say thank you for not being "the one".  Because by us parting ways it opens the opportunity for you and for me to find who are true companion shall be.  I would love to say that we should be friends, but it would be a lie.  Because when people part ways one or both of them is still harboring some sort of feelings whether good or bad.  But I do hope that all is well for you.  I hope that I helped you as much as you helped me.  I hope that you will find your own love as I will find my own.

Yours very truly,

Di