Introducing Poetry Fridays…

I have now decided that once a week, I will write a poem and also post it here. Here’s the first one…

A Thing of My Own Making

In college, I learned that poem comes from poiesis:

to make, to bring into being that which did not exist before.

And suddenly, almost everything was a poem:

the strawberries I ate with this morning’s breakfast

had been a poem a twice — first from Earth, and then into feast.

And if it wasn’t, it once had been:

our sun, suspension of light too old now at 4.6 billion years to be a poem,

had once been a surprise to the darkness that holds it.

Some better than others:

the moon-named girl my best friend is forging to be brave & self-coronated

slightly greater than this career I’ve built from words I thread through whitespace

slightly greater than the heartbreak that cracked open whatever ballooned both phenomena.

Some begetting more:

at some point, my father made my mother laugh in a way that was wholly new

and it birthed volume after volume

(two of which were titled son and daughter)

until they each made the other a wreck of animosity

which ended their marriage in a bombed-out dirge.

I let this hypothesis bleed wild:

Because God, if real, must be a prolific poet.

Or if God isn’t, then They must be a poem,

which makes us all smaller yet equally prolific gods.

But it also means, everyday I woke up this week?

And the loneliness that buried me?

And the ache I sometimes dig my fingers into?

Each a thing of my own making.

I Hate (Online) Dating.

For most of us, 2020 deeply fucked up something of our lives. For many, it’s meant devastating loss and uncertainty. I try to remember that so far, I have been fortunate. I am safe and healthy. All of my loved ones have been safe and healthy, more or less. I’ve been able to work and provide for myself.

The only things I’ve lost of meaningful worth are time and some hope. There were goals and plans I had for this year that I had to accept were just not gonna fucking happen. Some of those things were easier to accept than others.

The one that hasn’t been easy to accept? How this pandemic is affecting my (nonexistent) love life. When I turned 30 last summer, I promised myself that I would start “putting myself out there” — a phrase I hate with a murderous passion — because there was something about turning 30 that made not wanting to die alone feel very urgent all of a sudden. I blame Love Island. (And trust, we only recognize UK in this house.)

I’ve never really “put myself out there” before because I didn’t know how. I’m what one would call a late bloomer. I’m also what one would call old-fashioned. I’ve spent most of my life assuming that I would meet-cute my future romantic partners like they do on Sex and the City. And if not that, I would just meet them randomly IRL. I’ve only ever liked people I’ve gotten to know really well in person.

And since this blog is called One True Thing, I guess I should also explain that I don’t “put myself out there” because the one time I did, I was involved in a very coercive and manipulative relationship with an older guy who sexually assaulted me twice. A very trauma compounded by my trust and intimacy issues stemming from witnessing my parents’ disaster of a divorce. (Yes, I do go to therapy! Thank you for asking.)

Oh, and it’s also further complicated by the fact that I came out as queer only three years ago, because I fell in love with a woman. But it was messy and emotional. (Truly only emotional, which made it even messier.) But once you take your queerness out of the box, it’s not like you can put it back in and return it. But my queerness is also still new and foreign and and maybe a little misshapen to me. And so I’ve also been like, “Who am I putting myself out there for?” I still don’t know how to answer that question.

OK, so yes. This is why “putting myself out there” is a very scary and complicated thing for me.

But all of a sudden, I was 30. I was very single. And sometimes, y’all, I swear I can feel my ovum packing up their shit and retiring to Florida. Finding a person — not my person, which I’ll get to — became a Very Serious Matter. Because did I mention I’m very afraid of dying alone?

As I started talking about the not wanting to die alone and wanting to “put myself out there” with my friends and aforementioned therapist, a terrible truth was reiterated over and over again: For 90% of humans (this is not a real statistic), “putting yourself out there” means online dating. Swiping right. (Or is it left?) You see a representation of a person through your phone — a few photos and some facts and some blurbs they’ve written about themselves — and you’re supposed to decide if they’re cute or interesting or smart or kind enough to talk to? And if they want to talk to you? And then if they do, you have to deal with truly the most mind-numbing conversations to figure out if they’re cute or interesting or smart or kind enough to risk BEING MURDERED to meet them in person?

Y’all, it’s a fucking nightmare. (And do not even get me started on the politics of desire and how fucking hard it is to be a [fat] Black woman on these apps.)

But I tried it nonetheless. And promptly got catfished. So then I deleted the apps… and then re-added them… and then deleted them… and then re-added them. And now, I’m considering deleting them again.

Because the truth is: I fucking HATE online dating. I’m not a swipe-to-find-a-match kind of bitch. And it really sucks because in this dystopian future, online dating is the only dating that’s safe. If there were ever a time to really pony up, it’d be now. But I deeply hate it.

And so, a huge part of 2020 has been accepting that this will probably be another year I’m single AF and a little lonely. And that’s OK. My eggs are not retiring. I am not going to die alone. I have time. The goal isn’t to find a warm body. The goal is to find my person — someone who is cute and interesting and smart and kind, who shares my same values and ambitions, who I can have a relationship with.

So until I can “put myself out there” IRL, I’ll stay my Black ass at home.

The Pandemic Has Wrecked My Sleep Schedule.

I went to be at 2:15am last night. 2:30am the night before. 8am the night before that. 5am the night before that. Please don’t ask what I do until that time. You will be painfully unimpressed. (OK, fine — A lot of TV, YouTube, and mindless Internet rabbit holes.)

Do I feel like an insane person? Yes.

When the COVID-19 crisis escalated to the lockdown phase in March, I was pretty intentional about making sure I maintained a sense of “normalcy,” despite the fact that we were all social distancing at staying at home. I tried to make sure I woke up around my normal time, that I went on walks a few times a week, that I stood outside and got fresh air everyday, and that I went to bed at a reasonable time.

And then… Well, we all know what happened — and what is still happening. Between the deplorable and catastrophic government response to COVID-19 here in the U.S. and the BLM/M4BL uprising, that sense of “normalcy” has completely been shattered. Nothing about this is normal. Nothing in me wants to normalize it. And especially after the uprising, I’ve just realized how “normal” was already what we called being complacent/complicit in deeply fucked up systems.

Plus, I think there’s something about it being summer (too damn hot!), still feeling the urgency to stay my ass inside (very damn important!), and the overwhelming sense of WTF-ness happening in the world around us (too damn much!).

Normal just isn’t really in the cards anymore. And won’t be for a very long time. So it’s been difficult for me to feel like having a “normal” routine is a necessity at this point. Even though I know I’m being silly, because it absolutely still should be.

Bitches gotta sleep.

I'm Bad at Self-Care. (AKA One True Thing #1)

Two weeks ago, I turned 31. I still have two saved drafts I intended to post to celebrate my 30th. (LOL.)

I was once a fairly prolific blogger, as I’m sure most Millennial/Xennial writers who came of age with the Internet and social media were. But as I’ve made the transition from hobbyist writer to professional writer (blegh!), I’ve stopped blogging.

But for my 31st year, I made a commitment to myself (and my therapist) to prioritize self-care. “Self-care” gets thrown around a lot, usually to sell us shit. Like spa days and vacation packages and face masks. (Mmm, capitalism.) But for me, self-care means learning to practice daily actions and behaviors that prioritize my own health and well-being. And beyond that, prioritizing my own joy, wholeness, and peace.

But I’m really bad at self-care, y’all.

You see, I tend to put other people’s needs and feelings before my own. I don’t think this is necessarily bad. Especially because kindness and compassion are daily practices as well. The problem is I offer a disproportionate amount of my time and energy offering kindness to others — and not to myself. And then I burn out. And then maybe I spend five insomnia-addled days holed up in my apartment, procrastinating on writing and e-mails by deep cleaning my apartment and watching YouTube.

IDK, my brain is weird. What I do know is that for most of my life, it’s been so much easier for me to take care of other people than it has been to take care of myself. But I’m 31. But there are some incredibly important things that I would very much so like to achieve and bring into my life in my 30s, but they require a daily self-care practice.

Writing every single day for myself — not for a paycheck or acknowledgement or prestige — is one of the ways I used to practice self-care.

Being open about the messy, funny, boring, ugly truth of my life is one of the ways I used to practice self-care.

But the toxicity and hyper-visibility of social media makes me anxious, so posting on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook (yes, I still have Facebook — I’m 31) no longer really feels like self-care.

So welcome to my new old blog, in which everyday I will write at least one true thing.

See y’all tomorrow.

Making Up My Mind

Yo! It’s 2019. I am bad at regularly updating this blog.

From my last post, it’s easy to deduce that 2018 was a difficult year. As a good friend of mine reminded me recently: There are years that ask questions and there are years that offer answers. Whew, chile, did I have to confront all the messy, confounding questions in 2018. There were so many. So many. And for most of year, I couldn’t answer them for myself.

It was hard to give answers because I didn’t know what I wanted. It was hard to make decisions because I didn’t have the energy, time, or resources to do it very often. I spent much of last year working, but not knowing what I was working toward. And on a deeper level, I was often working against my own well-being, healing, and best interests. It was just plain hard.

But now that I’m on the other side. I have decided to provide my own answers. I am making up my mind about the things I desire, the things I’m willing to work for, the visions I want to bring to fruition this year.

I am writing. I forgot the magic and the meditation that is writing. I am taking risks. I am trying to be more positive. And when I can’t be positive, I’m at least trying to mind my business and stay in my lane. I’m being kind to myself. And I’m doing the inconvenient yet necessary work of learning how to care for myself, prioritizing my needs, and setting up boundaries.

I am committing to my dreams and my goals.

And you know what the gift has been? I have known peace this year. Tangible, golden, beautiful peace. It never stays for long. But it comes, which I don’t think I could say at all about last year.

I hope 2019 also brings you the peace and the joy and the wild dreaming it has brought me so far.

Let’s build, tribe.