Food for thought

What are you afraid of?

/ StaceyRose / Leave a comment

When I was a kid, I had asthma. The kind of asthma that kept my school nurse’s itchy dialing finger pointed toward the phone in anticipation of having me carted out of the school via ambulance … again. I breathed thin and narrow. One wrong move. A twitch, an overly ambitious fit of laughter could send me into the throws of throat narrowing brochospasmodic suffocation. My childhood existence was racked with anxiety and the fear that my next asthma attack would be my last.

As I got older, my asthma got better, but my fear never strayed too far. Most of my young adult life through my early 30s, I lived my life based on fear and made all decisions accordingly. Change is indeed possible though, and growth is necessary if one is to survive a fear based existence. Much of my “healing” came through art and written expression. My Poeish existence did serve to enhance my imagination and to some degree has made me the theatre artist I am now. A fairly cool trade off I must say.

Tomorrow, if you are anywhere near my fair city (Charlotte, NC) you can check out the programing at The Mint Museum of Art as some of my favorite arts folk (John Hairston, Antoine Williams, and Quentin Talley) answer the question “What are you afraid of?” through visual and performance art. Enjoy! 🙂

Rosie.

(oh did I mention it’s FREE)

;

My red feet.

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When I was sixteen, I met and fell madly in love with the guy that I was 100% sure would be my husband. (Don’t all sixteen year-olds 🙂 ) He was my first real live relationship. He was my first consensual sexual encounter.  He was in prison by the time I was 18 and I was devastated. I clung to him and our “ideal” relationship for years, even keeping a pair of low top red Chucks he gave me in 1993 until 2010. It was this type of romanticism that would keep me engaged in some pretty shaky dealings in the relationship arena for the bulk of my adult life.

From the time he was sent away and sometimes now (I won’t front), I have chased that ideal “first time”; those butterflies we first feel when we fall in love … or lust. I’ve chased, at times, with great risk emotional and physical well being.  I have had – many – sexual partners. There, I’ve said it.  Let’s set aside all the emotional “shit” that happens.  I have sacrificed my physical well being on more occasions than I will cop too here by having unprotected sex;  too afraid that he wouldn’t want me if I asked him to put one on; too caught up in physical pleasure to have practical sense. It is truly by the grace of a power greater than me that I have emerged from these experiences with my health in tact.

HIV/AIDS is real, not to mention syphilis (which is rampant in my age group), gonorrhea, and chlamydia.  There is plenty of information about how to protect ourselves. There are plenty of products out there that allow us to protect ourselves, and have a lil additional fun to boot ;). So why do even the most educated and driven women, particularly black women, lose their power in the bedroom?  I’m not entirely sure, but we need to search ourselves for these reasons and find the resolve  to stop bullshitting with our lives.

It was these things and the beautiful women in my life who live big despite their HIV+ status that I thought about on the National Women and Girls AIDS Awareness Day. Hopefully they’ll make you think.

Grandiose shout out to Jameka S. Whitten who’s social media activism talk matches her activist walk. Click her name to read why she Rocks The Red Pump. Click here to find out how you can too, while supporting the cause of HIV/AIDS awareness. Sorry Jameka, I got bad ankles, I have to resign to low top red Chucks.

Rosie.

I discovered this gem of a documentary on Netflix.  It is no longer streaming unfortunately, but I highly recommend it.

All of Us.

T’was a necessary day.

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I’m not even sure what I want to write here, but here goes.   In recovery I’ve heard it said that we have good days and we have “necessary” days. Necessary days are days where the not-so-great things come up that challenge all that good shit you think you believe. Today was “necessary”.  I took a verbal battering from someone very near and dear to me simply because we disagree on something. Something that in the end is my business.  I listened to a barrage of insults, accusations, and ill premonitions while saying little or nothing. I was called a “monster”. I was told that I needed to pray and rely on God in the same breath.

The entire time I felt like I was physically being slashed to pieces. I couldn’t breathe. My mouth went dry, but I continued to listen and actually maintained my decorum. I casually began to pack up my things, all while continuing to listen. That was my mistake.  I continued to listen. I knew that what was being said about me was in no way true, but I continued to listen.  I took on this person’s shit.  It danced with every bit of self doubt, shame and  guilt I ever had.  It rented property in my head, and affected my mood all day.

By 4pm (this happened at 11am) I wanted a drink in a way in which I hadn’t in a very long time. Me drinking doesn’t equal going to a bar, having a cocktail and taking it to the house.  Me drinking means me finishing a fifth of whatever, asking where the party’s at, getting in my car to drive to it, and blacking out.  Even though I had no intention of going out and getting a drink, this is a dangerous head space for someone like me to be in, or anyone for that matter. There is nothing a drink or drug can do for anyone (much less an addict) to solve a problem or fix a feeling. After today, I know I believe that at my core and I’m grateful.

I did all the healthy things I could to take care of myself like: talking to folks, making a meeting, praying, cleaning my space,  taking a shower, and writing about it. It’s 9:19pm, and I’ve officially gotten through this very necessary day with the bonus of seeing where its lessons fit in my life. Going forward, I know I must work on certain things so as not to continue to have the same “necessary day”. The main thing is developing the ability to give people their shit back.  Yelling, accusations, insults, and ill premonitions are sure fire guarantees that somebody is trying to give you some shit that ain’t yours. Run like your life depends on it.  It just might.

Rosie.

Kick. Push.

/ StaceyRose / 1 Comment

over the last few weeks i’ve been bathing in disappointment in some form or another; quasi-unrequited love, abandonment issues, re-hashing of and working through extremely  difficult childhood experiences, and three grad school rejections. i feel like shit.  i wanna bust out windows. scream. yell. lay up in my bed with the heat set to  under blankets eating fudge stripes, popcorn, and white castles , watching valley of the dolls. ok so that  was my actual day yesterday. i’m not ashamed. i’d start breaking shit too if i didn’t already know what the inside of the city jail  looked like.

i’m gonna allow myself to fester, too. i’m gonna wail like mahalia. write angry letters i have no intention of sending to the admission offices of each rejecting institution and let them know how bad they done fucked themselves by not accepting me. i’m gonna screech bloody murder to the roof tops at those who chose to bastardize my childhood. i’m gonna throw celie shade on the romantic futures of every man that EVER trifled with my emotions. fuck each and every last one of y’all! and i’m going to do all these things for exactly 4 and 20 hours. anything beyond that, would be embracing misery.

As bad as I want to stay longer, I know I have a choice.  I have infinitely broad base of  people to  reach out to, things to do, and a life to live. I don’t have time to wallow in this. Wallowing never gets me anything but miserable, and most of the time even worse. So I’ll push through. Cycle through my “self-esteem” playlist for the thousandth time. Call my peeps. Cry. Laugh. Be. Then, before I know it, I’ll be sitting pretty on the other side with a brand new set of experiences to lend. All this begins AFTER 2pm tomorrow (exactly 4 and 20 hours after the camel’s back snapped.)

for now, i’m off to count imaginary slashed tires until i lapse into a prostrate coma.

Rosie.

Someone to watch over me.

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Yesterday I spent most of the beautiful 75 degree day in my bedroom tearing it apart in order to reorganize.  I do this mainly when I’m wrestling with emotions and I don’t want my mind to eat itself.   Fast forward to 11pm last night, not much but the destruction part had  been done as I’d left my house at 2pm intending to get food and ended up staying gone for the rest of the day. As I stood looking at the remnants of my space and thought about the monumental task of putting it all back together again, I began to cry.

This wasn’t a regular cry. This was one for the record books. Huge crocodile tears filled my eyes and plopped down to the floor. One of those Viola Davis Doubt*, streams of snot ran down my nose.  My body shook.  I even got those crying kid hiccups, you know the ones they always try to talk through but end up sounding like they have a severe stutter. I was deeply sad, and I let myself be there until I could figure out why. My eyes were  just at swelling, and my gullet jam packed with Mike and Ikes when it occurred to me that in that moment, I wanted someone to take care of me. I wanted a male somebody to come in and make this shit right. I then did the other thing I do when faced with an internal crisis (I mean beside glutting myself with dime store candy), I wrote.

My writing put me in touch with something I didn’t know was there.  I’m tired of being the strong, smart, independent one.  The one that puts things together, or figures things out. Compound that with me not being one of these dainty little women that men tend to want to take care of and on most days I feel like a female Grizzly Adams.  I didn’t have a father, while I love my brothers dearly they are fairly useless in the area of handy-mandom, my romantic relationship … what romantic relationship? Anyway, the bottom line is that the times in my life when I felt protected and cared for by a man were few and far between.

So I stewed for a bit, swallowed the sticky wad of Mike and Ikes and tried to “activate my faith” (phrases like that tickle me ^_^).  I thought about times that I had been loved and supported specifically by men, in ways that were non-sexual. What I discovered is while those times are scattered, they are there. I have been loved and wonderfully cared for by men in my romantic relationships (even the sucky ones) – in my family (my Grand Pa always came through with a happy meal when I needed it most and my brothers  effectively kept me dateless through my teens for my own safety.) –and in my male friendships (these are men who have “dated” me, danced and laughed with me, given me emotional and financial support without  any expectations).

The more I wrote and thought and cried and chewed, the more I realized how skewed my perspective is. There is nothing I can do about my past life experience. Nothing. So there is no need to let it make my current existence  miserable. My history with men is just that, HISTORY.  I can make new choices, shift my perspective,  find new mistakes to make and  new lessons to learn. I can only do these things if I choose not to fall back into old patterns, which is what I was avoiding by destroying my bedroom in the first place. See. Full circle. Don’t you love how life works? I know I do.

Rosie.

*the magic happens at 1:11.

Of Duty.

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After hearing of the recent death of reporter Marie Colvin, the extent of who’s noble work I’d only heard of upon her death, I became overwhelmed with a sense of duty to carry out whatever I have been placed here to do.  At the foundation I believe it to be writing. I may find it’s something else later, but I’ll focus my intention and let life take care of the rest.  The truth (at least in my mind) is that all people are instilled with a particular “duty”; that certain something that they are put here to do in only the way they are meant to do it. That thing may be just to live  simply and well; a calling that sometimes I wish I had.

Being a woman of duty can be particularly sticky. For me that stickiness presents its self in the conflicting need to be engaged in the romance of a life-time while at the same time saving the world with my pen. Blame it on the excessive number of Hollywood Golden Age films I watched as a kid, my sometimes diminished self worth, but no matter the source I wish like hell it would go away. I get stuck in these hopeless “relationship” cycles with essentially the same guy in different skin. Never asking for what I really want or need afraid that he’ll “go away”.  In the end, he always does. That’s when I look up and months or even years have passed, and my life is a mess. Never mind any overall duty, the BASICS aren’t even done.

A dear, and I dare to say clairvoyant friend of mine sent me this note of inspiration that arrived as most inspiring things in my life do – just when I needed it.

“It’s not a matter of whether or not you have enough time. It is more a matter of timing. That anxious feeling you have may cause you to want to rush or force the process. Please don’t. You are so deeply and richly gifted that we cannot afford to have any part of what you are diluted.

Keep your vision as sharp as possible. Resist the urge to return to any vice that clouds your judgement and KNOW this like you know your own name: YOU WILL COMPLETE YOUR DESTINY. Remember, timing is more important than time.”

Oh, how I love you dear Stacey. I love your candor and your energy and that you fight tooth and nail for humanity. That’s who you are. You bring the future here by not letting the rest of us forget the past, all while living in the present. Not an easy assignment my Dear. However, you are not among the faint of heart. You are equipped for your calling.

I was amazed and honored by what she shared with me. They are things that I instinctively know but often forget. I forget that it’s not all about me and my desires. It’s how to serve others by being the best person  I can using the abilities and talents I was given. Corny, but true. I strive believe that my needs and some of my wants will get met, if only I do the next right thing for the right reasons.

Living a principled and meaningful life isn’t easy. I have and  will again stumble, but I will never fail to keep trying because the world is relying on me ;).

Rosie.

Related articles

The “Wrong Side” of 30

/ StaceyRose / Leave a comment

I am 36 years old today. I will not now nor ever be one of those people who run from my age.  I earned every damn second of this life I have. I won’t discredit it by monkeying with the numbers.  Notice I did not say that I wouldn’t have my yearly ceremonial breakdown.  It usually has something to do with not being betrothed and knowing that the possibility of another child is ebbing out to sea. Who am I kidding? Do I really want another kid? (See: all posts labeled The Zion Chronicles) Am I really ready for a committed relationship? (See: Living like a wife, Loving like a mistress)

My requisite breakdown is probably based on that universal sense that we should have done abc by xyz, and is based in nothing relevant to my actual life situation.  My life is pretty awesome.  I have a lot to be grateful for, and have lived through things that have killed countless others. It’s those things I focus on when in I’m in the bowels of despair leaning into my friend’s bosoms and adding the salt of my tears to the fried pickles on the table. As to being on the “wrong side” of any age, the only wrong side is the side that equates to me not being alive. As long as I have another day, I have another day to craft the tale.

Here’s to the next 365! Forty, I’m coming for you bitch, and it won’t be pretty!

Rosie.

And remember kiddies … Always stay young at heart!

Living like a wife, Loving like a mistress

/ StaceyRose / 1 Comment

Upon rising from my daily routine of prayer, meditation, and letting the screeching cat through my closed bedroom door, I was hit by a lightening bolt of insight. I have been living my life with the beauty, humility, and grace of a woman any man would be lucky to be coupled with but loving as if I only deserved to be a mistress.  Taking the miniscule bits of affection I could get, swallowing every compliment, kiss, phone call, and  text message as an unholy communion. Ignoring grave inadequacies of the relationship for fear I would lose the scraps I was getting, even when I was married. I have been living like a wife, but loving like a mistress.

First off let me say that I don’t view marriage as the ultimate yard stick by which one can measure the degree of soundness of a romantic relationship. See: The Real Housewives of (insert city here). I do believe in marriage as a symbol of commitment to a life with someone else based in non-material reciprocity.  Marriage, for me, stripped of all it’s culturally conceived glitz is simply saying ‘I do’ vow to go through all of life’s bullshit with you. To try not to hate you when you get on my damn nerves, and to while doing all this, love you for exactly who you are, as is. A simple but tall order. One that I have at one end or the other struggled with for most of my life.

I have given an over abundance of myself to people who either couldn’t or wouldn’t reciprocate. I have given with self centered expectation and been hurt when I didn’t receive the expected results. The relationship ground on which I walk on is pretty shaky but better than it used to be because I am now aware. Once I became aware, I couldn’t not become unaware which makes it that much harder to practice the behaviors I used to.

Love in abundance is coming. I don’t have to fight for it. Scrap, beg or borrow. I just have to be patient and honor the lessons I’ve already learned.

❤ Rosie

The Show Must Go On … or not.

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This is the first time since 2007 that I do not find myself in the throws of a production during my son’s and my birthdays (February 10 and 15 respectively). It feels wrong, and it’s not like I’m here of my own doing, so I also feel as if I’ve been robbed. I realize this sounds a little selfish/self centered, but it’s the way I feel right now.

Life happened and one of my actors opted out of a show that we’d all been working on since October, the Thursday before it was due to open. I have journeyed through an array of pleasant feelings including but not limited to: shock, rage, hurt, disgust, anger, disillusion, sadness, and lonelines. Each phone call, email, or question about the show  flings me back into a bottomless pit of despair (ain’t I the drama Queen 😉 ). I’m realizing somewhere between setting my script on fire (okay I didn’t but I wanted to) and a phone call about a pile of abandoned sand remaining from our premature strike (damn high concepts!), that I was grieving.

It sucks.  It sucks to have something that you work so hard on just NOT happen. It seems to be a pattern in my life right now as another project I’ve worked on now looks like it may or may not happen.  I’m waiting on grad school responses.  My son and I are fighting for his education. I’m at a stalemate in my romantic life.  Nothing feels certain, and I’d better get used to it, because nothing is certain.

“Life turns on a dime.” “The only thing that is certain is that everything changes.” Slogans I’ve either heard or read along the way that don’t leave me with the warm and fuzzies, but which truths can’t be denied. My discomfort is from my non-acceptance of the cards that are dealt. What has helped is focusing on what’s in front of me like waking up, brushing my teeth, bathing, eating a meal. Every now and then a flash of light or a moment of clarity provides me with things to have gratitude for, like the process.  The work I’ve done on each of my failed/in limbo projects have helped broaden my perspective and grow me as a human being. Then the gratitude ebbs and I’m left with my feelings, except now the likelihood of me picking up that lighter is just a little lower.

I hope this makes sense.  I hope this helps someone.

Rosie.

Precious be still.

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My dearest companion Eric is a never ending well of comedic insight. His latest moment of round about Zen goes as follows:

He and I had been toiling away for most of the day in front of computer screens, eyes melting, caffeine fueling our every keystroke. We’d wrapped for the day.  He dropped me off at a meeting and went to pick my son up from class and drop him home. (He is a loving and considerate thing I tell you.) Anyways, by the time Eric picks up my son and drops him home, he is ready to “eat his fist”.  Eric is currently watching what he eats for health reasons, so naturally he chooses to go to Captain D’s, like any health conscious person in the world would.

To his credit, he decides on the baked fish and rice meal. Sensible. Down right healthy. The she chimes in:

She is his inner Precious. The living breathing manifestation of his insatiable hunger. (Which I like to picture sitting in the passenger seat right beside him.) Inner Precious (IP) alerts him to the the fact that the baked fish and rice meal was indeed not enough and that he’d better damn well re-up on a south style fish sandwich, it was only 99¢ anyway. He fought with IP a little and eventually caved. He ordered the greasy delectable, drove to the window, payed for his food drove about 500ft then stopped. IP suggested that he check the bag. Sure enough, no greasy delectable. The drive thru was completely barren and he could have easily gone around again, picked up his sandwich and drove off, but IP decided that this problem needed a personal touch. She sent him inside.

After some mild aggression, and an apology (I’m taking dramatic license here based on how I think the interaction went), Eric got his sandwich, got in the car and drove off.  IP decided that it would be a good idea to eat the sandwich on the way home. He stood his ground, and the southern friend fishy snack remained in the bag. (It is here that I like to picture him slapping IP on her chubby chocolate hand as she makes repeated attempts to free the sandwich from it’s wax wrap binding).

The two make it home, and Eric decides to take one last stand against old IP.  He eats his baked fish and rice. He’s sated, and comfortable when:

*****DRAMATIZATION******

He says his inner precious leans in and says to him, “You know you want that damn sammich”.  Her bearesque aggression renders him useless. He proceeds to devour the artery clogging masterpiece in a few short bites. His stomach is heaving. His head is pounding and IP is staring at him …

… basking in the after glow of her conquest.

The take home lesson or what I saw to be useful from his experience, at least for me, is that we have to name our demons. That way we know what we’re up against thereby making it easier for us to see them coming. The next step is to embrace them. The old adage “you get more bees with honey than vinegar” applies. It takes so much more effort when I combat my demons as if at war, than when I embrace my IP’s fat ass and tell her lovingly “No bitch, we don’t need a sweet potato pie with that salad.”

Rosie.