Ending my political career

Mary J Blige says it best: "I'm tired of screaming independent. I wanna start depending on you."
From her song "Feel like a Woman".
Didn't know I had a political career? I don't, but I'm about to end it. I have honestly tried to live and let live, but my own baggage makes it difficult to do so tonight. This is not the focal point of this post, but I feel confident it would be the headline that killed my political career. MJB said it first. A girl needs a father in her life. An emotionally healthy father is a daughter's first lover. I watch my friend's daughter interact with her father. She is the apple of his eye, he would move heaven and earth for her. She knows this and does things that would otherwise be met with harsh words or maybe even a smack, but he's like a the whiny version of a grouchy bear who half heartily growls stop. Any discerning ear knows there is no sincerity, and just to be clear he backtracks by explaining why he asked her to stop and it sounds like an apology. She flutters around him and teases him with promises of her attention. She ask him questions as though he is the wise old oracle that knows all. She seeks his help and protection for little things. His words protest these interactions, but he loves every moment of it and you can tell he does not relish the thought that in a few short years she will either begin a life of her own or worse turn this attention and affection on another. I have said it to her mother and I will tell anyone that I am beyond envious of her daughter. I have no clue what its like to truly have the love of my father. I don't have a natural awareness of how it feels to put your trust in a man who understands that your well being is a part of his existence. So what? might be your response. Well I propose that there are lots of things that we do or are not able to do because of this hole in our lives. Well let me speak for me. Church has always been a struggle for me. I enjoy it love cooperate worship and really good teaching. BUT just like any other man, I get only so close to God. He is after all a man. I know blasphemy. I didn't mean it that way, I'm saying His gender is male and I'm not with that group that would like to remove gender or switch the gender. I watch Star Trek for my fantasy needs. It was years before I made the association about my distrust of God meeting his promises. How can I really grasp the love of God when I have no reference? I think its why religion is so appealing to women and why there are so many involved. First of all, you have a man who promises unconditional love and acceptance, secondly more than likely you have a man in the flesh who many actually call their dad in some form or another (spiritual father, pastor father, etc). This is especially true in the African American Church, almost to the point that women are pimped. I don't mean sexually I mean as a resource. Entire churches are often ran on the energy, time and finances of its women members. I've been to churches where the pastor, maybe his son and 2 or 3 elderly deacons were it for the male population. Even in some large churches with larger male numbers, the church history reflects a humble beginning with a pastor, one or two other men and several women. Offices now held by men were once the domain of women who worked tirelessly for the praise and acknowledgement of a few "father figures". Its okay if you negate this by saying this reflects my issues and baggage. I've been there and done that. Cool beans. Peace be with you.

I'm not condemning any group, just saying it bears looking at. Some churches and lots of rigid religions go so far as to mandate certain things that literally relegate women to servants and almost the property of their church and husband. Sorry that's another blog another day...

Anywho, we were talking about how this father issue affects me. Flirting escaped me for years. I thought flirting would let a guy know how much I liked him and I wasn't about to let my shield down enough for that. The first love in my life had been a huge disappointment and I would not be hurt like that again. I needed to be in control at all times. I had no clue what "they" liked to talk about, how "they thought, what "they" wanted. Only last year at the ripe young age of 44 did I realize that a man was not an enemy force to be overcome. He is actually a human being with flaws like all us gals. I never voiced that, but it was how I related to men. I still do it some times. I hear it coming out before I can stop it, "you people think differently". I would say that to this guy and he would say, "(my name), we think just fine or we feel just fine." One day when I was having my own little emotional break down he let me have it and I realized how much of a protective wall (mentally) I had built around the idea that these creatures called men were vastly different than women. No, I don't go in for that "whatever you can do I can do." I still say if my big butt was in a burning building I don't want to look out the window and see a female coming up the ladder. I want to see a man who passed the physical exam with flying colors and bench presses something close to my weight.

See I told yah, its the end of my political career. The right nor the left will want me after this one. Anywho, I started this post because of something I've said in the past and I'll say it again. Men like to be needed. My friends daughter has learned this lesson well. She makes her dad feel needed and she plays up to him. She's still learning so sometimes she takes it over the top, but he quickly forgives her and things go on, and more importantly she gets what she either needs or wants from him. I learned quickly as a child to need a man or depend on him set you up for disappointment and hurt. It made you vulnerable. By the time I got my first car, I could clean it like a guy. People who know me now are reading with their mouths open. That's right, I would wash, wax, vacuum, clean the inside and amour all the inside and out. Rims and tires sparkled! Had a guy teach me how to change oil. Actually learned but never did it again, how to change my brakes. If I ran out of gas, I knew how to get gas back in the carburetor. I don't need no stinking man was my rebel cry. For this reason, now I vacillate between being distant and needy. A boyfriend once told me that my body would tell him "you're touching me", without me verbally saying a word. I am trying to learn that subtle difference between needy and allowing myself to need him. I think PDAs make me look like I'm throwing myself on him. I shouldn't but I envy women who have had to learn the art of "working" a man. Women who, more than likely learned in childhood from the female in their life that men are a source of safety, power, money etc. I envy a woman who by her subtle charms is able to allow a man to feel needed and appreciated not for the fact that he is her man, but for what he brings to the table. I still find myself being the independent woman that Beyonce' and Kelly Clarkson sing about, who makes her own money and her own way. I watch like the kid outside a candy store as men climb the tower to rescue the women inside who demonstrate their need. Funny though, I realize I'm actually in the highest and most impenetrable tower of all. A tower that's been designed by me to look like a grand estate with a state of the art security system and neatly trimmed bushes for extra protection. I think the tower of fat surrounding my body will be easier to tear down then the estate tower, and I wonder if long after the fat is gone will I still be my nieces' and nephews' spinster aunt responding to their wedding, baby shower and house warming invitations as "1 guest" attending.