Stranger: You know I can take you out on a date.
Me: No thanks. I'm happily single.
Stranger: Don't live to regret this!
Me: My last regret was 5 ft 9, do you want me to add you to the list.
Stranger: No maam!
Jogger's Knee
Tensions run high in my house, other than the fact that all four females menstruation cycles are synchronised around the same time, we are very opinionated individuals who require a lot of space.
You need space, the oestrogen level in my house is too much, and there's enough heat to pop any popcorn seed when having a 'discussion', even when discussing medical remedies for one with jogger's knee.
I sit for many hours of the day, working on something...it could be a project, a blog, artwork...everything my mother consider's a hobby and what I refer to as 'self-employment. I have a knee injury in which I am very sure I incurred ever since I decided to jog, as you do when you are less mobile and you start to freak out over weight gain. From previous posts, you will realise I am terrible at jogging, believe it or not you can jog wrongly and I am one of those hopeless joggers. I don't have a trainer so I've resulted in avoiding it all together. So here I am resting my leg and yet I know the muscles in my knee are still inflamed, I've gone to the doctors and I'm told rest and rest some more and hey there are some drugs you can take to help you with the pain.
I personally avoid drugs because I know the food I eat which I have no control over as I am self-employed is poison anyway, if not poison, the combinations and lack of variety can send you to an early grave. Why would I add some more? And that description led to an argument. The old and new collide. Wisdom from an elder is essential in life but sometimes you just have to except, the individuals you live with are stuck in their own ways and whatever new knowledge you have gained doesn't make you an expert, knowledgeable or enlightened, you're just another reading sibling and guess what everyone else reads too.
Daugther of a Migrant
I cannot stress how important it is to instil self confidence into a child, no matter where you are from, what colour you are or faith system you participate in. I am also sick and tired of people telling me to 'move on' or to 'get over' my childhood traumas. Certain problems need to be discussed, that may be the only way I can heal those wounds. I do not know how many times it will take for me to have a good 'ol conversation with my girlfriends...cry myself to sleep or simply be angry at the world before I move on and get over it already!
I also do not want to be ill advised and asked to 'pray' away my problems...avoid being the angry black woman. I get angry sometimes, not because I am black, not because I am not 'lady-like'. Fortunately I do not represent the black community, everyone has different experiences, I happened to have a terrible childhood. People are intelligent enough to know that I am simply a person....that happens to have feelings and it is perfectly normal.
Yes, I get passionate, my voice increases in volume and in pitch when I am discussing a topic close to my heart. One of those topics is the terrible schooling system that I was subjected to, from nursery to secondary school. Traumatised, self-hating, low self-esteemed girls in pubescent stages of their lives , all slammed into one building with equally menopausal crazy mortgage-paying teachers.
That's an entire five years of your life...pretty much defending yourself, physically and emotionally just because you want to learn. I have been upset at my mother for a very long time...trying to get her to understand the difference between raised in a black bubble and waking up to a white-mare. It is difficult. I am beginning to believe I wasn't made for England, I wasn't made for this cold climate and mentally it is driving me crazy. I am constantly deficient of vitamin D and I have never experienced the sun from an African climate.
If I hear one more African, telling me how difficult it would be if I returned to my country of origin, I might just kill a person. Did my parents not live there, Are my relatives not surviving? Did my parents not survive over here? What is so terrible about a country you live in?! It is good enough for you, so why is it not good enough for me?!
Can you believe, I am stuck in the West and I want to get out...whilst people are drowning in the process of getting to the land of 'opportunity'. It is no more the land of opportunity folks. We all want to leave! I want to leave, I'd happily trade places. I have no idea how I'd adapt but I'd like to be given the option.
I had to listen to myself, recall a horrifying story whilst my friends were over this weekend. I remember lying to a teacher in school, how I'd flown to Nigeria in the Summer, rode on an elephant and swam in the 'brown' ocean. As imaginative, a child can be, this is sad one. It is a sad story of a young child playing with stereotypes she has been fed by the media, a white world, a white-mare. This teacher was definitely white and of course loved telling the low-income kids he taught in a school in Jamaica and even attempted an accent. Whilst me, unprivileged child, had to dream and make up stories of a country I have yet to step foot in, the country that my parents came from. I remember that day like yesterday. My father was told the story, normally my over-zealous Christian father would have warned me of the perils of hell fire and lying. Not this time! How shameful. Your child has to make up stories from what she has seen on TV about her heritage.
Self image is important. If you accept yourself, your esteem is built, giving you the confidence required to overcome obstacles you will be faced with in life. Black girls are not beautiful in the UK. That is what we are taught. It is changing, but it would change much quickly, if our meek Christian peace making mothers would teach us about the world we live in and the world we are from.
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