As I Am (updating * )

Serendipity

What's crazy is how inadequate a person can make another person feel. You don't have it. Not enough, my boobs aren't big enough or small enough or shaped the way they want them to be. Not enough, my butt isn't round enough, big enough, and my hips aren't wide enough. Not enough, my waist is too small or too large. Why are my self-consciousness and slight self-hatred here? Because of you constantly reminding me that what I have is just not enough. And here I find myself in this dark place once again. Because my physical traits don't make me 'fine' 'beautiful' or 'womanly' they make me 'alright', 'nice', or 'straight'. Because my natural hair is never good enough for you. Sir. Does the distribution of my body fat upset you? Am I not enough? Does the chub of my stomach make you uncomfortable? I must not be enough.

Then to be constantly compared to them, because according to you that is what beauty should look like. My beauty does not seem to be beautiful to you, the beholder. As if it isn't human nature for us to all be diverse or different. "Look at her butt, look at her waist, look at her skin, look at her hair, she/they are so beautiful, you should be more like her," you say in an indirect way. I understand now, through your eyes I am just not enough.

And because of you I prayed, prayed that God would fix me. I prayed that God would change my hair, skin, and every piece of me that wasn't perfect to you. As if his work was sloppy. As if my being who I am is an accident.

  But to you my unordinary lover. I've spent my entire life waiting for you. The one who looks at me in awe, positively taken back disregarding yet admiring my physical assets because you see the woman in me beyond the outside or physical. I'm the ambitious girl to your Wale. You understand my struggles and my desire to not only reach but achieve every goal I have set for myself. You know and accept that I'm not perfect despite trying my very hardest to be. With you, everything I do is finally appreciated. With you, feelings and intentions are matched and reciprocated.

Jeanette

It's back. The fighting is back.

When the arguments first started they were about my mom working 12-hour shifts every day of the week. He tried to reason with her, but she insisted that it was necessary. Then she began picking fights with my dad, how he needed to do more help out more, get a better job, stop hanging around my uncle Marty; and considering my dad's fresh out of prison circumstances he was doing a hell of a job. Everything you can think of became a fight. At one point they started dragging my older sister and me into them, demanding that we pick a side. The arguments between them got more intense until one day I noticed everything went silent, for days, weeks even, there was nothing.

Not the comfortable type of nothing that I'm convinced only death could bring, but a silent storm. A nerve-wracking, anxiety-brewing, storm.

There was nothing, then there was peace, and now here I am at 22 years old and we're back at square one.

Note to self add move out to my graduation plan.

I made my way down the stairs slowly, trying to be quiet and not attract any attention. But as soon as I stepped into the living room, their voices rose just like the last time.

"Where were you?" my mom's shrill voice cut through the air.

"I was at work like I've been every day for the past month," my dad's calm but firm tone replied.

"Work? That dump of a job? I told you, Jaymes, that's not good enough. We need money to pay the bills, not scraps," my mom spat out.

I could feel the tension rising as I tried to slip past them and out the door, but I was stopped by my dad grabbing my wrist.