underneath the mask

my tears are sometimes all I have to remind me of the person that exists underneath this mask. see, I've always been told I was handsome, good-looking, even sexy. these were always followed by "oh, he's smart" or "God, he speaks well." if what you hear everyday of your life is a compliment about your physical appearance, then at some point you'll reach a fork in the road. you'll decide to put great stake in what people feel about your physical appearance and let it take over your life OR you'll dig deeper and find there's more to you than ever imagined.

i recently saw this woman on Oprah who decided to let the world see her disfigured face for the first time. she had been mauled by a gorilla that basically took no caution in trying to make her face his lunch. Messed up! But it got me wondering, if tomorrow, my face were mauled would I still have the same friends? would I be accepted by family? how would my church respond? you'd think the answer to all of these would be some flowery, positive answer in the affirmative. but unfortunately, this is NOT the case. i hang with people who are considered "beautiful" by american standards. and though I know they love me, I am not sure that they could stand to be around me.

essentially my face does not take away my personality or my intelligence. it doesn't diminish my care and concern for people or my undying love for chemistry. but without it, I feel like I would be nothing. that's crazy, huh? something so temporary and changing can hold so much power. well, i want to take the focus off of my face and more on my intellect, my care, my passion. i won't hide behind these intangibles but i am placing more emphasis on them. its the only way that I feel I can reconnect with God, who loves me for my flaws and my persistence and my soul's ability to love. i am tired of impressing man. i need to start falling in love with the inner me so that I show God I am a good attendant to my temple. that's a blessing i couldn't ask for more.

so, here it is 2010. i am maintaining the physical only to show an outward expression of the spiritual. as it grows, so will I. however, if you see me less than what you expect, know that i don't care. i am not looking to impress you - only free myself from your insecurities projected on me.

peace.

Nothing more than feelings

Spending time with you makes me even more confused.
Getting texts from you drives me insane.
Looking into your eyes and seeing you say words that are casts of your real emotions - frustrating.
Hearing your heart with mine makes me sadder than I've ever been.

But I am learning to forget you.
Its frustrating, because while you weren't my first, I was yours. But to me, it felt like an extremely special interaction. And I see how hard it is you try to gloss over the idea of their being a strong bond there. Sometimes, I wish we didn't take that step. I wanted to be your friend and only that. But you wanted more. And now, you have built a wall around your psyche, just tall enough for me to see your true emotions but still be confused by my own interpretation.

I thought I had grown up. I thought I was making better decisions - not putting myself in the way of trouble, neither emotional nor physical. And I took the chance on developing a friendship with you. And while that was a good call, I should have never, ever let me guard down. I've spent 23 years of my life being guarded. Giving only so much of me in a relationship so that if it ended badly, I wouldn't have made the emotional investment in the first place. So I would be okay. But I can't keep living like this. I can't pretend that being emotionally hollow is any way to live... yet, we went ahead and completely messed that up.

I should have said no to your request.

But really, aint no time for shoulda, coulda, wouldas. At this point, I'm forgetting. Its the only way I can mentally heal. I'm forgetting about the immense joy I get when seeing you, or the way your conversation makes me smile. I am forgetting about how the passion in our love making sends a flood of chills up and down my spine. I'm forgetting it all.

Ironically, you have helped me. You let me see that I have the emotional capacity to give of myself. But you also helped me see how "caution" should always be exercised in the game of feelings. So, I'll end with Rihanna...

How bout a round of applause? Standing ovation?
Cause you put on quite a show - really had me goin. 
Now its time to go, curtains finally closin.
That was quite a show, very entertainin... but its over now. 
Go on and take a bow. 


shit.

Com-part-men-tal-ize

v. To divide into categories or compartments. 

I've never been able to appropriately compartmentalize any of my emotions. I'm guessing I haven't quite reached the higher levels of Freud's hierarchy of needs. Nevertheless, I am aware. So, I can adapt - in order to survive. Survival technique - shut down. It sounds like an avoidance technique because it IS! But it's worked pretty well so far. Or so I thought. Recently, I feel like I haven't been able to shut down. Feelings of loneliness take over - emotional loneliness, romantic loneliness, loneliness that success brings, and so forth and so on. Most dramatically has been this loneliness of self that I have experienced all my life. 

See, momma and daddy didn't pursue any degrees as high as mine. So there's always that point of reference that they miss or that I have to forego in order to maintain the status quo. But it's annoying and frustrating. Because, as I decide on a move out of New Orleans, I find myself wanting to have that family base of people who understand - who will know what it feels like to be stressed out and away from home. BUT I don't. My parents and sister won't understand what it means to be pursuing a terminal degree and all the stress associated with that. And because I can not compartmentalize appropriately, I find myself feeling overwhelmed with sadness and grief. WTF! I just want to have someone in my corner. Someone I can call and just have them sit and listen to me bitch and moan (maybe even shed tears) for a minute. I don't have that. See, shutting down has always made me the friend I am talking about - the one who can sit and listen to a million problems of those around me without adding or taking away from the experience. But this too is alienating. It just makes me feel lonely. Thoughts of those low moments to come are those that have been keeping me up in the evenings. I don't know what to do! 

Some people say "pray." Relationship with God - in need of some serious repair. ugh. I've always sucked at commitment. 

I have about 7 months to get this together but I know I can not get through this on my own. I'll be looking to become more vulnerable, opening up in ways that make me uncomfortable. Just hope I don't get seriously hurt in the process.

Insomniac thoughts at 4am

My mom has a prayer line (she and a group of women get on the phone and use their combined faith to pray to God about their sins, heart's desires, etc.) Of course, I am up at 4am, the hour of prayer. While I try to scaffold about 20 different thoughts that run through my mind, I hear my mom talk about asking God for specific things and writing those things down so that I can have a tangible record of those things, a way to sorta hold myself (and I guess God?) accountable for certain promises we make to each other. I'm understanding more now that this religion thing is a relationship - just like any real, tangible one I've encountered before.

Anyway, I turn to my blog. Its just the simplest place that I can deposit all this shit in my head - a good outlet for my emotional and mental obsessing. One day I'll be able to let go of thoughts on my own and compartmentalize them like "regular" folk but until then, this blog and my physical journal will have to do.

So, as I look toward 2010, I would like God to bless me with the following things:

1. Pharmacy School acceptance - Top priority since this is what I want to do with my life.
2. Healthier lifestyle (mentally/physically/spiritually/emotionally) - why the hell do humans have to have so many layers - I can't manage the 4 rooms in my house. Do you think I can handle the most cluttered and fragile parts of me?
3. Spend more time with God children - I foresee a move to Houston or ATL so I want to solidify these relationships now seeing as though my God sons are really young.
4. Financial uprightness - I want to pay off more debt - I'm faithful enough to believe that I can eliminate it all in 2010. the year just feels so right!
5. Time management - I'd like to think I have this aspect of my life down but I am far from a great time manager. I want 2010 to be the highlight of this. I need it!

So those are my 5 requests. But like any stable relationship, I need to make some accompanying changes and promises (commitments) of my own in return. These are:

1. Complete Pharmacy apps in enough time to troubleshoot any issues. Also, commit funds towards interviews, etc.
2. Spend more time with myself, appreciating the ugly. I know the good and bad but I want to learn to love those ugly parts of me - eventually so that I can deal with them and evoke change.
3. Pray more for more Godsons and spend time with them on the weekends since they are my heart.
4. Spend more on paying off debt. Spend less on extraneous "stuff" - it doesn't help to accumulate things when I am trying to move away and learn the art of appreciating little.
5. Less time committed to useless activity like facebook and twitter. More time on getitng tasks accomplished immediately rather than putting things off.

I think these are fair compliments. I would also like to meet newer, more exciting people - as well as newer, more establish figures who could serve as tangible examples of what I can do with my life and greater.

That's all for now!

more insanity to come.

The Amnesia of Mandated "Success"

African Americans rose up out of slavery, fought through the tundra of Jim Crow segregation and achieved Civil Rights for the betterment of all Americans. Somehow, along the way, either out of necessity or mimicry of best practices, black people moved to cure themselves of the ailments of injustice by a calculated prescription of: school + work + opportunity = healthy American dreams. Sense I can remember, I have been indoctrinated into this ideology of success. However, recently I have been flooded with so many emotions - a sea of feelings that not only overwhelm me but they cause the projection of images in my mind that hint of more innocent and vibrant Johmyrin. Someone not so bent on gaining as many degrees as possible. Someone who is dangerously unfamiliar. Someone who knows that the prescription for success was faulted - anachronistic for its purpose in my life. 

My parents have always preached the value of education. I bought that sermon on DVD. I've seen how my mother elevated herself from the vicious cycle of poverty even with some very substantial obstacles standing in her way. For some reason this formula worked. It worked so much that my father had my educational path chosen for me the day I enrolled in nursery school. "He's gon be a doctor!" My dad's words would always evoke a very plastic smile on my face. I was very much so capable of becoming a doctor but where did my strong distaste of hospitals and research fit in? Kind of a hard pairing. I never wanted to be a doctor and it took many sleepless nights to convince me that I was insane - I was going against the formula. 

In my darkest of hours in reflection and revelation, I started to see glimpses of that young boy again, memories that I should have been able to incorporate into the success formula. Somehow, they were going to force themselves out of my mind one way or another. The most startling scene was me with several bottles of my mothers hair products sitting on the back porch stirring up concoctions in the new tupperware. My mom always thought food walked out the house with the tupperware so I was never suspected of crimes of wasteful behavior. However, I was inquisitive. Seeing color changes, creating gases, and observing two liquids turning into solids was vastly more intriguing than anything else going on in the neighborhood at that time. The lower class black boy's chemistry lab. It didn't dawn on me until yesterday, as I sat at this computer in a general malaise, that chemistry had always been my first love. So why in the hell did I choose Biology pre-med as a major in college? Because the stupid success formula mandated I do so. I was supposed to give up my talents and maximize my skills in order to be something I did not want to be. Granted, I would make a ton of money, but at the greatest expense - my happiness. 

Now don't get me wrong, I feel like my black family along with many others around the country had to prescribe to some ideology in order to survive in a country set up to keep them down; however, as times had changed they, like those other families, never revisited that prescription. My career was dictated from the things I did well - not the things I enjoyed the most. And with shutting out those things went the memories of my youth. Its weird though because the human soul is raw and eerily noncomplex. It responds to passion with a smile - an ease felt only when one does something successfully in their career that they would likewise do for free. This is where we derive happiness. How unfortunate for me that I had this revelation at 26 years old? But, in opposition to this, I think "Thank God this wasn't 10 years from now..." 

So, now I am at square one. I have earned three degrees and yet, because I am breaking away from the prescription and following my passion, I can finally apply to schools that have my real interest - Pharmacy - the delicate combination of the 11 year old inquisitiveness in me with that of a driven scientist. I get to impact the lives of others and do it through Chemistry. The little boy on the back porch is alive once again. He can smell the various aromas of a vast array of chemicals, observe the amazing effects of  phase change, and incorporate his passion into a profitable business that serves several people's needs. 

My soul is rebuilding as I take the first step away from the path of success.