Month: May 2020

Leave a comment Posted on dating, love, real talk

Love is….

Probably one of the most difficult blanks to fill in because this topic is so varied and can be very broad or as specific as one wishes to make it. For this post I think I will attack it from three different angles. One, love is beautiful. Two, love is complicated. Three, love is disappointing. While there are definitely more words and sentences you could use for this example, I am choosing to use these three as I think they are probably the most common and the most open to discuss. Maybe after reading this you will have some thoughts of your own. So lets dive in.

One.. Love is beautiful. Make no mistake about it, there is nothing greater, in my opinion, than being in-love with someone who is in-love with you. It is one of the most beautiful things that you can have. Someone whose heart is beating just as strongly for you as yours is for them. Someone who thinks of you like you think of them. Someone who looks at you with the softness and passion that you look at them. It defies a lot of the negatives that can exist in the world and it can make even the most challenging of days seem tolerable. The beauty of love can make anything solvable because you know that someone is giving you what you desire. Companionship, love, intimacy and all the things in-between. Love like that is intoxicating, it can make you feel like you’re high without ever touching a blunt to your lips or a glass to your mouth. It makes you have butterflies sometimes when you see that special someone and it can make you feel real good about yourself. This kind of love is transcending, it allows for you to get past most any challenge set in front of you. It can take you to a place where nothing matters to you but you and the bond that you have built with that individual. Tell me if you have ever experienced a love like this.

Second, love is complicated. When you have the beautiful parts of love, sometimes you also have the challenges and the stresses of love. It can be and usually is a process to love someone. It’s not something that typically comes right away and even if you are in-love with someone, it’s likely that you’ve had some patches along the way to test and strengthen that love. It also has helped to build and grow you together with that someone. Sometimes it takes the challenges and the not so fun things for the love to truly grow and expand. Usually what’s happening is both people are staking their ground, drawing their boundaries, expressing their displeasures, as a means to grow together and figure out what are the triggers and displeasures of one another. It doesn’t mean that it’s anything bad happening, but it means that there is work to be done. And with all things, a relationship shouldn’t feel like a job or work, but for it to be the best that it can, it takes effort from both people to be as successful as possible. Learning to understand the difference between work and effort is key in having a relationship with that beautiful love. Also, sometimes a person may get weird or act out of character, it’s important to understand the root of that or at least have a full understanding of what to expect from someone in that situation.

The more in-depth and complex an issue is, the more complicated it can make the love that you share with someone. Because these complex situations require delicate and decisive actions in order to resolve them and grow from them. The worst thing that you can do when confronted with a situation like this is be timid or unsure. You also need to exercise a degree of patience. That is one thing that complicates love. Patience is something most people don’t have or are very reluctant to give because it requires them to give your time and yourself to the process of growing in love with someone. And time is one thing that we can never rebuild, grow or get back again. Once the clock changes from minute to minute, hour to hour it is lost forever, never to be repeated. It is for that reason that I believe many people are now hesitant to invest the time and energy necessary for a successful and beautiful love, because they fear their time being wasted and their energy being used for nothing. If you agree or disagree with this particular premise let me know.

Third, love is disappointing. Perhaps the most controversial and opinionated part of the this post. Love can be definitely one of the most disappointing things that happens in your life. It can break your heart. It can destroy your life, leave you fucked up, to pick up your own pieces, figure out what went wrong and try to figure out how to put yourself back together again without being too cold or bitter or black hearted about the situation. When you experience one or multiple of these disappointments, they tend to mark you. Leaving you trapped mentally in time to when the scar happened. Forcing you at some point to deal with the pain and damage. Otherwise, you will subject yourself to endless repetition with different people, until you address the situation that caused you to get stuck on pause. When you love someone with all of you and get your heart broken it can and usually will, change you forever. You aren’t the same because a piece of you is lost with that heartache, but it also gives you an opportunity to learn, rebuild yourself and become a better version of you. it can also create the space for a lot of bitterness or hardness towards people.

Love is also disappointing because you may not get the same amount of love back that you put out. Nothing is more hurtful that you showing and giving all your love to someone you think loves you, only for them to return your love half hearted or some percentage less than the 100 that you’re giving. That usually indicates to some that you aren’t being fairly treated in that relationship and you may need to get out for your own good, which is painful in that regard as well. Or maybe you’re loving someone one way and they don’t share that same love for you. It too can have an effect on you. No one will know how that will play out until or unless you come across that situation. While there are so many more situations that fit into this category, I think for now this is where I will leave you. Give me your feedback and I will pick this series back up down the line.

Leave a comment Posted on dating, real talk

Heart to Heart

Exactly as this title suggests this post will deal with matters of the heart. Why some seem to try to hide and others are willing to allow the emotions and feelings to freely flow, and what that does to people attempting to form the bond that builds towards forever. I think it’s worth sitting and attempting to understand why some people show too little concern for the time and moment that their given and why others seem to either over prioritize it or value it with a great degree of specialty. To understand that dynamic, I think, will allow for people to realize that when you take too much time worrying about protecting yourself and too much time buried in a phone, you lose the valuable time given that you will not be able to get back.

First let’s get real about the person who seems to be unwilling to really let themselves get caught up in the moment with someone they love. That person most likely has been hurt before and they don’t want to allow the next person to play with their heart strings. Or maybe they’ve been hurt and they haven’t fully recovered so they aren’t really and truly prepared to take on the necessary vulnerability needed to successfully establish the bond that’s needed for a relationship to truly form and develop. That individual also doesn’t take full advantage of the situation, and in that case constantly wants to talk about the what if’s or what they want or need or miss. Instead of truly just stopping to enjoy what the opportunity has been given. It definitely makes one question whether or not that person is forreal about their intent to build as needed. Or whether they are simply caught up in the what if’s and grandeurs of wanting something, yet unable or unwilling to achieve the objective.

Being unappreciated is something that can make anyone turn sour. It can make you feel unwanted and not truly cared for. You have to wonder if the person who is afraid is aware of that? Do they understand what it is that they’re actually hurting their own cause with person they desire. How do you really reach that individual? You have to figure out how you really get them to understand that what they’re doing isn’t actually working. You must in my mind understand that their will be a delicate dance that you must navigate. If you push too far you can ruin the positive and strong environment you have created. On the other hand, you risk losing part of your voice, and the control of the situation for as much as you can.

Now, the person who appreciates and possibly overvalues the element of time with someone. That person can be a little impatient and slightly anxious. They can feel that they’re not being given the same amount of attention and energy that they’re giving, which can lead them to feel very unappreciated and ultimately unwanted. You have to hope that it’s not the case at all. You most definitely have to move with a delicate balance. When you start to feel as though your heart isn’t being spoken to anymore, you have to take a very sensitive approach to the situation. If you are unable to see a little deeper into the situation you may risk alienating the person. It’s never an easy thing to do, primarily because you have feelings and emotions that re difficult to manage. Secondly, the person who is a little dismissive will then begin to feel slightly attacked or uncomfortable and then you must react accordingly.

Heart to heart is a difficult blog to write because it really plays on the emotional strings of someone who over thinks and has to analyze everything, risking alienating the other person, and the other individual, while highly analytical, operates from a much more reactive and present disposition. It can then become difficult for the two to go from one situation to the next because one is operating from a place of pause and catch up, while the other sits present, more flexibly able to go from one thing to the next. Allowing for situations to not be perfect and needing to pivot in order to see things through. It suggests that maybe these two individuals aren’t as compatible as one may think they are. And it could also indicate that more time and patience is needed for the two to really understand each other.

I know this is a bit scattered and disjointed, but these thoughts are hard to place right at the moment. Read and talk to me

Leave a comment Posted on lifestyle, real talk

Gone But Not Forgotten

Ten months ago, I started on another journey towards fatherhood. It was exciting, nerve-wrecking and emotional all at the same time. Because twice before I have been in this position only to have the individuals decide to terminate the pregnancy without any consultation with me. Both knowing full well that I wanted to have the child they were pregnant with at the time. So this time around I was dealing with someone that I knew would not kill our kid prematurely just because or because we went through a fall out. And to our surprise, we were supposed to be having twins. Fuckin twins!! I wasn’t expecting that you know I was happy as hell to be having two kids at one time. And so the process began of preparing for these babies to come into this world and to make sure that they were given everything they needed to grow and develop as they needed to.

Because they were twins and the person had already had one miscarriage we were cautioned about revealing too much too soon as this would be a high risk pregnancy and all the guidelines would need to be followed exactly to the letter of the law if we were going to maximize the opportunity for both of these beautiful babies to see this world. Early on things were dicey, but I thought that we had gotten out of the woods of that and was moving towards a more normal situation. And then the dominos started to fall that made things become far more uncertain and eventually to the end of another chance to be a father. The complications began to happen more frequent and sadly in mid September we had lost the twins and again the pain and aguish of dealing with the loss of unborn children I had to endure. It hurt unbelievably bad. It’s something that no one can ever prepare you for.

I’ve sat many days staring into space just wondering how so many people who don’t or didn’t want kids have them and someone who wants them and would be good to them and treat them well can’t get to the end of the race and have one or two or three, however many it is that I’m meant to have. It’s frustrating and saddening. It makes you depressed and sad. You want to cry and just block out the world, yet you know that can’t because the world doesn’t stop just because you go through misfortune. You must deal with it, with the person that you started that journey with, hope that y’all can find some semblance of support and understanding for each other while grieving on your in and in your own ways. My babies never got to breathe a breath of air. See the light of day or the dark of night. They never got to cry or laugh and feel anything of this world.

Maybe it’s a good thing in one respect with the pandemic that has crippled this nation and world, but fuck that man, I wanted them to be here. See this world, hold them, burp them, feed them, change them. Lay them on my chest and let them sleep. Wipe their little faces after they eat. All the things that a parent wants to do with their child, again I don’t get to experience. I just wonder if I will ever be given that opportunity to welcome my own kids to my life. Time will ultimately tell me if it’s meant for me to give life to kids of my own. I know that it’s tiring and hurtful to get started and be forced to stop. To my two unborn babies, this is your memorializing, your marking that you were here to a degree. You were alive inside your mother and you were loved as though you had already been here.

Leave a comment Posted on dating, love

Fear In Redemption

Yeah, I know the title sounds like an oxymoron right? Why you have fear in being redeemed? I think it depends on what you’re getting redemption from or for. Sometimes when you’re the person that giving some redemption for something that they did to you it can be among the most scariest and uncomfortable things to do. Usually, it means in some form or fashion that you are giving that person a second change at something of value or important to you. If it’s a former love interest or lover, then what you’re doing is turning back on those emotions and feelings that you once carried. It also means that you’re willing to make yourself vulnerable again to that someone who has hurt you and caused you great disappointment and probably pain. Why is it that when we allow that to occur we feel this feeling of uncertainty? The answer is simple and obvious but not always accepted.

The reality of the situation is once you allow someone to be forgiven and taken back, what you are doing is taking responsibility now for anything else that happens to you as a result of dealing with that individual again. It does stand to reason that for some it’s very unnerving because people don’t always like taking responsibility for their actions or the actions of others when you have the choice to choose not to allow someone back into your space, or to allow your emotions or your heart to be involved again. The other part of this is that once you reopen that box, you can’t necessarily control how strongly those emotions come out until you have a feel for exactly what it is you want from that person. Your also fear the unknown and honestly the known. Because this is someone that you have history with your mind will think about whatever it is that caused you to remove them from your life until you see that whatever it is has truly changed and you can allow yourself to feel as comfortable as you would like.

This doesn’t pertain to a certain group of people or race or gender of people. This situation is a universally experienced situation. It’s one that sometimes you have to sit back once you’ve made that decision and just wonder to yourself did you make the right decision? Is that something you see as being as productive and fruitful as you hope. Or is it a case of being tempted by that “forbidden” fruit once again? Is it a situation where you’re going to put yourself out there only to get burned again by that person. It is the most confounding and difficult thing to actually express to someone that you have just given that second chance to. Because the reality also is that if you’re going to agree with the decision to try again, you kind of have to remove the stain of the past. You can’t forget it because that would dumb and reckless, but you must be fair and allow that person the room and space to show you that they really aren’t that same individual that they once were.

If you find yourself in this position it can be so difficult. You want to allow that person in to truly reclaim the space that they once occupied and are trying to or are occupying again. But, the fact is part of you is scared, afraid to allow yourself to get close to them fully because you don’t want to be made to look foolish and stupid again. It does in some way hamper the comfort you have with that person in different ways, without you really showing that you still are cautious with them. Yes, it is normal to feel that way. It’s normal initially have a bit of hesitation, but why would you want to live like that towards someone that you truly care for? It makes you wonder if you made the right decision? Enough time has passed to where you could make this decision with full understanding and not being jaded by what happened prior. But the feelings are just so strong. The emotion you just want to let out and be felt unharnessed and unhinged. You want to open up and just allow the moment to overcome you and the interaction. But the truth is you pull back just a little, you become a little uncertain exactly to move because you really don’t know what the person is about to show you.

I guess in the end it does come down to a few key elements that are often times at the root of most relationships and circumstances surrounding the relationships: Control, comfort, trust and emotion. Are you okay with releasing that grip on the emotions and situations surrounding what you allow to happen; can you be comfortable knowing that the more you show yourself to that person they’re going to respond to you accordingly; do you trust them to walk down the path that y’all are heading down and; are you emotionally prepared for it happen again if it does, and conversely are you prepared for the payoff if what he says is true and you two get the fairytale that you’ve talked about from the beginning? It is my belief that if you can answer these questions positively and affirmatively then you will won’t carry the fear of redemption anymore, instead you will be welcoming the redeemed.

Talk back to me, let me know what you think.