Here's What Happens

Here's the thing -- we all (okay, just me) thought Joni Mitchell's idea, co-opted by the Black Crows, that you don't know what you've got until it's gone was trite. Okay, yeah, I have a bunch of crap in my house. Boxes unopened over four moves, in fact. If they were destroyed in a fire, I have to say, I wouldn't be sorry for their loss precisely because I DO know what is in them -- nothing I've needed in four years.

That said, I do kind of get it now. When it's all gone, it's just you. Lonely is shit; shit squared, in fact, when you didn't know you were lonely until someone told you. Ass. I didn't know I had non-lonely until it was gone. No Izzy/Algebra (I'm thinking of changing her name). No Louis. Just me. Durn, I suck. I am horrible company for myself, especially when this week's episode of LOST is a motherfucking repeat. What the hell? I can't knit/sew/crochet anything else, because there's too much in progress. And, I don't want to start a new project with 8 already in the works. It's just this -- someone sought me out. That same someone told me I was worth more than I have/am getting, and I believed it. Someone wanted to give me that more. I now know that more is possible, and the sad thing is, it's worse than not knowing. Digging ditches is fine, and honorable work. Until someone tells you that your idea of yourself as ditch-digger is limiting, that you can do more. And then, that someone throws you a rope down the grade and pulls you up. Do you take the first rope that comes down the grade? It's a risk, because there might be another, stronger rope to follow. If I had it to do over again, I'd take the first rope and wend my way to a different life. It might not be better, but I would have done it. I would have grasped at something new, and having grasped, learned that I could do it again.

I have often said that, were I a different woman -- a different color or age -- I would deserve a nervous breakdown. As it stands, I have the luxurious burden of being a strong black woman. Yeah, I read Essence, the magazine for today's black woman. The same magazine, mind you, whose employees were described by their parent company as having the abiltiy to morph a status meeting into a revival meeting. The parent company rep who said that was a woman, too. Let's all give her a smack right in the chops, shall we?

Jeez-o-peetz, as we used to say
Back in the day
When we were kids
And didn't know how it really is
That someone has proscribed her very existence
That slings of derision and arrows of patrimony
Would overcome her resistance and hope for a new day
That her success was rated lower
Than those she hoped would one day love her
Or you

That the gains and strides she made
Would be subjected to a separate grade
"As good as us"
Or, "Not quite", and thus
The expectations laid at her feet
Those that she hoped she'd meet
Would be those of another
One versed in condescension? Hate? But not love, or
One who knew her not for her self
But for her difference from him
Or you, or them

There was a poetry vibe all over me today. Lucky for you ... or not. Later - j. (<-- read with the proper cadence, that rhymes, too. I can't sop myself ... nor can you.)