The Ballad of a hot mess

So... I lost my job Friday. Anyone that knows me, knows that working is my life. I've worked every year since I was 16. If you do the math, that's 10 years... The last few months, I started adding to my nightly prayer to be shown a direction.. I needed guidance. I needed someone to tell me what to do. I had a dream, as do many. I had the keys to execute every plan almost flawlessly. When it came down to it, I would conk out and continue to settle into my cushy office position. I was the boss. Not the big boss, but a boss nonetheless. I ran my district with ease, and although there were times that I would want to kill the CEO, I considered many of my co-workers to be family. Then things started to go wrong.... I started to become miserable. I didn't have time for anything. I barely saw my family. I worked from home, weekends, even after and before hours. Work started to consume my entire life. What was worse, it was in a job that I wanted nothing to do with. Medicine and writing are my passions. Working for a corporate Handyman empire was just to pay the bills. But they owned my soul, in my mind at least. My affinity for independence, nice things, and vacays kept me chained to the heels of that awful company.
I watched the man that would now take my position tell me that my services would no longer be needed. I heard nothing come out of his mouth. I felt my ears get hot and the room spin. If I didn't tune him out I would have thrown up all over his desk. This little shit. The same little shit that I trained. Taught him just enough for him to excel. Watched him become the new favorite of the office. All those times I felt it coming and I shrugged it off and immersed myself in spreadsheets, profit and loss standards, and vendor registration. But yet, here I am. In bed at 9:12 on a Monday. I knew it was coming. At first, I kept a pretty calm demeanor. This past weekend I found myself laughing and joking about the situation. But as Monday approached my attitude became more volatile. It was like a dark storm cloud that I could see approaching in the horizon. I tried to keep myself busy by scrubbing the entire apartment from top to bottom. It worked for awhile, but every 5 seconds my mind kept drifting back to WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO DO KISHA? My friend offered me a job which I thankfully accepted. It's a significant pay cut but a job is a job and I am eternally grateful. Monday morning came and at first I had a little difficulty. I got up to walk my dog and grab a cup of coffee per usual, but the only difference is, I would be going home and staying home. I kicked off my shoes and drank my iced coffee in bed, bordering between sadness and excitement. I decided to try and distract myself by going on Facebook. There among the many notifications was one for a picture in a club that I am in. It completely knocked me off my feet

 

 

It made me realize that I had asked for this.. I asked for a sign. It may not have been the sign I expected, but it's there nonetheless. I finished sending off the necessary paperwork to begin my job change in the Navy, and sent off my transcripts to the rest of the colleges on my list. There is a reason for everything. Every encounter, every change, every new experience, every heartbreak, and every triumph. The reasons are not always known in the beginning, but it's up to us how we handle each one.

It is what it is

I cannot keep confusing what you're doing with love... Love isn't suppose to make me feel like shit.

What is love? Baby don't hurt me

Dear Love,
You've given me life when I thought I would never breathe again
You gave me love for my beautiful god daughter
And Love for my unborn god son
Unconditional love for my family and friends.
My career, and my dog
But love. You really fucked me good this time.
I fell in love. A deep love. A love so encompassing that I never wanted to step outside of it's warm embrace.
A love so heavy at times it felt hard to breath
A love so innocent I blushed whenever I said your name
A love so bright, it blinded me from the truth.
How could I be so stupid love?
The signs were in front of me. Signs that I could touch, see, and feel
But I was lost in naïve hope.
Hope that one day, me and love would be on the same plane
Not this 1 sided love I had grown to adore
To yearn for
A love I had thirsted for. I was hungry for your power
A love that kept me up at night. Thinking of ways to outsmart your murderous chokehold
I had to stop
Had to let myself go
Because love, I started to forget myself
Started to compromise myself
I blamed it on the "greater good"
But I was slowly destroying myself.
My love, did not love me
And I was heart broken
My love sought other women
And I was heart broken
Like an addict I knew I had to quit you cold turkey
Shivering, and alone in the fetal position my heart cried out to you love
You faintly replied with answers you thought I wanted
I thought I wanted them to
I missed your sweet nothings. Your empty words that echoed so beautifully in my ear
I missed calling your name. Love. Sounded so sweet dancing off of my tongue
But love, you only loved what you thought you could get
And I will admit, I gave you what you wanted and expected little in return
You took it
With reckless abandon you took my love
My pure, sweet love.
You made it ugly
It made me bitter
Love I will probably never forgive you for this
I understand that in order to open myself up for my next blessing I will have to
But love I'm hurt, and there's nothing anyone can do about it
Time heals all they say. Love. This will take time
But I will fight.
My armor of hope, and my shield of forgiveness will help me navigate my way through this war
But I will be triumphant
Because love, I'm no quitter
You may have tricked me all those years, but you forgot one thing
The strongest love anyone can have, is the one they have for themselves
So in the words of the amazing Samantha Jones
Love,
I love you. But I love me more

Stop! The love you Save may be your own

Two weeks ago while perusing on Twitter (while I was suppose to be working) *coughs*  an interesting tweet showed up on my Timeline. It was a punk bitch  man claiming that none of his girlfriends could make more than him, or be more successful than him. The slander that showed up in his mentions was classic, and many men decided to take there stab at him and call him out on his shit. "You cant be serious" said some, and "N*gga, what do YOU do" said others. I wanted to add my two cents in to the mix, but it got me thinking. Many of these guys (and girls) showed utter outrage that somebody could be so set back in their thinking, that they would feel emasculated if their female counterpart was more successful than them. In reality, people think like that ALL the time.  There are plenty of guys that can't stand for a woman to be more successful than him. You know how many times my single girlfriends have said that guys were intimidated by their degrees and good jobs?
The last guy I was seeing did not understand that I write. (I love writing for the Examiner and it's damn good money). I draw a lot of writing pieces from personal experiences, and he just happened to be the muse to most of my best work... (shouldn't have been fuckin up). Although I never used names (to protect the innocent.. mainly myself) It still made him very uncomfortable that I would engage in lengthy dialogues about some fuck shit he did. He would call me out and say that it was subtweeting, or subwriting, and rarely read any of my work. I would like the record to show that I could understand how jilting it must be to experience something, then read it, and read other people's commentary. Honestly, I got tired of defending myself and my decision to express myself the way I wanted to, while making a little money on the side.
I explained all this to one of my best male friends Trent (whom you all have had the pleasure of reading in one of my older blog's "The Waiting Game"). He said, 

 "He doesn't respect your hustle. You need someone that understands you and what you do"

He was absolutely right. I thought on this for awhile as I contemplated how I was going to handle our situation. Later on that day while talking to my roommate, she randomly stated

" You can only really have one... Love or a career. And they way things are going for me, I might just choose love"
 

 I was floored. Here was my roommate, one of the brightest in our class, beautiful, smart, and incredible talented, saying that if she had a man that wanted her to choose between him and her career that she would choose him. It brought me back to that fool from Twitter saying that he wouldn't date anybody more successful than him.
Has it really come to that? Do we have to choose between the two? Where are they guys that would prefer that you had your life together? I have no idea because clearly I'm still single as hell. But if I do have to choose between the love of my life, and the LOVE that I have for my life, what would I choose?

Matters of the heart. Pretty much suck

Hi!
Don't even say anything about that fact that I haven't written in months. How do I even know people read this?. I know. I know. But life has really been kickin my ass. I'll explain later.
 Today, I'd like to discuss the fact that my heart is out to kill me.
I've written many times about how much I HATE when somebody uses that tired ass excuse "I've been hurt before". I used to hate hearing that (and yes I've heard it often). It was never a good excuse to me, because everybody is different. Don't make me pay for the sins of others. Right? Somewhat right. See, before I got into the situation that I'm in now, I always believed that everybody got a clean slate when they started dating new people. Boy was I wrong.
So... there's this guy. That I like. Well love. Like, a lot. And unfortunately I've heard that "I was hurt" excuse from him.. multiple times. I was actually starting to think that maybe it's just me. Maybe we're so incompatible in the important areas, but not the physical ones, that I wasn't even worth a try. Then something strange happened. We went out on a date. A DATE.
THAT my friends is when my heart started plotting against me...

I started feeling a certain type of way if we didn't talk when I wanted to talk

If I would notice certain things on a social network

The way we interacted in a social setting

I started finding reasons to ignore a text, or catch an attitude.

Now I know what you're thinking. WHAT THE FUCK?!
All this time I spent trying to get to this point and now I'm sabotaging it. WHYYYY?
Well.... Because I've been hurt before *ducks the many invisible shoes being thrown at my head Bush-style*
I know, I know. How could I persecute someone for using that excuse with me, when I was using it with them? Because now I know what it means.
I'm literally SO terrified of getting my feelings hurt by this dude, that I'll do whatever it takes to protect my heart.
Well now my heart is so "protected", I've pretty much isolated myself. Islands are no fun if you don't have someone to fuck frolic with..
So where do I go from here? Who knows. I surely don't. But I can say that I've learned a very valuable lesson. I wont be so quick to shoot down someones feelings or responses just because I haven't yet experienced them.
God I hate being an adult

Is 25 the new mid- life crises?

It all started 2 weeks ago.. The feeling. I was coming home from work when I noticed I had mail in my mailbox. Now, I know that having mail is a routine thing, but I just moved into my own place, so my first piece of mail was a magical moment for me. As I heisman'd my way through the crowd of children that play in my yard, I snatched my envelopes out of it's respective holding quarters and ran to my door two steps at a time. With careless abandon I slung my Kate Spade messenger bag and Navy issued Pea coat to the side only to find 3 very large disappointments. The first piece of mail was a letter for purchasing life insurance. The second piece of mail was a letter from an anonymous church in Oklahoma which contained a prayer blanket, and the third was the biggest surprise, ( and biggest let down) of all... An AARP magazine. Thinking that the magazine was a joke, my eyes frantically searched the little white address box at the bottom of the cover page, praying that this was some sort of mix up. But alas, on the bottom in full display was my name and address. This had been no accident. Why on earth had I received a magazine for the elderly? As I flipped through the pages, words like Osteoporosis, menopause, and erectile dysfunction jumped out at me. Every second that I spent skimming the pages, I could feel my bones shrinking, and my ovaries shriveling up. I decided to toss the items in the recycling bin and continue on with my day. Fast forward to the next day. As I was boarding the bus for work, a boy who couldn't be any younger than 10 stepped aside and let me board before him. I thanked him with a smile and started to climb the stairs as he shouted to the bus driver, "Aren't you gonna lower the bus"? Wait. What? "No no no, I'm fine" I assured the bus driver. But to my embarrassment he began to lower the bus. I managed to grumble a generic thanks under my breath, to which the boy responded, "You're Welcome ma'am." Well yall. That right there did it. Ma'am? Ma'am?!  My mother and grandmother are ma'am. I'm not ma'am. I was horrified, and shook. It couldn't have been a coincidence that I had received a letter for life insurance, the official handbook to getting old, and had been "helped" onto a public bus. Much later on in the day during one of my breaks, I decided to keep up with the times and check in on my Facebook account. I don't update it that often so I wasn't caught up with every body's tea. As I began to scroll through the timeline, I noticed that mostly everyone I knew, from High school, to CAU to the Navy were either engaged, married, or pregnant. When the HELL did that happen? Had I missed some sort of memo that I was in fact... old? It was the final straw. I quickly text my best friends to tell them that I was going to find a boyfriend and fall in line with the rest of my peers. Soon after I sent that text, a received 1 from a guy I had met a few weeks ago. He was very attractive, and older then me which was a plus. We kept missing each other due to our schedules, and he wanted to hook up since we both had some free time. I was ecstatic! I got myself together and an hour later I was in his company. Things were going pretty well until he began filling me in on the details of his life. He didn't have a job (but was employed.. hmmm... I'll let you conclude what he does). His parents own an apartment complex, but he lives with his mother. (hmmmm... ). He rarely drove because he was always letting someone else "borrow" his car (hmmmm). And last but certainly not least, he had 3 practically grown children. Usually, I would have emotionally checked out of the conversation after he had stated he wasn't legally employed. But I decided to ditch my shallow Hal ways and look past everything else. We began discussing my accomplishments and what I wanted for the future. As I was talking, I began listening to everything I was saying and in the middle of me telling him about going to Nursing school, I began to smile. 25 isn't old. I wasn't old. In fact, I'm in my prime. I still have so much life to live, and so many other things to do. I couldn't believe that I let a  magazine, and a boy who was only displaying his wonderful home training change my thinking. The date was pretty much over, and although he was a cool guy, he had a lot more growing up to do. I did tweek myself out for at least a week with my "I'm old" mentality. But the reality is, I'm not the only 25 year old that thinks this. In fact, there were many times that I had to calm my best friend down from fits of hysteria the closer her birthday came. In today's society, everyone is in a huge rush to "grow up". The rush is so major, that age restraints have become completely useless. 12 year olds are already checking into alcohol rehab, 15 year olds are moms and dads, and grandparents are still clubbing it up. It only makes sense that my mid-life crises would come a few years early. Today, I'm perfectly content with where I am. I'm happy, and healthy with a loving family, wonderful friends, and jobs with great benefits. I'm exactly where I should be plus sum. But don't think I didn't take anything in the AARP magazine serious.. uh, hello calcium pills? What? Osteoporosis is real.
Kisha_Fashionista

A single girl's musings on being single

Well.. what can I say?
These last few months have been a whirlwind for me... A higher position at my job, more collateral duties with the Navy, moving into my own place, and changing my career path. WHEW!
In the midst of all the turmoil, months after my breakup, I've allowed myself to finally let go and "date".
The concept of "dating" is very new to me... When I look back on my life and the people that I've allowed in, I realize that I made many mistakes... The biggest mistake of all was not allowing myself time to be with me. I've always had someone I was either exclusively dating, or someone I was "talking to", or whatever it is you kids call it nowadays. There was always someone to text, or call when I wanted to chat with he opposite sex. Someone always willing to grab a quick lunch, dinner, or movie... Always, someone. I was never ALOOONE..
Now that I find myself alone, I'm treading in waters completely foreign to me, and I'll admit, I was not handling it very well.. But as I sat in my living room waiting for my alarm to go off, I gave myself time to really examine what it was that I was doing wrong.
*gasp*
wait.. wait.. yes, I will admit that maaaaaby, I have played a crucial role in a lot of my relationship outcomes. There were moments where I did not allow myself to be treated wonderfully. I was so bored with the thought of routine, that I would blind myself to what it feels like to really be courted. Two missed potentially golden opportunities later and here I am.
It's not all my fault though.
Well, I guess it is.
I wont be that girl that blames her parents (because mine were wonderful and loving). I had no early childhood traumas, and I come from a caring support system. No, my quirks are all my own.
I also came up with another conclusion. I expect a lot out of someone, but fail to put much effort in myself, especially if no clear titles have been given
All of these realizations came to me this very morning, and I made a vow that I would stop getting in the way of my own happiness. Easier said then done right? Right. But I figure the path to self discovery is like a 12 step program. The first step is admitting there may or may not be a problem
Kisha_Fashionista