Have you ever been somewhere and felt totally out of place? I feel like that all the time, unfortunately. I went to see my sister graduate today and just like any time I'm around family or people having fun, I feel that I am involved in a moment that doesn't belong to me. I feel as if I'm interrupting the fabric of time or something. Strange, I know.



I am finally coming to terms with being depressed. I type that and I have to laugh to myself because it's still a little unbelieveable. I have become the prey of my emotions like you common citizens of Earth. I think Ruby Lee passing pushed me over the edge, even now I tear up thinking about her. She really loved me and I don't know where else I'm supposed to find love now. Myself? I thought I did I love myself until I found myself caught up in a bad situation that could have been squashed with just an ounce of self-esteem. I'm too embarrased to explain it, even to myself. Anyway, this acceptance of depression is new to me, it's still raw and itchy around the edges. I just want to be whole, but I'm so empty and tired. Sigh......

I dreamed a dream like I use to dream. There was water and I was scared to go down in it but someone made me go. I was excited too. the water was a blush green and clear. I could see dead limbs underneath its surface. I knew it was deep before i thouhed it. I knew I would die if I got to close because I couldn't resist it. The banks around it were too soft. It was a journey to i don't know where. In the middle of the woods and I was at peace.

Someone please love me. Unconditionally.
I'll do the same.
Just hold me.
Someone please rescue me.

Back to myself....

I sit here, close my eyes, and inhale myself back into my lungs.

My lungs expand and I feel myself seeping through pores and circulating back into my veins: first down to my toes then upwards, stabilizing the erratic beats of my heart, and finally (and most importantly) waking up my brain.

See I exhaled myself too quickly. All for embraces and kisses that dulled my senses and left my mind and body withdrawing from the effects of infatuation.

Why didn't I learn to guard my heart? Probably because for so long I wore it dangling from my sleeves hoping that somebody would love me. So blinded was I by thoughts of being apart of an idea that I couldn't see that in reality I am already loved.

See God loves me and I LOVE ME! And that's all I need.

Mr. Big

"If you can get a girl to smile, you can get her to take her clothes off."
~Uncle Charles

I admit that at first I didn't want him because I was being shallow. I met him at the grocery store as he was coming out and I was going in and he stopped me because he recognized that I was in the sister organization to his. I was looking tore-up from the floor up!!! I rushed through the whole encounter embarrassed about how I looked. Later my friend Jessica said "Your frat brother was kinda cute" but I couldn't recall his face, I just remember that he was BIG. I nodded in agreement and tried not to think about it because I thought I would never see him again....wrong lol.

I had gotten his number to send to my other frat brothers because he was new in town and didn't know anyone outside of work. I sent him a text to let him know that he should be contacted soon. My text didn't say "Hey this is Moe, I'm horny come holla at cha girl!" No it was "Hi this is Monique from HEB, I sent everyone your number. Expect some calls." I don't see anything suggestive in these words plus the embarrassment of our meeting was still fresh on my mind, but something told me he was going to try and talk to me and sure enough he did...And I was annoyed. Again my annoyance was due to my shallowness and I immediately projected on to blank space his face held in my mind cross eyes, a couple chins, and unsightly facial hair. Plus I thought he was gay because he looked at my shoes: that could've been because he works as the manager of a shoe department at the mall but if you're me you don't let things like that slide. Unfortunately, this is usually the case, and I thought "Why are hideously deformed (or mentally disabled or GAY!) men always attracted to me??" (Aaah!)

So we're texting back and forth, my one word responses followed by another one of his inquiries., when the worst thing that could ever happen HAPPENED!! HE MADE ME SMILE!! An uncle of mine once told me "If you can get a girl to smile, you can get her to take her clothes off." I looked at him at the time like he was an ass, but after further observation I have found that it is kind of true. All women are looking for someone to make them smile, and when you smile you have all these chemicals released to your brain that distort your vision and next thing you know you're waiting on this bastard to call you so you can hear his voice again and you want to be held by him again because his embrace is so strong and you want him to kiss you again because his lips are so soft and his tongue is amazing and you want him laying between your legs again with his head resting on your stomach!!!....... Not that this is what happened to me.....But you get the point.....

Somehow I went from not wanting him to craving his presence. It could be that I'm just bored (school is out and I don't have to go back to work til the 5Th and I'm in this deserted college town without a car) and our first date...at his house...ended so well...I didn't sleep with him....well I didn't have sex with him but we fell asleep together. He wasn't like I imagined him when I finally stopped giving him the run around and said yes to a date. Yea he was BIG but in a sexy way (and in more ways than one) and his eyes weren't crossed (Yes!!) just deep and dark with a hint of false innocence, and now I'm caught up in him trying to unravel the lines of his snare. It's not that I don't want to be in a relationship, it's that I'm scared of losing myself in those eyes, those embraces, those kisses... I have a tendency to do that with men.

We went from texting to talking because my phone screen broke, but now we haven't talked like we did in the beginning. We would talk on the phone til like 4 in the morning and we both had to be at work at 8. Now it's short little conversations that leave me wanting more. I'm fighting this urge to call him and "Do my own thing" like my friend Jazzy has advised. She says I need to focus on myself, which is a duh! but it's hard when there's nothing to do. So I'm going to start exercising more and doing more spa days and that's when he'll pop back up. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," she says with a smirk because she has never seen me like this.

Damn his gift of gab! Damn his swagger. I know that in the beginning relationships are games and I have to keep playing 'till....I don't know. I guess I keep playing until I find out he's an ass or we live happily ever after, but I'm trying to fall somewhere in between all that bull. I just want him to call me and not worry that it's over before it has truly began.....Is that too much to ask?

Penny

A Penny for Your Thoughts

Car rides

I remember these car rides with my cousins, auntie, and Mother. They would take us out to these secluded places and turn off all the lights in the car. We, my cousins and I, would huddle close to eachother in the backseat excited by the adventure we were own, but scared of the unknown. Then another car would come up. Turn off all of its lights and either my mother or aunt would go get in the car and stay there for a long time. "SSshhhh be quiet!" They would say and we would hold our breathes in obedieance. Later I would find out that they were sleeping with men in those cars...actually I think I always knew. So began my confusion on men and sex....

Missed Call

Why is it so hard to return a phone call? You might as well not call at all if all I'm going to do is see that it's you and freeze completely. Hesitating, saying I'm gonna call you later. NO, the battle is in getting the nerve to even hit send and see the numbers turn into a name that represents you because there is the possibility of you taking me out of my misery. This is what I asked for right? So why is it so hard to return a phone call when all I want is to hear you say my name? I'm not one to play games but this game of wait-and-see is torturing me...I asked for you...now here you are....and here I go again retreating from the chances that God provides in our lives. Returning your call does not mean that you will be my cure all, this does not mean you will be the love of my life, it only means that I am showing you enough decency to return your call after you've called me.

Hypergraphia

I have finally defined my passion, I am a writer!
I know you think you know this but you don't understand the power that circulates through my body when I have a pen in my hand, or pencil, or chalk, or a rock, or a stick, or make up, or anything that makes a mark on a surface.
When I was little, I would write on the walls of our house "My name is Monique. I live in CKT with my grandmother. I am __ years old" over and over all over the house. These were my first lines when I had only a few words. I wrote all that I knew. I had to write.
There was a woman in church who would read poems and she wielded just as my power to sway as the preacher. I wanted that power! And I have it.
I am powerful beyond measure and writing is my light.
Do you understand?
Without friends, without being a college student, without being a Zeta, without wearing a mask of false confidence I am a writer, I am a poet, I am a thinker....
If I lose everything tomorrow that is used to externally define me I will still be a writer.
I think about writing all the time: on the bus, at clubs, during class, before I sleep, when I wake up in the morning.
Without paper I will write on walls, on my skin, or dig into cement.
Without ink I will write with mud, my blood, or on the imaginary chalkboard.
If I lose my hands I will write with my toes in the sand.
Do you understand?
I am a writer. This is my first truth....

BARACK OBAMA WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Childish

How did I handle the situation the last time he started fucking one of my friends? If my memory serves me correctly, I didn't handle it at first, I just ignored it, acted as if I was okay with it and then....
Then the lying began to take its tole and then....BOOM!
The situation exploded into my friend and me fighting because of my jealousy and my fears.
Jealous that they were sharing the secret of lovers, afraid that I will be alone forever.

What gets me is that he thinks I'm stupid, which I find hilarious, he thinks I don't know his games and the way he operates but I know him better than he knows himself.

I talked to her because she really likes him but she can't discard the memory of a horrible track record with relationships. I told her to go for it because I sensed an attraction between them long before they did. He still doesn't know I know, he will tell me later if it doesn't work out and act like he was hiding something from me. What an Ass.

I'm afraid of the predatory nature of men. I learned recently of what's called "Courtly love." The basis of courtly love is that a woman's beauty triggers males desire which leads to a woman's eventual(if not immediate) acquiescence to his advances. I hate that shit, and I've been running from it my whole life. No means No Bitches! Not try even harder and in more annoying ways!

Anyways, last time I started acting childish. Angry for no reason. In a bad mode for no reason and I always focus it towards the girl friend. I guess my thinking is "Why can't she keep her legs closed?" He's never around for me to get angry at and if I did he would make me feel stupid and brush me off. I guess you can equate my feelings about this situation to the feeling of a young child watching their single parent getting married. I was once the focus of attention and now I'm on the back burner or I feel that I'm there. I feel this way because he stops talking to me like he used to and so does she. And when I'm around them it's like they are sharing a secret I will never know. I guess like that child I have to remember I am loved, but the animalistic side of our nature takes over sometimes and has to be satisfied.

Solutions: Stop placing my happiness on other people. Learn to be alone. Get a man lol(this should probably be labeled complicator), and stop being so damn childish.

The end of the world

So I'm afraid that this is the end of days. While trying feebly to explain this fear to a friend a few questions were raised to which I had no answer. The biggest one is "WHY?" Why am I so afraid of God bringing justice upon the world.

Truthfully.....

Truthfully I want time to sin then repent and sin again.
Truthfully I want time to grow old and raise a family.
Truthfully I like the world.
Truthfully I don't want people to be harshly punished.
Truthfully I don't think I'm ready.

I'm not ready for God to come back because what if he leaves me here to burn? I need to get right with God. I'm trading my chance at forever for a few moments of sin.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and it was good. All good things must come to an end.

The Rut

My friend Danger says that I am caught in a rut. I laugh a little thinking of all the times I heard my grandma say that, RUT, and seeing the image in my head of a pig flopping around in a muddy ditch that this word conjures for me, but, for some reason, I don't think that's what she meant.... So since I'm in one now I decided to look it up and finally get a Webster's definition for it. I laugh again. The definitions that I get back are perfect in so many ways.

Definition 1: "a settled and monotonous routine that is hard to escape."
Perfect. I've dug a ditch for myself in this world and I continue to wallow in my muck of a life. The walls are coated in fears and that's why it's hard for me to climb out. They're slipper those fears, and sharp at the same time.

I was depressed the other day about a guy (of course) and I grabbed a Smirnoff (yes, Bitch beer) and some food and watched some TV. Danger, came over and, as she explained later, this new me scared the shit out of her. We've only been for real friends for like the past six months (a really great story goes with this that I'll have to recount later), but we have a really weird connection and we can read each other like books. She read the depression and turned off the TV and made me talk about it. I'm usually the one doing this so I felt very uncomfortable. I told her how I liked a guy, he liked one of my sorority sisters, and this brought up a lot of issues for me about self-esteem that were worse than I thought. I was so exhausted after our conversation, but from it I've recognized that I'm in this rut of liking men that are unobtainable so I can use that as an excuse when they don't come pick me up on a white horse because they didn't read the lust in my mind.

Danger posed a very interesting solution to this situation which leads to....

Definition 2: "a period of sexual excitement"

Danger said that I should sleep with her ex-boyfriend...........................
I looked at this bitch like WTF?
My good girl kicked in and said no right away. This idea was weird and I didn't even know this guy.
But my bad girl kicked me in my ass and screamed in my head "DO IT BITCH!" I silenced her like always. To many doubts to count kept me from letting her speak. The good girl wins again...hymen intact.

I think of the feelings I have every Fall. Like clock work I become excited about finding a boyfriend, starting a new semester....by the end of September this rut ends and I'm unsatisfied because the rut from Definition 1 has me still without a man. Long story short I'm sexually frustrated. Extremely sexually frustrated. There has to be another way than this to get out of the rut but I want to do it. If I don't: I'm stuck in the rut. If I do: I'm a Jezebel. But I challenged myself not to think of it as whoring out for some guy, I want to see it as "taking care of myself."

I laugh thinking of every time my grandmother has told me, "You need to take care of yourself better." I wonder what she would think if she found out how the corrupt new connotations her words possess now.

Diva's don't sweat

So I try to keep my composer. I breathe deeply and try to take in things one at a time.
A true Diva does not sweat small mistakes that can be easily corrected, she corrects them and moves on to the next challenge. If I'm to be a Diva I must learn to do the same. I'll do better next time.

Do Diva's forgive?

I have someone that I need to forgive so that God will forgive me, but I don't know how. Well actually I know how, I just don't know how to make myself do it. This grudge I have should be called a vice because it's holding on so tightly to my heart.

Truthfully, I hate her because she had him. She possessed him in a way that is off limits to me. I need to move foreword with my life, he hates her now and that should be enough to satisfy my need for revenge. But the thought of her and him....ugh. I need to move foreword with my life, she was just a fuck buddy and her heart was broken. I am being stupid, but I will not apologize for having a heart. I am trying to possess someone who has no wish to be possessed, he has told me this - as a friend. I need to move foreword with my life and stop being a jealous bitch.

She had him in a way that I can never have him, but I have him in a way that she can only wish to have him. Ha! I've moved on.

Rule number one: Being a Diva has to start on the inside. Close your eyes and feel it. If you can’t quite picture it don’t fret. It takes time and patience. Practice every single day. I’ve found sitting at my computer, incense going and a glass of wine close by helps create the Diva mood.

Now, think to yourself. I am a writer, therefore I am a Diva. Tilt your nose ever so slightly, head high, shoulders straight. You might have to shake your shoulders to loosen up. Careful if you’re well endowed. I strained a shoulder doing this once. It really took away from my Diva moment.

Rule Number Two: Only after you’ve achieved inner Divahood can you move to the next step. Yes, the outer Diva. It’s so easy to make a faux pas so I caution you to be extremely careful.

The Visionary

You Are An ENTP

You are charming, outgoing, friendly. You make a good first impression. You possess good negotiating skills and can convince anyone of anything. Happy to be the center of attention, you love to tell stories and show off. You're very clever, but not disciplined enough to do well in structured environments. In love, you see everything as a grand adventure. You enjoy taking risks for love. And if things don't work out, you're usually not too much worse for the wear! You would make a great entrepreneur, marketing executive, or actor. At work, you need a lot of freedom to pursue your own path and vision. How you see yourself: Analytical, creative, and peaceful When other people don't get you, they see you as: Detached, wishy-washy, and superficial

What's Your Personality Type?

Memories: Keys to pain time has locked away.

My grandmother was telling me a memory she recounted to one of my aunts. The memory was of the time my cousins and I went into the projects without her permission [I remember the fear of disobedience] when we came back she was waiting with a switch. I was the first to get it because I decided to go a head to get it over with. And she remembered that. Why?

I had forgotten 'til then that our lives paralleled. But I'll never forget that she is my home. I live inside of her and I fear her death because then I will be homeless. I will be unloved. No one's love matters more to me than her's. Not even my mother's.

My grandmother admired me for taking my beating first. My cousin's on the other hand resisted what was rightfully their's. She remembered that particular moment to allude to the state of our lives now. I am in school while my cousins are having children and are running wild around town. I cannot explain it, but I understand what she was saying. I'm just surprised that she remembered. What else does she remember? I called her a bitch once, does she remember that. She said that she would remember that forever because it hurt her to her heart. Does she remember when I was little and asked her to come back from heaven and tell me what it was like? Does she remember how I use to take out all of my hurt and anger on her? I want to ask her all of these things but I am afraid of the pain that memories hold, that's why I have forgotten so much of what I use to be. It just hurts. Memories are keys to pain time has locked away. I never though of it that way, but it's true. Even now I fight to keep it down because I am remembering.

The Accident...

I was sleeping, but I thought I was awake. All of a sudden the car began to shake and when I opened my eyes I saw a black road quivering in front of me and Shameika trying to regain control. The swerves became more violent, the first thought that crossed my mind was "O Lord, she fail asleep, too!" and the second was "How is this going to end?"

During my conscious life I have never been in an accident. I fear them, I look at all of the little crosses set out on the sides of roads and pray that there won't have to be one for me. Last night there was a particular air of dread. It was like I knew it was coming, especially on the way home like when we passed the 18 wheeler and held our breathes until it passed, I prayed then for our safety. The accident was in everything: the strange fog, the deep darkness...but I fail asleep and I wasn't watching.

I had the iPod and Shameika wanted to change the song, but instead of waking me she tried to find it in the dark herself. She said she took her eyes off the road for too long and the moment I woke up was when she realized she had lost control. I held on to my life, if that makes any sense. I held on to something inside of me that seemed like it would fly away. When the back of the car hit the mail box it sounded like a gunshot and what I thought was dirt came over my shoulders and fell all over my neck and chest. And then we just stopped.

I could smell the burning rubber and in my delusional mind I thought the car was going to explode so I screamed "Shameika get out of the car!!" and I was out in half a second, Shameika said she forgot how to take off a seat belt. But outside of the car was scarier than the possible death by explosion on the inside- we were in the middle of the road with darkness all around us. Every f*&king scary movie that I had ever watched came back to me and I jumped back into the car. "Who should I call?" "Call 911" I said just so we could have some protection. That had to be the worst part of it all, the hopelessness. I had no idea how we were going to make it from that point, one of the back wheels came off so we were stuck, so I prayed. Gladly the people who lived right in front of where we stopped came out and helped until the wrecker came to take us home. But that hopelessness was so deep, that fear so great that I will have that moment forever marked in my mind. I never want to feel so stuck out again in my life.

What I thought was dirt was really glass. I'm still finding it in my hair and in my bra and even in my underwear. I saw it in my seat when I first jumped out of the car but my mind couldn't register what it was so I didn't try to figure it out. It wasn't until I went to get a jacket out of the back seat that I realized that the window was gone and that the dust on my chest was sharp.

Things I learned from this experience: I'm really irrational, I maybe a little psychic, I'm over dramatic, and like the guy who helped us said, "There are a lot of things you shoulda, could've done, but there's always something you can't undo."

Remembering...

Lately I've been diving deeper and deeper into my memories trying to find out what makes me tick. With my psychosis becoming more and more prominent with each passing year, I fear that I will loss myself if I don't learn how to remove myself from these continuing ruts. You know the ones: relationships, self esteem, sex.
So I dive....

I want to know why I am afraid of men. What in my past makes me go into a state of panic whenever one of them shows the slightest interest or when I feel like they are judging me in a sexual way.

I am not a lesbian. Trust me I've considered it, but that's just not what I'm in to. I long to be with a man. I want to be intimate with someone. I want to belong to someone. But I fall apart.

So I try to remember when it began. Was it seeing my older cousin's penis when I was little? His penis seemed like a monster. I had never seen one before, he was sleep and it was out. I imagined that it was in fact an octopus because it seemed like it had more than one head. It was so ugly. Later that day he would chase me, I screamed-afraid of the monster. And he laughed like an evil Disney character. I think that this is the root of my fear of men because it is the memory that I am drawn to the most.

So basically I am a little girl running scared of the penis monster. Truthfully, I have never had a boyfriend. I have recently discovered that I am ugly by choice. Hear me out first before you call the mental ward. I am pretty, but I don't want anyone else to see. So I hide myself under fat, bad clothes and hair. Self made ugly, it's so safe. No one wants to rape you when you're undesirable. I tried to explain this to a friend the other day and she laughed. She doesn't understand that this is the key to all my pain. I wanted to let her look into this darkness I live in, a place no one knows exists. This is the source of all my depression. Now in plain writing. I think it was just that I didn't have the words to explain that I don't want to be beautiful because it comes with so much danger.

My friend Crystal wants so badly for me to have a boyfriend. She thinks I'm lonely [I am lonely], but I don't know how to tell her what I've just told you. Lonely....lonely....it's strange to think that I'm lonely, but I am. I have no one to tell these things. I am lonely in a world filled with millions. Sigh, I am the little girl running from the penis monster.

I don't want to wish anymore, I don't want to dream because I've learned from experiences that I will never get those things. That dreaming, hoping, wishing, praying shit may work for other motherfuckers but not for me. I swear that whenever i want something, anything some crap happens to keep me from it. I wanted a car, thought I was gonna get it but I found out yesterday that it had to be destroyed after my aunt had it shipped from Hawaii. That was the straw that broke this bitches back. I had a little breakdown yesterday, a combination of lack of sleep, falling grades, and the stresses of sorority life , and the destruction of the car that was my freedom. Yes all this equals hysterically crying on the phone with my aunt while my friend tried to comfort me. It came out of no where. I don't cry because of a personal childhood philosophy. I thought I would never stop. Anyways, I had to go to a dinner after that which I didn't fucking want to go to and my sorors were wondering what was wrong with me, but I didn't want to be like YOU BITCH because it would have hurt her feelings and I hate that what I feel usually hurts others and that's why i just I don't understand. I'm tired. And I don't want to wish anymore, don't wanna dream, just fuck everyting.

Failure

I am a complete failure. A I need to hurry up and drop out of school before they kick me out cuz my grades are so bad that they need to be spanked type failure. I can't do anything right, and whet I think I can do right well that shit falls through. Just a God damn failure.