Black Girl Interrupted

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There is something so incredibly SEXY about a man who is patient and consistent in his effort to pursue a woman.

As I’ve matured, I’ve realized men have a tendency to take longer to realize things right in front of them. So while we sooner are ready, or seem to think we are ready, to take the relationship to the next step; engagement, move-in arrangements, they are still in limbo.

Now when I say in limbo I don’t mean he’s out sex’ing any and everything, his mind is just not even thinking about those things (but dont count out the sex’ing anything just yet, each situation is different). …anyway, Because of this women tend to be the more riskier partner when it comes to relationships.

We usually are ready to “date” long before he is and put ourselves out there, and he gets to just eat it up (no pun intended).

I have learned to value qualities like patience and consistence in a man. Before I get involved with you, seriously committed, I need to know that you are worth the wait. You being consistent and patient tells me you thought of me as worth the wait, and so you might tend to value a woman in waiting a bit more than the next man who has no idea what it feels like to wait.

What are some other qualities in the opposite sex that make them worth a “wait”?

The tale goes, in relationships there is the Lover and the Loved. There is the selfless partner A, and the seemingly selfish partner B. It seems partner A invests more, thinks more about partner B than they even think of themselves. Meanwhile partner B, invests less, and while loving the other, still never seems to be capable of putting partner A before EVERYTHING else. For many people, the idea of putting someone before all else is irrational as hell. What if it doesn’t work out, now you’ve invested all this into that person for nothing? Yea, the mindset of the Loved!

The Lover seems to have no problem with these relationship risks. Max defined the Lover as “the one who will be left “ and the Loved as “the one who will leave.”

While I agree with the characteristics of the Lover and the Loved, it gets a little more complicated than just “who are you?” It should not be an “either or” situation. In my experience, in my own relationships, as well as others around me, I’ve noticed that the Lover and the Loved aren’t people, they’re capabilities.

As the Lover, you bare the burden of insecurity. You realize all the risks you are taking and to reduce the chances of the relationship failing. You overextend yourself, constantly worrying about your partner. Your less concerned about your needs and desires, your more concerned with keeping up with the wants and desires of your partner. You need displays of satisfaction as your daily sustenance or you feel there is something YOU need to do or change.

…but then you are Left! Your partner finally decides to tell you what it is. Most people think this is were the powerless Lover is devastated, and commits suicide or goes anti-opposite sex. The thing is, at the end of all failed relationships the Lover has all the more power. To know that you gave your all in a relationship, for it to simply fail, is a lot less depressing then you not giving it your all and wondering what if you had. The lover gets to leave the relationship blameless

As the loved you simply sit back and enjoys the ride. You don’t have to think twice about them “still” loving you, hell they show it all the time, sometimes too much. You don’t need affection, at least not all the damn time. At some point you realizes all you have to do to keep them happy, is BE. Just don’t die!

..but then you leave! And this is where you are powerless, and feel like the shittiest piece of shit and a little more shitty if shit could get any shittier. (excuse my french) The fact of the matter is they attended to all your needs wants and desires, and part of you envies that. You say things like “its not like I asked them to do all that,” but really that doesn’t make you feel any less like shit. Your really saying to yourself, all I had to do to make them happy was be there and allow myself to be loved, (even though their actions are irrational to you), you still feel guilty that you couldn’t just do that.

Crazy ain’t it? I’m pretty sure most people think of these as characteristics and everyone either hates themselves for not being the loved, or envies the Lover.

When put into perspective though, you must realize that if you make these characteristics (one or the other type thing) with relationships, you must go back to how Max described them. The one who is left, and the one who leaves. This is a clear indicator that these are positions of FAILING or FAILED relationships.

That is why, I choose to categorize them as capabilities. In my opinion, and this is a stretch as a I am no relationship expert, hell I’m not even in a relationship to test this theory, but I believe that for a successful relationship you need to have both the capability to be a Lover, and the capability to be loved.

Growing up I watched my grandparents, who have been married for a very long time, go back and forth as lover and loved. I thought about my grandma who had worked, but still cleaned, cared for children, and made sure dinner was prepared, clothes were washed, ironed, and folded… whatever my grandfather needed he got. If he needed a glass of water, he could just call for her and she would stop what she was doing and bring him a glass. Its not like he was doing anything, why couldn’t he get up and get his own glass? He was the loved.

Now I look at my grandparents relationship awfully confused because my grandfather cleans, he doesn’t cook, but he cares for grandchildren, irons, and stops what he is doing at times to tend to my grandma or something she needs done. He is a Lover.

As a model, I use my grandparent’s relationship to understand the importance of having both capabilities if you want to have a successful relationship. No one wants to put everything on the line, but fail at the end of the day, even if there is sanity in knowing you did your best. In the same breath no one wants the guilt of leaving someone who loved you more than they loved there self either.

When you find the one, you cant live without, if there is such thing, you are going to want to be the Lover, you are going to want to give it everything you have got, and risk it all. And they will be very happy with you for doing so. …but sometimes even they will want you to just sit back and enjoy the ride, just be loved.

I cant imagine a relationship where there’s constantly two Lovers running around like chickens without a head on trying to please each other all the damn time. And a two-loved relationship is just not theoretically possible. So whether or not you have been the Loved, or the Lover in your past or present relationship, rest assured that there is still a chance for you. You are already halfway there ,knowing you possess the ability to be whichever you have been, and now you need to have the ability to be the other, and find the one who is able to be both as well.

I don’t know what is more shocking, the fact some members of the FSU community need extensive help with grammar, spelling and American history, or the fact that so black members of the student community had no idea racism exists on campus.

Even the mildly social members of the student community in Tallahassee found themselves involved in an online civil war-like conversation engulfed in racism yesterday. The race war included everything from who is more intelligent, to who is really responsible for the crime rates, and even the most unintelligent conversation about affirmative action and how it affects student admission to Florida State.

The whole thing started after an apparently white FSU student made a post that asked “can I seriously take a vote and ask how many people are fucking fed up with the niggers at fsu”. Here is the post:

Anonymous 02/14/2012 9:29 AM QuoteReport ??If you don’t like our school then fucking leave and take your Nigger Student Union with you. Every day I get an FSU Alert about a robbery or a mugging and guess who it always is, a *god* *damn* *nigger*. Yet we whites are somehow the racist ones because you people can’t stop stealing, can’t stop smoking crack (like your hero Whitney CrackPipe Houston), can’t stop wasting tax dollars paid by good white citizens who work hard and paid their dues. I can’t even walk around campus anymore without seeing your ugly fucking monkey faces. Your features are grotesque, as are your mannerisms and speech. Thats another thing too, why can’t you people learn how to fucking TALK. This is America and we speak English here, not Witch Doctor Nigger Chimpspeak.

Sometimes I think the S in FSU stands for Spearchucker

P.S. Stop wearing “Yes We Can” t-shirts, your nigger president won’t be in power much longer

Most people unfamiliar with Internet trolling rapidly began responding as if this came as the biggest shock to the student community. (The same community which hosts the FSU Republicans who in efforts to show a more tangible example of affirmative action decided they would hand out cookies or pieces of cookies to their student body not too long ago. If you were black you got a whole cookie, Spanish the same and if you were Asian less and so on and so forth.)

It was shocking to me, regardless of wether this was troll or not, to see so many students shocked and moved by it they got out of character and subjected themselves to already existing stereotypes of black people. Not that it should have went ignored, but it definitely should not have been provoking enough to have people wanting to inflict violence on anyone for simply expressing their ridiculous beliefs. Even more shocking, but utterly disappointing was the admin of FSUacb.com disabling the website due to the degrading/demeaning posts (rather than the violent). What’s worst than people expressing racist sentiment? Them not expressing them, but feeling them, while people assume it doesn’t exist.

Of course racism exists, even on this campus! The positive side of this whole event is that both races came together and had a conversation, besides the blatantly ignorant posts, discussing several misconceptions of each other. The disablement and deletion of these posts in my opinion does more harm than help because it seems to try to pretend it never happened. But it did happen.

I am proud to say that just as many white students making racist comments , there were also white students apologizing for those comments. It was good to witness stereotypes being torn down by intelligently witty posts by black students who didn’t want to be categorized with the stereotypical colored peoples.

I think more of these conversations are needed before we could ever pretend to have a society where color doesn’t matter. In high school we pass over slavery/racism so fast that many times its worthless to even cover.

Because racism remains such a major issue in America today, we need to teach our children a lot more than America had slaves, then great men freed the slaves because they were Good people, the south rebelled because of it, and the North stood up saying slavery should be abolished and even fought a civil war over it, and now blacks and whites live together harmoniously, while the radical Muslims try to kill us all.

I think more comprehensive lesson plans on race are due. We need to tell the story of slavery and racism, but not just the tale of hundreds of years ago. Even 40, 50 years ago is too far back. We need to discuss how the racism back then still permeates into society as the racism of the now. Black students need to be prepared for such racism and equipped with the proper tools to battle it effectively. White students need to be involved as well. So many of them have no idea it exists. Not because they are in denial but sometimes there is no recent history of it in there family. They are sometimes good people and can’t understand or comprehend the conversations we have amongst each other. This leads them to find things like affirmative action, and progressive minority organizations racist or counterproductive.

We have to realize though race is a social construct, as Americans, hell as humans, it is a large part of our history and cannot simply be erased with a law or a generation. It is hard to say whether it even can be erased. If it can, accepting that it exist is the first step to recovery, and consistently remembering it is not a bad thing, because the more we remember it exists or has existed is the more likely we continue to refrain from it. An alcoholic has to remember those days when they were too drunk to walk, the really bad days, in order to remind himself how good it is to be sober.

Lets take a vote!!!

There have been few moments that I have been so disappointed with society. This Whitney Houston drama obsession, the news constantly bringing up her “demons” drug addiction and people focusing on nothing but the negatives. Have we not realized it is this kind of society that pushes people over the edge, this lack of love and comfort that forces people to find love/comfort in other things? This is what makes the evil doers/devil so tempting for he welcomes everyone with open arms speciously, while “Good” people/God’s children continue to judge and condemn. I am not saying that we should leave addiction out of the narrative, but it surely does not reduce this woman from anything less than a legendary artist, and let her family and close ones speak on her as a woman.

RIP WHITNEY HOUSTON