It's That Magical Time of Year!

I've been extra nostalgic lately and I think it's mostly due to my impending birthday. I'm not excited at all and that kind of makes me sad - I usually love my birthday but this year I just kinda don't care. I know part of it is what my birthday is near... Exactly one week after the birthday of my friend who was murdered. I just feel so old and unaccomplished (lol). I know that I'm not old for real for real but it really feels like time has slipped away from me. This past weekend was my high school's homecoming and a couple people older than me were going to the game and I was just like -- I seriously graduated over 3 years ago, I'm not trying to be around a bunch of 14-year-olds. But seriously, where has the time gone? I look at this picture of my best friend Jinnelle and I on our graduation day (June 10, 2005) and I think about how in a few years my little cousins Helena and Daisy will be graduating... Why do I feel like life is moving too fast?

Earlier today, my mom was on the phone with my Auntie Helen (Daisy and Helena's grandmother) and she told me that my little cousin Helena had made homecoming court and the strangest thing happened -- I started crying. I can't explain it but it was just too much for me at that moment. Helena is the first baby I have ever held. My cousin Mel was the first pregnant person I ever remember being around. Helena is my little baby, my little shadow and now she's a teenager and soon she'll be an adult and I'll be her uncool older cousin that she thinks is desperately holding on to youth!

I mean, it seems like just yesterday that I was a 14-year-old and on the phone with Jinnelle talking about how were pretty much over The Backstreet Boys. Maybe I just miss my family or maybe I'm just extra crazy. Anyone else have an irrational "DAMN I'M GETTING OLD!" moment???

Life Updates Part I

I have not really been inspired to write lately. Well, that's kind of a lie because I have AT LEAST 5 danishes that I started in draft mode. This week has not been a good one for me. In case you didn't know, I've been sick (for what feels like, FOREVER) and it's cutting into my lifestyle. I thought I was going to get this nice gubment job and get paid nice gubment money but, sadly, no soy fluida en español so the job will likely go to some inmigrante o boricua instead (bitter much? YES!). I guess it's back to my other job prospects. I've got man problems! (Don't we all?) I won't dig too deep into that though. In conjunction with my illness, I am currently suffering from nature's cruelty to women and heavily medicating myself to cope with the pain involved with it.
Worst of all, my favoritest cousin in the whole widest world has ovarian cancer. This is where the tears start to flow as I write this. I forget how long she's had it because she waited AT LEAST a year to tell people but I found out sometime in the fall of 2007. First they told her 12-18 months, now they say no more than 6 months. I stand paralyzed and frozen at the thought of a life without her... The distance between Louisiana and Maryland is already too far. She has a daughter... A six year old daughter who is smart and beautiful and amazing and does not deserve this. My cousin does not deserve this. I do not deserve this. Excuse my selfishness, but why me? Sometimes, I look on my life and I wonder if I am a curse? There's more involved in why I say that but I won't get into that -- Things reveal themselves in time anyway. I just wish... That it were me instead of her. I don't live in RACIST ASS Hammond, LA and I don't have a daughter and I wouldn't have hesitated to let them rip my ovaries out with the initial diagnosis! I would have said fuck it, I've been begging for a hysterectomy for years anyway! Sometimes I'm mad at her and I don't think that's the right way to feel but what is the right way to feel? I'm just so hurt. I'm so tired. I'm tired of nothing ever going right and nothing ever being okay. I thought to myself yesterday, this is how people become alcoholics and drug addicts because being numb is better than hurting all the time... But I snap out of it. I wish I were religious because maybe then I would think to pray. I just want her to have a chance. I can do this cancer thing again if the results are the same... If, just like my mom, she comes out okay. I know this is not certain, because nothing is ever certain in life... Just like the doctor cannot hand my 24 year old cousin a death sentence because he/she does not know. Nobody knows. She's switched doctors, maybe the tests results will all come back that her tumors are benign and they just need to remove them. Maybe... Maybe... This is all a bad dream.

I don't know why I just wrote all of that.


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Now playing: Armor For Sleep - Raindrops
via FoxyTunes

"Why are you the way you are?"

That's the subtitle of my friend Cara's danish. It made me start thinking about myself... About why I am the way I am. I think I will try to make a list now. Try to follow, I tend to ramble.

• "Jasmine is such a snob" -Selected Family Members
  
• "She think she better than everybody because she live in Baltimore." -Selected Family Members (And I don't fucking live in Baltimore)
• "This my cousin from Baltimore." -Cousins
• "Girl, you think you from Baltimore and you not. YOU FROM HAMMOND, LA." -Selected Family Members
  
• I was actually born in Hammond, LA. Not THAT GREAT of a place for black people.
• "Your chink eyes are ugly." -Selected Family Members
• My mom counted less than 20 black people in my 7th grade yearbook (me included) for all the grades (6,7,8).
• I stole my brother's Tupac and Nas CDs when I needed a break from Mariah Carey.
• The whole first 8 years of my life I was only technically allowed to listen to christian/gospel music and country music (with the exception of Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, and Whitney Houston). I cheated in secret, of course.
• Child-molestation.
• Alcoholism... Throughout both sides of my family.
• Being abused daily.
• Getting screamed at for bringing home a "B."
• Being the only black kid in at least one of my classes every year since 4th grade.
• Not realizing there were so many black kids in my graduating class until graduation... They just weren't in my classes.
• Not knowing what "nigger" meant until 6th grade.
• Hating my father until I was 18 for no real reason.
• My favorite book is The Giving Tree because it mirrors many things in the relationship between my mother and my brother.
• Accepting being called "oreo." (Black on the outside, white on the outside).
• Being called "white girl" as early as 4.
• Being forced into attending an all black school because my family thought I needed to learn how to be around black people.
• Being given a natural apprehension to trust any male by the time I was 3.
• Suicide attempts.
• Having my hair straight for the first time in 7th grade and having Kyle Bagbey pull on it because he didn't believe it wasn't a weave.
• Growing up in Crofton, Maryland.
• Giving into Go-Go music at 18.
• Falling in love with poetry at 4.
• Reading Shakepeare's classics in elementary school.
• Wishbone. :)
• Being a scorpio.
• My brother dying before I was born and the effect it had on my mother.
• My other brother dying in 8th grade and me not being able to remember his face.
• Having every hamster I've ever had die in less than a year (though I took good care of them) only to find out after the last one that hamsters just don't have long life spans. :(
• Being complimented on being so "articulate."
• Having good SAT scores that were not good enough for my mother.
• Sexual assault in adulthood.
• Witnessing women I love and respect being beat by men.
• Bad allergies.
• Thyroid conditions.
• Depression.
• Anxiety.
• Arundel Senior High School.
• Four Seasons Elementary.
• Woodmore Elementary.
• Crofton Middle.
• Arundel Middle.
• Clark Atlanta University.
• Woodland Park Elementary School.
• The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill.
• Eating chili and cheese out of a bowl.
• Bonne Belle chapstick.
• MTV rotting my brain.
• Disney channel.
• Nickelodeon.
• The Guiding Light.
• Never feeling quite loved enough.
• The handful of people in this world I think understand me.
• Leke.
• Derek.
• Jeff.
• Broken-hearts.
• Michelle.
• Jinnelle.
• Cara.
• Melody.
• My cousin Kelle.
• Jonathan William (both of them.)
• Hurricane Katrina.
• The internet.
• My grandmother Augustine.
• The rest of my family.
• Music!
• Books!

I could probably go on forever, (and I almost did) but I won't.


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Now playing: N*E*R*D - Maybe
via FoxyTunes