Day 552 – Something’s Got To Give

Hey. I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out what to do with this day. So many things pulling for attention. Part of me wants to hide forever. Throw in the towel. I am tired of this world. My beauty has been a curse. My gifts and talents have been a curse. My love has been a curse. They only make people want to take from me and resent me when I don’t give what is wanted of me. I do not get to paint my toenails yellow and put shea butter on them without someone I love feeling jealous or someone I don’t want feeling angry with me and withholding because I won’t be with them and let them touch said feet. I don’t get to have my skillset without everyone in my life feeling like I should use my skills for their agendas without having fulfilled my own agendas for myself. I don’t get to love without others feeling like my love is only for them and I don’t need any true love in return. And getting angry and hurt if I dare seek love for me. I have hurting hurting hurting. Probably hurting for a very long time, but feeling it deeply these past few months. Crying every day. Feeling trapped and stunted in my life. Not really knowing how to solve problems. Not really wanting to face problems because all answers seemed to lead to pain and more pain. But the problems are not going anywhere. They are just compounding. My WhatsApp is buzzing alerting me I have messages. It is only people wanting stuff from me. Stuff that has nothing in it that’s good for me. I’ve retreated into numbness and apathy. It is easier than feeling the pain of feeling so un-loved and feeling so used. Something funny? The nicest person in my life right now is the last person I ever would have guessed. My brother. I never realized how Loving my brother was, but that is another story. He’s nice to me. He treats me with respect. He helps me without me having to ask. He sees me without me having to tell him things… I am grateful for that small Grace, Allah. I want to to dump. Sorry, this might not be a motivational post. I need to talk to someone. Someone who understands. Someone who sees me as good. I want to be right. I want to be seen as good. I want to be understood… What happened, you ask? So much has happened at one time. But family stuff mostly. Situation(s): Where to start? Family. Sisters. I went overseas. To heal the world. The world was broken and full of shit. I guess that’s part of the heal the world premise. You’re going into broken stuff. Moana stuff. Demons throwing fireballs at you. I didn’t factor that whole part into my overseas ambitions. The demons throwing fireballs part. And the fact that you might get hit by fire. And the fact that it hurts and might kill you. And the fact that most people will not understand the depths of your pain or sacrifice because they have not faced off with demons throwing fireballs that almost kill them. But anyway. That happened. I went overseas. To start a relatively small venture. Some people didn’t like it. They wanted the land I was using. They were jealous because I did what they had wanted to do but couldn’t. There was much backstabbing, betrayal, etc. It was a lifestyle. Men wanted me. Not because they wanted to give me anything. Because I was a possible meal ticket. Possible sex ticket. Possible way out of the land of fireballs. My grandma had died. I knew her life was in danger but nobody listened to me. And six days later she died. I was sad that I couldn’t save her. Nobody wanted to really know what happened to her, at least nobody demonstrated it through action. They didn’t want an autopsy. They didn’t want to videotape conversations. They didn’t want to press charges or go to police to investigate. They didn’t, through action, show interest in knowing shit. The person whom I suspect was responsible for my grandma’s death is a family member. I suspect he wanted her dead because he wanted her house. Shortly after my grandma’s death, my mom had the audacity to say she was thinking of giving the house to said person – no investigation needed, no autopsy, no nothing. Because this person was family. I realize I was involved in a looney bin tale. Maybe I was part of the loons, too. But I just couldn’t sit by and let such a grave injustice happen. I loved my grandma. I hadn’t spent much time with her, but in the small time I spent, I loved her so much. She was mean as hell when she wanted to be, but just as sweet as she was mean. She would lay her head on your lap or let you lay your head on hers and hold your hand and tell you stories about life and joke with you. She was deeply loving. And beautiful. She had beautiful hands. And she wasn’t scared of shit. And I couldn’t imagine what really happened to her during her final dying hours. But moreso, if she was murdered, I couldn’t imagine giving up her house to the person who was responsible for her murder. I went overseas. I also had a farm there. I had started the farm with my mom. I loved working with my mom. Our bond. We fought over a lot of things. I almost died and was deeply sad after realize the nature of my relationship with mom. I threw a bottle at the wall at one point and then our relationship shifted. Somehow, my mom and I came to a place of genuine Love and respect. I don’t have to bend my back when I’m around her anymore. I Love her deeply and can be myself with her. It’s been a dream of a lifetime. And she loves me, too. But I knew that after grandma died, everything would have changed. My mom’s reason for being overseas was to take care of my grandma. She may not want to be there after grandma’s death. I may not want to be there without mom. I didn’t know. I really loved working with my mom. She’s a gem of a human being. Don’t get me wrong, she’s got a million issues, but having her on your team in whatever is such a Blessing. Because at the core, she really really Loves you and wants you to win, and that takes precedence over all issues. That’s good enough for me. So, situation. I went overseas. Was there for months. Farm lived. Decided to keep going with it. Joined a film program. Learned about filmmaking overseas. Worked on a script that I had started in the states that had been getting traction. I was working on a rewrite. One of my sisters was helping to sponsor my trip and I had also gotten some money from a grant I had written. And I had a little bit of passive income that was coming in from the states. So that was carrying me. That sis had a project that she was starting in Africa and she wanted me to shoot some videos for her and connect with some characters – I’ll just call them actors – to be in her project. A shot a video and connected with the actors. Put up ads. Made phone calls. Had meetings. A lot happened. Maybe I’ll explain in another blog. But it was time to come home. I don’t even know why I came home. My mom was worried. Other sibs wanted help with stuff. I wasn’t feeling one way or the other about coming home. With all the drama overseas, my life there was a bit better than here, because I was living on my own terms and I wasn’t lonely. The people in my life in America just wanted me back because they wanted stuff from me, and I wasn’t really feeling it… My creative work had gotten some traction, and I had planned to come back to the states, put all my energy into selling the script that had gotten traction, get myself right so that I could finally get a man, and prep for the harvest of my farm before having to go back overseas in the fall to harvest. So, here’s the situation. My sis, who had sponsored me and has also been supportive of other things over the years asked if I could go overseas in early fall to essentially lead the production of her project. She didn’t say lead the production of her project, but that’s how I saw it, because I am the only one on our team who speaks the language of the country and knows how to produce. Having just been in a film program in that country, I know that working there on a film project is a full-time commitment. Also, having worked with the people on my sister’s team before, I know that they are all type A overachiever types and they will be working on the project nonstop from the moment they talk about it. Which means, if I lead them, I will be working on the project nonstop from the moment they talk about it. Which means I will not have the time or mental space to finish my script, get a man and/or prep for my farm harvest correctly, ‘cus I’d be busy with pre-prep for a whole other brand new project. In April or so, I told my sis that I wanted to support her on project and could be more involved at a later time, but for the time being, I couldn’t commit to coming back overseas for her project in early fall because I had these other priorities which I just spelled out and I didn’t want to commit to anything else which might force me to forego my other priorities before they had come to fruition. And my things were time sensitive urgent. Hers really wasn’t. There was no reason for her to come in early fall versus a time when it would be easy for me to help her except that she wanted to. But somehow she seemed upset or hurt that I said I couldn’t commit. And I felt upset and hurt that she, knowing my struggle, knowing my age, knowing my lack of success in just about every area of life, knowing that I had finally come to a place where success was on the horizon and I could very well break through in three months if I just focused on myself – knowing all this… Knowing that I melt down with too much stress and I struggle with keeping my physical and mental health balanced – I send her pictures of my muscles twitching and tell her about my meltdowns regularly, she was backing me up against a wall. Either I work at a super stressful pace: Rewrite a script by a certain time, which would require a twenty hour a week commitment full of high mental energy because I don’t know how to to do it. Plus prep for a farm harvest, which would as well require at least a twenty hour a week commitment full of high mental energy because I don’t know how to do it. I’m done by then as we all know. I’m beat. My energy betrays me at the worst times when I do hard stuff. But get up with my muscles hurting and nerves twitching and get excited about taking classes for a new business sis is starting and writing grants and getting on phone calls with overseas people who love a good scam and making creative plans with type A’s who are on the dominate or be dominated interpersonal vibe. Forget about a man or free time or self care or time for joy with this plan. I was mad that my sis would even want me to be on this plan. When she didn’t have to. I don’t even know if she cares that much about this business. I don’t think she does to be honest. It’s a hobby and she’s just excited about starting a business overseas in general, but she don’t want to run this business. She wants me to run it. And I don’t want to run this business. It’s not feasible or sustainable. Not for me. I’m so not interested in the high paced super busy life anymore. It doesn’t work for me. It makes my muscles hurt and gives me no time to smell roses, laugh or love. My sister lives at high pace and maybe she’s able, but I’m not interested. So that was my one big situation, which is still not resolved. I told my sis about all this and she still wants me to lead her project. Still planned to go overseas at a time that would either make me sacrifice my goals or move at a pace that’s unhealthy for me. So, my only options are to help her at a pace that’s healthy for me and allows me to meet my goal timelines, which is not fast enough for her to be prepped by the time she goes and then her results won’t optimal; or move at her pace and then flop and fail at my timelines and be nerve buzzed and muscle pained to boot. It’s a bullshit situation and I’m mad at her for putting me in it. Because she didn’t have to. She could have everything she’s doing – I could have done it for her even – in a few months after I had seen some success in my own endeavors. The other situation was another sister. She had plans for me as well. She generally asks me to help her with stuff as her first responder and always treats me the worst when I help her and is the most ungrateful and disrespectful and abusive as can possibly be when I help her. While I was overseas, she asked if she and her son could move into my apartment. Whatever whatever happened in her life and it was urgent. I said yes and she had moved in in a few weeks, with the idea that I would be living with them when I got back from overseas. She told me she wanted to remodel the apartment and I was fine with it. She asked me if I wanted to contribute to selecting the decor and I wasn’t interested in contributing – we don’t have the same sense of style and I didn’t even want to try. We had tried before and don’t agree on style. But I didn’t care, because I like her style. It’s just not my style. I told her that the only thing I cared about was the couch. We agreed that we would select the couch together once I arrived. Before arriving, I was on a conference call with her one day and I stepped away. While away, I heard her ask the other person on call, “When is Laydie coming back? Because I need a babysitter.” I was crushed. Here I was actually excited about coming to see my sister and here she was trying to play me as usual. When I came home, my place was beautiful, but there was no indication that any consideration had been made as to where or how I would live there. There was a queen sized bed in room and literally all closets and all shelves in the entire apartment were filled with sis and son’s stuff. There were two work desks in the living room – one kid desk and the desk I used to use now had my sis’s big desktop on it. My sis had panicked in prep for an event and ordered a couch before I got there. She said that she ordered it before consulting me because I was traveling and she couldn’t reach me. She hadn’t tried to reach me and could have reached me had she tried. The couch was cute enough but not functional. You couldn’t sleep on it. I mean, she could have gotten a futon. She could have gotten a sofa bed. She could have gotten a king bed. She could have gotten anything that would indicate that she had thought about where I was gonna sleep, but she didn’t. We had lived together before and every time one of us slept in the living room and had closet space in the living room and one of us slept in the room and had closet space in the room. I asked her where I was supposed to live and she started crying. Said she had been used to being coupled up where her and her person shared everything and slept together and she didn’t think any differently when moving in with me. She said I was supposed to sleep in bed with her and son. Or that I could decide. And went on with the waterworks. It was clear to me that she hadn’t thought about where I would sleep, or she had thought I’d sleep in living room. Sleeping in living room could have worked for me if I actually had something to sleep on. But the couch wasn’t appropriate for sleeping on. It was too skinny. On top of all that, she had invited or allowed another family member, my 6’4″ nephew, to come and visit for the summer. So now there were four of us in apartment. One bed and one non-sleep-able couch. I slept on the floor because I don’t believe you invite guests to your house and have them sleeping on the floor or force them to sleep with you unless you absolutely have to. I had a script due – something that could change my life – in a few weeks if I was going to be on track. I would write and she would call me a workaholic. My muscles were hurting. She had planned a birthday extravaganza and had written me into babysitting duty and whatever else on the plans. I fell off a scooter and scraped my arm up real bad and kind of banged my body out of place. She noticed in the moment but forgot about it later. After our neighbor came upstairs and rudely complained about her son jumping up and down, she changed our internet name to a real adversarial name – “***** witches upstairs”. She thought it was funny. I thought it was destroying about ten years worth of relationship building and also I didn’t like the idea of identifying as a witch even in jest, and I asked her to change the name. She didn’t. Had one excuse after another. Thought it was funny. I had a work meeting with a colleague whom I had invited over the house. He wanted to log into the internet. I had to tell him the internet name was “***** witches upstairs”. It was humiliating. Anyone who knows me knows I’d never name my internet that, including my sis. But here I was. I had welcomed someone into my house and I was being bullied, sleeping on the floor, got an effed up internet name, couldn’t do any work because sis acts offended if she’s in my space and I’m not giving her my full attention. I had had a super opportunity to be recommended for this prestigious film lab. I had previously applied for this lab twice and been denied. This third time, I had a shoe in. I was recommended. All I had to do was show up with a project. I had several friends who would have died for me to bring them into this opportunity. But I reached out to my sis, because she’s my sis and I wanted her to win to. Told her I could bring her project in and all she had to do was write it. She was with it, but at the end of the day, she didn’t write it. We didn’t get into the program. She had nothing to say about it. When I brought up my disappointment, she starts crying and talking about how she had gone farther than ever with that project and how she never finishes anything. Never said sorry. Full of shit. While I was out of town, I had introduced her to an ex of mine, who is a neighbor, thinking she could use a friend and she could use some help with stuff. They connected, and she would tell me when they chatted. When I got back in town, neither she nor he would tell me they are in communication, and I didn’t even think they were. Then one day she tells me she’s going running with him that night. I was shocked. I had just spoken to him that day and he had told me no such thing. “How are you going running with him?” I asked. She was taken aback and said “You can come if you want.” I didn’t say anything. My ex didn’t tell me about it. They went running together and hadn’t thought to invite me at all, even though I had been focused on exercise and my sister knew that. He told me it was last minute – that he thought she was going to flake and didn’t know they were going till 10p (my sister had told me they were going around 6p)- and that’s why he didn’t invite me or tell me. She told me she thought he was going to flake and that’s why she didn’t invite me, but I was welcome to come. I was welcome to come???? How is my sister going on a one-on-one with my ex and telling me I’m welcome to come? Some bullshit. My ex told me about an eyebrow raising incident that happened during their run. My sis never told me about it. My ex told me that my sis had messaged him at some point on one of those days asking him to take her to the farmers market because I was asleep. My sis never told me about it. I generally wake up before her in the mornings… And all this time sis is walking around the apartment like she’s doing me a favor by being there. She’s doing me a favor by getting my internet turned on and labeling it a name that makes me feel disempowered, offended, and disrespected every time I see it. She’s doing me a favor by getting us a couch that I can’t even use. It’s the thought that counts, they say. But I’m sorry. I really don’t see any thought of me in her actions. In fact, I see thoughts to hurt me. I call bullshit. So this was my life in June. This was going on while my other sis has designed a whole business model around my potential leadership. My mom is calling me asking me to help my brother and if I tell her about any of my small wins, her immediate response is to tell me to help my other sister, who didn’t make it to the blog today. I am offended. What is she talking about? I stay helping somebody’s sister, brother and friend, but it’s too much. And the worst part is, I be giving blood for people. Blood they don’t get anywhere else, but somehow I am resented by those same people for whatever reason. I don’t get it. Nobody is asking me how I’m doing. Nobody is noticing my drained energy or my teeth chattering or the amount of deep breaths I have to take before walking out of the house. People acting mad and calling me selfish if I dare mention me in a convo… I came to my brother’s house in July. He had gotten an operation and needed help. I needed a place to sort things out. It worked for both of us. My sis eventually moved out of my apartment. But now today here I am. Hiding. Mad. My sis is planning her overseas trip and she’s overwhelmed. She doesn’t know how to do it. She never planned to know how to do it. She doesn’t even speak the language there. She planned on me doing it on her time, even though I told her it wouldn’t be good for me to do it on her time. I actually know she cares for me deeply and she can’t see how this is negatively impacting me. But after being in a situation where a family member was literally trying to feed me what I thought was food poisoning that could kill me – not because she wanted to kill me – because she couldn’t see how she was negatively impacting me, I’ve become a bit hardened. I don’t care if you don’t mean bad for me. If you’re affecting me badly and I’m telling you and for whatever reason you can’t hear me and I’m doing my best to communicate to you, I have to stop and just do what’s good for me. I’m not suicidal. I can’t wait for you to understand. I might be dead by the time you get it. I don’t know where this blog started of where it’s going, but I had to tell someone what happened. Maybe you will feel sorry for me. Maybe you will understand that I am not a bad person. Maybe not. I just received an email that makes me think my sis can do this project without me. I am relieved. I’m sure she’s mad or feels whatever about me, but I’m giggling. Thank God! Wow. Y’all. What a realization just happened. Is happening as I write. They can do it without me. Let them the eff go! Lawdamercy this feels so good. They not gonna do it the way they would do it with me, but that’s fine. They’re smart and talented and even my wanna be witch betraying ass sister got some good qualities somewhere that will come out at some point. I think this needed to be done. I think I needed to fall back so that they could be mad and out of whatever motivation prove to me (and prove to themselves) that they can do shit without me. Oh, Lord, thank you! Wow! I can go work on myself without feeling guilty now. Just in this moment, I am realizing that they can do it without me, and with that realization there is a possibility of hope. Maybe they will approach me for stuff because they want to, not because they feel like they have to. So I did do a good job? I did the right thing. It has been so hard to not be accepted by them or be disapproved of. It has been the hardest thing. It has been the hardest thing in life to not be accepted or approved of by so many. I’ve been a dumb ass sacrificial lamb wanting people to love me or approve of me or accept me, and at the end of the day, I haven’t usually even gotten those things after giving what feels like so much to me. Y’all… We got somewhere in this blog. A spell just lifted. I feel like I can go do me without guilt. And I can get over my stupid sister’s roommate transgressions. I ain’t coming close to her until I see demonstrated action that indicates she is loving and kind towards me, but suddenly, I can get over things. Oh, man, this feels so good! In this moment, I am starting to feel free. I guess telling on everyone makes it a bit better, even if I’m just telling it in a secret blog. But also recognizing that they can do it without me lifts some burden off my shoulders and allows me to think a bit wider. My mood has shifted and there is energy in my hips. Thank you, God. Ameen. I don’t know what to title this entry. This is a long one. And there’s more to it. It has occurred to me that I’ve been over here in the mud for far too long. And I’m over it. I’m so over it. Something has got to give. That’s the title of this entry and this chapter. Not in a romantic fantastical way, but in a way that works. Something has got to give. This life can’t just be about surviving and solving stupid problems and making it through. Somewhere, there has got to be the chance at thriving. Somewhere, there has got to be the chance at something good. Not just the chance. The realization. God help us. Ameen.