Your Body is Your Temple ( Said in my Black Mother Voice)

July 17, 2012 by 4 Comments

So we have all been there- sitting at the kitchen table and talking to your mom or aunt about life, love, and sex.  I remember my talk. I come from a deeply rooted southern black family with the southern tradition mentality.  The older females in the room just looked at me and said “Baby, your body is your temple.” It is obvious that the strong women in my life were talking about the infamous act of sex before marriage which can lead to the even more infamous act of pregnancy before marriage or the modern day STD scare.  In the past 10 months of my singlehood, I have spent a considerable amount of time talking with different men, getting to know them, and ignoring phone calls after I decided to let them go.  It has not been until recently, in which I realized that there is more to the “Body Is Your Temple” idea.  Yes, my body is a temple.  But what about my mind, my emotions, my deep inner thoughts?

Just think about it.  We can’t hide from sex.  We live in a sex-centric society.  We are fascinated by it and terrified of it at the same time.  But even though every character in a movie has sex by the third date does not mean that everyday people are opening their legs to every Tom, Dick, and Harry.  Still, if you are not trying to engage in sexual fantasies with someone, you are still giving up your thoughts and your feelings on the first date before you give up the goods.  By the end of the first date, he usually knows where you come from, what your parents do, how many siblings you have, your college degree, and what you want to do for a future career.  Granted he doesn’t know all of you, but he knows enough to stalk you on the internet or call his friend and find out if you have any mutual friends (if he desired).

When I first became single, I was on a mission meet as many people as possible and work on my dating skills.  I was the girl, who went on numerous dates with various men only to have the same “Tell Me About Yourself” conversation during each meal. And honestly I am burnt out.  I am tired of the meaningless conversation that develops into ignored phone calls and missed text messages.  My mom always told me that my body is a temple, but I find myself giving away my mind and my soul before even thinking about what is between my legs.  So what do you do? You have to get to know people in order to find someone to be with for more than a couple of months. But I refuse to give myself to random people.  Not everyone needs to know what I want to accomplish in 10 years.  Random people do not have the privilege to know my inner secrets and wishes.  Every guy that asks for my number does not need to receive it.  It’s more than just standards and expectations.  I have decided that we need to protect ourselves from our own openness.

I am very excited about this new guy that I met.  We have our official first date in a couple of days.  We have a lot in common (as far as I know).  I am excited for him to get to know me. I want him to want to know more, to yearn to know more. And when he asks for more of my mind, I can be in a position to decide whether I will give more.  So maybe my mom was right.  At the end of the day, men will always be the same.  They love mystery.  They come back because they yearn to know more.  Your mind is not a temple, it is a dynasty, full of layers and levels and dynamics that only you can completely understand and comprehend.  You need to decide who gets access into those levels. Your mind, your thoughts, your wishes, and your dreams are beautiful and a blessing from a higher power. Cherish them and only give them to people that you feel will respect them.

Your body is also a temple. But Lord knows, that is a separate conversation for a separate time and place.

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Shrinks and Matrimony

May 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I remember when I walked into my first therapy session and met my insurance sponsored therapist named Jada.  She was interesting to say the least.  I remember asking my insurance company to set me up with a female, preferably African American so she could understand my background, how I look at the world, and how the world looks at me. When I finally met Jada I found her to be utterly candid with  long ginger hair and a lanky body; I knew that our journey together as patient and doctor would be somewhat entertaining.

The first session ran over by an hour because Jada just wasn’t ready for the things that came out of my mouth.  I think Jada thought that she was going to lead the conversation until I interrupted her “Get To Know You Speech” and told herhow our meetings would be structure.  Jada needed to understand me before helping me.  She needed to realize that I am not like the other people that come to visit every week and there was nothing in her Ivy-League Ph.D textbooks that could explain the complexities of a minority female in America.  She would have to get educated before even trying to educate me.  However, once the groundwork was laid, we got into my real problem:  The married man that I had been seeing for the past 2 weeks.Yes, I was dating a married man and didn’t even know it until one night at dinner when his wedding ring accidentally fell out of his suit pocket.  We met at a retro coffee shop near my apartment.  It was a Sunday early afternoon and I had a date with a cinnamon latte and a stack of Vogue and Essence Magazines when he walked in the shop with his sweaty Navy Academy Alum sweatshirt and basketball shorts.  Even though I noticed him from my corner table, I just smiled and went back to my magazines.  About 10 minutes later, Sweaty Navy Academy dude was awkwardly standing next to my magazines trying to ask me about my Stanford t-shirt.  Within 15 minutes, his body had replaced the 5 Vogue magazines on the other chair and within an hour we had made plans to get drinks the next day.

We had planned to meet at one of the best Happy Hour locations in the Bay Area.  He was on time, he opened the restaurant door, and he complimented me on my shoes.  2 drinks and one shared appetizer later I found out that Navy Academy alum was a 2002 graduate with an MD and he worked as a doctor on a nearby Navy Base. After I got home, we spent the whole night on the phone talking about everything. By day 10, I was telling all my friends about my possible future husband.  On day 12, we were dining at a restaurant in the area when a sparkly gold ring band slipped out of his pocket and next to my new heels.  As I picked it up, I noticed the romantic inscription inside the band that read “The day you changed me. I will always love you.”  I left the restaurant and tried to never look back.  For a couple of days, I received the We have something special. I plan on leaving her at the right time type of messages but I just didn’t respond.  The idea that I could click with someone on so many levels who is married with a child made me seek to talk to someone about my dating life.  Why was I attracting these crazy people? Was there something that I was doing wrong?

By our third session, Jada and I connected around this concept of dating people who aren’t married.  Though she and I are very different, she agreed that finding out that you are the other women does take something out of you.  I left our 3rd session knowing that it would be our last.  While it was fun educating Jada about the intricacies of African American culture and the complexities of my personal brain, I also realized that there was nothing Jada could do to make me feel better about accidentally being the “other woman”.  So I called some girlfriends, met them at a Chinese restaurant and let them help me get over my “other women” status with steamed pork buns, fried rice, and some orange chicken.

I have decided to put this dating disaster behind me because there was nothing I could do to change the situation. The good news is that my friends and I always have fun telling others about my alleged “other women” attempt.  The better news is that, it was just that: a short lived fiasco.

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I Used to Love Him

April 17, 2012 by 2 Comments

The thing about finding the right timing for a partner is that you have to be in the right timing yourself. For me, that means shedding all of the emotions from my tumultuous 2 year relationship with my college boyfriend. It was one of those roller-coaster relationships where everything was either perfectly peachy or horribly wrong.

I remember when we broke up. He told me “I need you, but I don’t want you.” I remember the five sleepless nights where I replayed that scene and that quote in my head over and over again, believing that I was the reason why the supposed love of my life no longer wanted me.

I remember two good friends staying with me during the weekend and staying up all night as we watched re-runs of Sex and the City and ate gummy bears until we almost exploded. In between each episode we deconstructed my relationship. We discussed what I did wrong, what he did wrong, and more importantly, why I stayed during all of the negativity. I never had a rational answer. My friends never understood why I pretended to forgive him when he didn’t come to my college graduation. I never understood why he pretended to forgive me when I held him so close that he found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place.

See, the thing about break ups is that they are nothing like the tabloids. There is no million-dollar payout from some random magazine that wants the secrets to your ex. There is no television show special that you attend in order to dispel the dating rumors between you and your alleged rebound. It is just plain loneliness. There are moments of “I am better off without him,” and moments of “What did I do to influence this?” There is this continued emotion that rocks your body to the core, but at the same time uplifts you from the shackles of the day to day disconnect between you and him. The media portrays heartache as this two day flu that is remedied by some good friends, cheap chocolate, and horrible television. After you finish your prescription drugs from Dr. Cupid, some beautiful man bumps into you at Wal-Mart and the whole process starts all over again. But that is not the real world.

I used to love him. I used to love the way he said “I love you”. I used to love the way he would bring me my favorite soup from the university coffee shop. I used to love the way he would surprise me with my favorite flower after a long week of finals. I used to love our addiction to each other. It takes more than a hug and a pat on the back for the pieces of my emotions to shape back together. I am getting over it, slowly but surely. I am finding my way throughout the world as a one person team, instead a double. But now, I am more in love with the idea of loving myself without him. I am learning more and more that in order to be the best partner for my future partner, I need to love myself first. I need love myself hard. I need to love myself to the core.

With this new found single freedom, I am realizing that it is ok to be happy, confident, sexy, sassy, without being in a relationship. It is perfectly fine to be content with singlehood. And it is perfectly fine to fall in love again with Mr. Right Timing at the right time. Until then, I will continue to find the joy and the love for me inside the multiple deep layers of my own emotions.

We had a phone conversation about a month ago. My last line: “I wanted you and now I no longer need you.”

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For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Giving Up When the Statistic Is Not Enuff.

March 22, 2012 by 2 Comments

Let’s face it. That princess fantasy of finding your prince charming in the university library or locking eyes in the middle of a college lecture is not the norm for all of us. It is true that some have found true love matches in this manner, but for me, that was not the case. I spent my high school career trying to find myself through my high school transcript and a plethora of after-school activities. Even though I had the urge to date, I didn’t find anyone that I could connect with on a deeper level or someone who was willing to be questioned by dad and his supposed shotgun that he stored in his imaginary closet known as “overprotective”.

So when it was time to attend college, I only dreamed of a place where there would be intelligent men at my disposal. At the tender age of 18, I decided that I was going to find my future husband at some 4 year institution. Between history papers, math finals, and hanging out with friends, my prince charming and I would fall madly in love and name our future children. Little did I know that the minds of college 20-somethings don’t usually have the capacity to think past “I just need to graduate” and “thank God my parents are not around”.

Fast forward 4 years. I graduated, got the good job, started the perfect new lifestyle with an income of my own disposal and I am single. I went on multiple dates in college, had a couple of long term relationships, but nothing stuck. Some of them were my fault, some of the were his fault. But the point is that I walked across my graduation stage with a dual degree and no promise to a Tiffany sparkler. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a wake-up call for a young professional workaholic like myself. Despite the media’s portrayal of us black college educated females as desperate and forever single, I am not desperate. We are not desperate. As a matter of fact, I am very comfortable being single. Just because the media portrays me as this depressed workaholic who has everything but the man by her side, does not mean that I perform this behavior. Being single is uplifting. It is an amazing experience that lets you find yourself. Being single is freedom. It gives you the freedom to be who you are and to figure out what you want to be become.

But I would be lying if I said that I do not think about the possibility of my Mr. Right frequently. I have a college degree, an awesome first job, a massive collection of contacts on LinkedIn. I have put myself in a position to succeed in the working world. The bills are paid and once in a while me and Nordstrom.com rekindle our relationship via my credit card. But this whole love life thing is something that I haven’t seemed to get a tight grasp. It is windy, it is confusing, and it is full of ups, downs, and circles. I have been on multiple dates since my start of singlehood, most of them ending in very strict good byes. From the students, to the working ones, to the “saving money by living at home”, I have met them all, talked to most, date a handful, and selected a few as friends. And what I have realized is that maybe Mr. Right is does not exist because Mr. Right is the wrong man for me. Ladies, what we are looking for is Mr. Right Timing. You know, the person who has had his ups and his downs. The person who has figured out their goals, their dreams, their flaws, and their strengths.

So this is my new prophecy! To all my single working girls who are looking to find themselves and a Mr. Right Timing: We will not give up.Our partners are out there, somewhere. Just because he didn’t pop the question before we moved to this new chapter of our lives does not mean that we won’t find someone for a moment or for a lifetime. But before we are ready to be united with this “perfect partner” we need to take the time to look at ourselves.

Call in the big guns, call in the militia because this is about to be a wild ride full of fun, confusion, fabulousity, and just overall entertainment. To All my Single Gals: Stay Tuned for the truth- Balancing the career dreams and the dating dreams with style, grace, and a couple of good laughs.

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