Staying in the war and keeping your focus

I enjoy television. No...seriously I really enjoy television. I get emotionally involved with characters, work out stuff, get in touch with emotions that are brewing just below the surface, I laugh a lot at funny things, fuss at characters and of course I veg out sometimes. Anywho I have become addicted to "Drop Dead Diva, True Blood, and Army Wives". All of which come on Sunday night. Drop Dead Diva and True Blood are on at the same time. I don't have HBO, so I go to a friends house to watch True Blood. I record Drop Dead Diva and Army Wives. I was watching the last episode of Army Wives.(ok this is like 2 weeks old) One couple had a son who was also in the military. The son is in Iraq when his buddy gets shot. He calls his parents, the father being in the military began to talk to him in military language. I am paraphrasing but basically he told him he was sorry that his friend had gotten killed, but that he could not lose sight of what he was suppose to do. The father knew that if his son lost his concentration it could get him killed. He told him to stay focused.
The wife of another military man was diagnosed with diabetes and she had been really tripping out over this. She went to pick up her daughter from ice hockey practice where she met a young girl. The girl was a captain of her team and a full blown diabetes patient. She was very nonchalant about checking her blood and drinking juice. The wife realized diabetes was not a death sentences or something to hold her back. Then the one female officer got the call that her group was to ship out the next week. The episode ended with her crying as she held her baby.
As I told a friend, I don't dare compare myself and the trivial stuff I deal with to the daily dangers the men and women of the military face, but life in a sense is a battle. There are skirmishes, battles, coups, rebellions, ambushes and such. I sometimes get distracted by the skirmishes which really aren't that serious and will probably pass as quickly as they came. When I get distracted by the small ones, it makes the larger ones hit me even harder and almost takes me out of the game.
Sometimes I forget that the goal is not to focus on eating less, but simply listening to my body when it says its had enough. Its difficult enough when I am struggling with this, but then you have other family members tripping off of it too. Last week a friend and I treated my sister to ice cream at Coldstone. This past Sunday she and I are sitting beside each other in a church service. She looks at me and says "I told Jane we ate ice cream". She gives me this look and says "Jane said we can't eat ice cream!" WTF and whada ya mean we white man? I'm thinking great, now I'm gonna have to tell my sister and her friend to bite my butt. Then every time I say anything about there seems to be something different about my body, before I can say what it is, my mother says "are you gaining weight?" Ok hold up, am I gonna have to tell my momma, chill, I'm screwing this cat? Sorry I've loved that saying every since an ex introduced me to it. I think I've told you I like "I got your (fill in the blank) hanging. Men have such cool power statements...notice how they seem to center around sexual prowess...hmmm. Oops what was I talking about hahaha oh yeah focus.
Stuff like that shakes me and if I'm in a vulnerable spot (not feeling attractive, afraid that I will gain weight, wondering if I will reach this goal or another one, etc) it hits me even harder. Like a soldier I've got to grieve or feel it for a moment to at least acknowledge it, but then pick up my weapon and keep stepping. I am fighting a battle and it can be won, but I have to keep my head. I have to defend myself, I've got to be strategic about where I go, listen for incoming bombs, keep my eyes open for traps, and keep my mind "Army strong" to deal with the terrorist attacks. You know the folks that walk up like a woman wearing an explosive, and then they blow up in your face. "You look good, how much have you lost? I'm glad you did something..." back handed comment/suicide bomber...one day I'm gonna figure out how to make sure it really is a suicide bomber by taking out the bomb carrier. What do you think a punch to the face or the gut?

Butterflies in the wrong place

So this Saturday I was washing my car...that within itself is deep and profound. Before surgery I gained quite a bit of weight and was tired all the time. My car was filthy and I mean F-I-L-T-H-Y. When I started the plan was wash, vacuum, and wipe down, but at each step I kept adding things. By the end it had been, wash the car(hand wash), buff the film off the headlights, spot shampoo, brush and clean carpet and seats, scrub console, spray amorall, wipe down windows and wipe amorall inside and out evenly. Close to the end I was cleaning the windows and wiping down the leather/plastic parts, a beautiful brown butterfly came by and lit on my finger. I shook my hand thinking it would fly away, but it just grasp tightly to my finger. It was such a beautiful and delicate thing. I didn't want to hurt it. I tried to nudge it off, I told it that despite my fingers smelling sweet and the bright colors I had on, I was not a flower. Finally I got it to climb off my finger and onto the sunroof. A few minutes later "she" was flying back down by my toes and the car door. I laughed and shooed her away. She kept flying around, landing on the door, my finger, the window. She just wouldn't go away. Eventually she flew into my car. I was changing sides and by the time I got to the other side, she had flown up to the sunroof. I pushed it back, forward and then had it open from the other side, but she kept flying behind the shade. I explained to her (as if she understood human language) that she needed to move on, and if she didn't she would ultimately die. I didn't want to damage her wings and I didn't want her to die in my car. We went back and forth. Finally she flew down away from the top and I moved her out with my hand. She fluttered around the car for a while. At some point she flew off.
I suspect you have an idea where I'm headed with this. I think we are much like butterflies in various areas of our lives. We stay in dead in jobs, wasting our time, talent and energy when it will lead us no where. There is no chance of promotion, no growth, and no potential to prepare us for something better. We flutter into relationships that are like that. They will never allow us to fully flap our wings and grow. Yet we flutter, attach and won't fly on. We do the same things with friends who don't have our best interest at heart. We shine for them, dance about them and support their dreams, but some not only don't support us, but actually bruise our wings.
I kept hearing that people change after you've had the weight loss surgery, but I disagree. I think after you make a major change in your life that can't help but alter the way you think and respond, YOU change. This of course forces those around you to change. Wouldn't it have been funny if the butterfly got in my car, and while I was coming around to the other side, it had hit the door locks, started the car and drove off? I would have been forced to do something different then what I had planned. Ok, it would have been amazing and not so funny to me. If you change how you think and act it forces those around you to either adapt or move on. I'm getting both, and I gotta tell yah its not always pretty, funny or amazing. I'm trying so damn hard to fly, flutter, and check out the flowers, but there are times I feel real guilty and want to fly back into the car just so others will feel comfortable. I know I can't, but its tempting. I feel myself disconnecting with people, I hear myself not giving folks the answers they want to hear, I see myself doing things that I see as best for me at that moment. Its funny, I thought that making decisions like that would make me happy...sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't. Lets go back to the butterfly. She had flown all across the yard (big yard) and was probably ready to rest, but my car or my finger were not the best places for her to rest. She could have resisted my overtures completely and found a nice comfy spot in my car to stop. It probably would have made her happy. Happy is a moment to moment thing. It comes and goes based on the situation. However, she took the hint and flew on. When she found a flower to rest on. There was probably food, drink and the wonderful fragrance of a real flower. I would dare say she was content. Hint: Content is better than happy. I wish I had spent more time on this before surgery, but I was busy being happy sitting on a fake or wannabe flower and eating food to squash my real desire to be content.
Content is definitely harder work and I think lonelier work, but I am betting the farm its worth it. So are you some place that your wings can reach their full span, you won't get bruised as you flutter around and is your soul getting real flower food? Yeah its scary and it may be a while before you find the right flower to land on, but you and I are such pretty butterflies and we all deserve to be content. Keep flying its out there.

missing out on a hidden blessing

So the post before this one had been sitting in draft for a couple of weeks. This past weekend, my mom and I were talking and she shared something that sat me back on my heels. There were men in my family church who were pillars of the community and leaders in the church. Their wives and families looked up to them and followed them. My mom blew my image by telling me how they could not read. She started out telling me about a neighbor who would bring his money home to his mother. Mom explained that his father had done the same thing, because he was unable to read and was limited in counting. I guess my look of shock led her to reveal that these more well respected men had the same secret. They were able to count, but their literacy skills were very limited. She went on to say that these captains of industry in our local African American community would have their wives with them when they went to the bank and other places of business. I listened and thought, the first black millionaire in our community would have had a very hard time landing a good black woman in this era. I was out with a friend the other day, we ran into an older black woman I know through work. My friend is just who he is 24-7 and asked me the spelling of a word. When he stepped away for a moment, the older woman asked "where did you meet him" in a tone that sounded less than approving and more judgemental. I was taken back by her judgemental tone. She obviously hadn't noticed our level of comfort, the shared silent jokes, or his generous nature. She seemed to note that he was different. Now it may have been a bone of contention for her that he was white. After all she takes great pleasure in mentioning the HBCUs her son and daughter attended, however I suspect it was a bit more classicism than racism. But I thought about what my mom had told me this weekend and wondered, how many times have we as black women, our mothers, sisters, friends and even well meaning outer circle near do wells excluded a perfectly good partner candidate because we deemed him not good enough. There are lots of legitimate reasons to exclude a man, but is his social class a good one? My friend insisted that I see Something New when it came out because she and everyone else insisted I was much like the main character. Alone, spending most of my time in my job and focused on having a BMW...Black Man Working. The movie lightly addresses the expectations we have of finding an educated, God fearing, over achieving Black man who out performs us. The funny thing is that this would be okay for those who are in the for profit world, cause you don't see and know first hand what we do. But, those of us in the helping professions know darn well that the odds are against us and yet we continue to look for the needle in a haystack. We know that first of all, black male babies have a higher infant mortality rate than female babies. We know that black girls began to out perform black boys mid way through elementary school, not because we are smarter, but culture and society make it tougher for the boys. We know that the number of black girls graduating from high school out number boys. We know that black girls attend college far more. We know that black males far out number any other race of males in jail. We know based on health department numbers that numbers of black males are homosexual or living on the down low. Yet faced with those numbers, we continue to pray for, expect, accept nothing but an equally educated and well employed brother. This is not my open your eyes and taste the rainbow speech. That's for Evia and her blog. This is my get real speech. Think back to your high school economics class. Remember the terms supply and demand? Well the educated and paid brothers are in high demand, but the supply is low. Guess what that means...ok if you are having problems with this go to your nearest gas station and wait there for the next big travel holiday. The prices will go up. A BMW knows he's a BMW and his price tends to be quite high, so does his taste and frankly he tends to not be worth the hype. Many are arrogant, less than faithful, selfish, demanding and not a few decide they are too value to be trusted to the likes of a black woman. After some thought, I decided that if I found a honest, hard working, good hearted brother who appreciated me and didn't think he was God's gift to women, I would be just fine with the fact that he had a blue collar job. I will not compromise on addictions, down low, two timing, abusive, general trifling behaviors, but education, job title, and what he wears to work are things we can work with. He can be cleaned up and dressed up, but you can't wash hard heartiness off man, you can't shampoo away a "better than you" or a "you're lucky to have me" attitude. I want someone who will cheer me on, and I'll do the same. Not someone who expects me to always take one for the team because he's the star quarterback. I'm not saying an educated, prosperous brother can't be a good husband. I think its just harder for him. If you are a female, ask your grandmother about your granddad's skills and how she helped him. Maybe the perfect guy for you just repaired your car, or rolled your trash receptacle back up to your house, or flagged you to pass on the left side of road. If he's not the one for you...ask him how he feels about "good and plenty thick sisters" and pass the wealth my way! :)