loving like a teenage girl because i still don’t seem to know any better

a labor day drabble. (posting oldies while i work on my project)

i’m walking up the creaky wooden steps to the fourth floor, turquoise sandals with broken soles gum-smacking against the surface, and jennifer hudson’s “spotlight” playing in my worn-down white headphones. today, i’m wearing space buns. the black bra i usually wear started bickering with the metal of my post-scoliosis spine, so i’m wearing the pink one. i just received a text from a scammer saying tyler perry and stranger things are doing a casting call. it is easier to laugh in the afternoon, especially when i am sore from morning cries. here are the things i’m laughing at:

• i think about the officer at customs who made fun of the fact i didn’t buy anything else but that stupid plaid newsboy cap in london. whenever i wear it i think of him. he was my warm welcoming home.

• the friend i got a drink with late saturday night lifted her head back to see the stars when i regurgitated oprah’s famous line to meghan markle: “were you silent or were you silenced?” she pops my wine virginity, any other glass previous to that one sipped out of bare politeness (well, the one i had in london was quite nice), but the pinot grigio (she pronounces it better than i do) feels like hmmmmm. mkay. yeah, i like that.

• when mom and i get brunch on friday, we go to an irish pub mainly because she doesn’t want to walk more than two blocks to find anything else. it takes forty minutes for us to receive our food, and hospitality is something she does not take lightly. the emptiness and the irish flags waving patriotically signal to me that these fuckers might be racist. turns out their business was closing down. together, mom and i go, “ohhhhhh.” as if we weren’t about to walk out and order a sandwich from subway.

• today, as in labor day, i may not be doing physical labor, but i’m working an emotional shift, choking up while sending voice memos across the space-time-continuum to my favorite friends. when i press record, i then get distracted and go, “damnit!” starting the pre-sadness all over again. sometimes it takes me two tries, but then i just go nevermind, and share a paragraph. then i go on wordle.

i’ve been trying to write all of yesterday and today. i get a couple of good quotes out there, “loving like a teenage girl because i still don’t seem to know any better,” i imagine my crew on family feud would clap and go, “that’s good! good answer, good answer!” the other phrases kept in mind are—or in steve harvey decorum—survey says: “how can love be so unforgiving when it already takes so much?” “why is love so expensive—at what reason should it cost so much?” “lost my wallet on this affair, still paying rent on past feelings.” “younger versions of myself blister when i converse passionately and they stop listening.”

i have been thinking about my teenager self recently. she and i stumble over that word forgiveness. i wonder how she’s doing, how she’s hanging on. i can still hear her toes cracking, she sleepwalks at night, in the corner i still see her blonde afro holding shape. i wonder if she’s thinking about me, she’s the empress of getting her feelings hurt, and i know she feels confused that i’m following her footsteps so many years later. “i am just trying to love openly,” i tell her. i see billboards that say, “you accept the bare minimum while the bare minimum doesn’t even accept you,” “you look fucking stupid,” and the younger me is watching me still make her mistakes. here are the things making me depressed:

• all of the blackberry cartons at the regular grocery stores taste like ass, and i’m too lazy to go to trader joe’s for a carton of blackberries. i just don’t want to. 

• i keep having these very vivid sexually ambitious but also heavily overstimulating dreams. faces start to change, and everyone’s naked, but no one’s necessarily ‘doing’ stuff? last night, i opened the palm of my hand to start counting off ‘body count’ fingers. i am asking for a sign. sometimes i’m asking for a cliff to jump off of, in hopes that the floor will turn into a trampoline. maybe my writing’s too intense, maybe i’m not writing enough about old people, and haagan daz’s ice cream. or that the sun is out, and i’m not dead. maybe my perception’s wrong, and i should put my heart with the box of baby pictures under the bed because being sad is to be weak, and when i’ve cried a thousand letters, mom says i’m not going to church enough. 

• i sat in a thai restaurant and told a loved one i’m getting used to the fact that there may not be enough people on this earth that unconditionally love me. he looked at me like i told him we were all going to die. younger versions of myself blister when i converse passionately and people stop listening, i said it because i meant it, the loneliest parts of me fracture when ears shut off at the moment it’s time for me to speak. people start stretching, people start texting, people start looking for the exit, i wrote ‘worm’ for a reason—a call to action, a sit down at the edge of my bed for people to go, “hey, is everything okay? and if you do feel like destroying the world, just give me a second and i’ll come with you.” 

• constantly feeling embarrassed that i’m choosing to love so hard. just wanting to be someone’s yes. a ticket to see you, and hey fuck it if my card declines. i told a new friend the men are just not singing in the rain anymore for love. what will it take for a man to get utterly naked and sing the d’angelo untitled/how does it feel ballad for me? i’m fighting to be someone who forgives. trying to mourn the relationships with people i knew before i crossed the west coast border. trying to be someone who lifts my own chin and says, “hey queen, your tiara’s falling.” —eureka! 

depression is a funny word because either you really have it, or you’re just a young woman trying to survive a new york summer. my eyelashes are longer because i can’t stop crying. waaaaaah, waaaah, you fucking baby. my back has been killing me this past month, i’ve been carrying the weight of my broken-hearted ancestors on top of the funny bone in my scapula. here come all of the people sighing because i don’t have anything good to say. i just want to go back in time to when kendrick lamar’s “not like us” dropped. i miss c-walking in the bathroom in slipping socks, and knowing that when i entered the room, there was a mist of love that tickled my skin. 

reading bell hooks’s all about love, and she tells me to look in my own backyard. she says i’ve been lying lately to redirect trouble on a different route, but i’m approaching that highway anyway. i’m starting to think the plants are gonna die anyway—doesn’t matter if i keep watering them. at least the one in my room, the fake one, has always been her truest self. love, love, love—you never talk about anything else. aren’t i bored of it? even when i’m not thirsty, i still pour for more. here are the things i’ve loved recently:

• the worker at the pizza shop two blocks from my house just started smiling at me. when my cousin and i went to go pick up auntie’s jamaican food, the worker there gave me two high fives, and i remembered the special feeling of being a father’s daughter. or, something like it. —has anyone ever put me on a pros and cons list? i’m hungry to know.

• the liquid blush, warm like sangria, that i bought from the beauty supply store. i dab ellipses on the edges of my cheeks, rubbing it in to become smiley. it helps when my eyes look tired from withholding breakdowns, and when my lip quivers from laughing to keep from crying. i’ve been laughing a lot lately—i told you that. but it makes me feel another close step to beautiful, and there are so many barriers put against girls i know to keep us from feeling beautiful. 

• the black camisole top i bought from rogue with a friend. we circled around soho, her suiting up to help me on my mission to find a slightly unbreathable top. we encourage each other to spend without hesitation. spending is fun. investing is fun. even if i might hate it tomorrow. at least i won’t hate myself tomorrow. it’s possible i might have some disdain though, i might have some dislike for myself tomorrow. the black camisole fits as a slipper, and she hugs on my body in all of the right ways. an endorphin fix, it makes me go, “hello titties, it’s nice to see you again.” don’t you just love a good little black top?

• spoke to a favorite friend, she moves in and out of the BART train station, i love how smooth her hair looks. she’s my style icon, and i treasure her LGB jacket, because it keeps me close to her. i remember the moments she did handstands at a loved one’s high school college sports prom. that entire sentence is hard on the tongue. everyone thought we were nuts, but to each other, we were special. she might hate my twin bed when she comes to visit, but i’m going to convince her to stay in my room regardless. 

i really need a back massage, i’m starting to feel like those old people i don’t write about. just saw jessica pratt’s CD is on sale for fifteen bucks. i might need that. should’ve finally cooked those potatoes in the basket, but instead i had pizza. i hope the potatoes don’t kill us from neglect. i heard they can make carbon monoxide. here’s to an emotionally laboring day, celebrating like a true patriot. 

j.