Just some Guy on Tumblr

Here's where I write.

[bloodytales]

Article:

The Law Made These Women Pay Up To Get Out Of Their Abusive Marriages

These women thought they could finally break free from their convicted abusers. They didn’t expect it’d come with a price tag.

[christopherjpaige]

JSGT #whyididntreport

#whyididntreport

I did report one incident, but I have survived incidents of harassment and assault throughout my life. Though I found my voice to report it once, here's why I didn't report the occurences before I reported:

I didn't understand what happened and then why someone could do that to me.

I thought I did something to cause it.

I was afraid to not be loved anymore.

I didn't want to be the weird kid.

I wasn't comfortable with my identity.

One of the perpetrators was someone I had to see all the time

Because I was a boy.

Because I didn't want to appear weak.

I never mentioned the incidents afterwards because:

I feared retaliation, embarrassment and shame.

I just wanted to wake up and not think about it anymore.

I feared rejection from loved ones.

[christopherjpaige]

This week's featured dance (at Casa Franco) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn6tgpUAld8/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=3pzn628uce90

[christopherjpaige]

JSGT about....protest

I have really been holding back from posting anything besides what I am doing in my professional life. I'd be remiss as the person who I am if I did not address some things that have come across my feed. 1. Some of us feel endangered and uncomfortable in the current climate of our country for various reasons. If you have the privilege to feel comfortable and safe in the current climate of this country, enjoy that feeling and hold onto it - but understand that some of your fellow taxpaying, law abiding citizens do not or may never have had that peace of mind. 2. Protest is not unpatriotic. Disagreement with the sentiment of a protest is acceptable, but disagreeing with the ability to protest is contrary to the fabric of this nation. Upholding that right for one of us fights for that right for all of us. 3. This has always been a divided nation - it's just that there is more evidence of it for all to see. Unfortunately for some, fortunately for others, the division has not been visibly evident  depending on where on has lived. 4. Questioning authority is not unpatriotic. It is that very questioning that has produced many of our greatest moments as a country. 5. Facebook posts are not activist achievements. Armchair activism is like seeing a fire across the street and tossing water on the ground in front of you. I guess it's a start, but it's completely not useful. Exchange is great. I am heeding my own advice and I am beginning to make those strides to get involved with organizations that make change so that I can not just talk about it but be about it. 

[christopherjpaige]

This Thursday, I start my residency at Casa Franco's Latin Night. Staten Island's new home for Latin Dance. 7 pm Lesson in this week's featured dance: The Tango from Argentina 8 pm Salsa Lesson. Immediately afterwards the dance floor opens. #salsa #merengue #tango #dancelessons #latin #statenisland #Thursdaynight #events #thingstodo #dinner #dance #latinnight #christopherjpaige (at Casa Franco) https://www.instagram.com/p/BnkOGQRA3tO/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=txryzvac0zp4

[christopherjpaige]

I'm black and I'm a member of the 1%

[sondhymen]

[penis-hilton]

why is this me

[christopherjpaige]

The Regular Life

There is a  saying that goes

Small minded people are the people that worry about whether they should buy a bottle of water from the store or the vending machine and include the entire world in the conversation. This is the highlight of their day. 

Regular people regular things and worry about the same things all day. They want to talk about the weather and their insurance programs and what they bought the other day. They obsess over what they are going to eat for lunch. When this involves hours and hours, and days and days, this is the obsession of the regular people. 

I didn’t have the right way to describe my aversion to this conversation and mentality. I knew that it frustrated me and made me want to cancel any connection that had with them. I don’t have a desire to be a regular person. I don’t want your inordinately long discussions about weather, sale prices, how to cut your hair, what I think about your sister.

Is that dismissive of me? Yes. Is that what I am worried about? Absolutely not. I don’t want to ever perform in small stages.

[theyuniversity]

👨💬💬💬 Looking for words to describe a talkative/wordy person? Try “garrulous,” “loquacious,” “verbose,” “diffuse,” “effusive,” “voluble,” and “prolix.”

[christopherjpaige]

Loving. Losing. Living

I’m blogging my progress after having lost my mother. I will be including my thoughts on the process that got us there. Keep posted.

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lovinglosingliving

[thatdiva]

h/t KylanM

[christopherjpaige]

Her name will live on

Shirley Ann Morgan Paige was born on February 9, 1944. My mom was a tomboy, a sister, and then a wife, a mother, an entrepreneur, an educator in the home schooling circuit, a woman of great faith, and most of all, my Mamita, my pretty lady.

Cancer, heart failure, kidney failure, vasculitis, lupus, depression, PTSD, and panic attackes all ravaged her life but up until my last conversation with her, she was still lucid, in love with life and her kids. 

I’m mad that she never really got to live her life fully. She had five pins and a screw in her ankle that happened going to pick up my sister early from school so she wouldn’t have to stay at a Christmas party, and that severly impacted her mobility. She didn’t get a chance to enjoy her life the way that I think that she would have wanted. 

It’s been 10 days, since she passed, and it feels both like three years and 2 minutes since I have seen her. Once the funeral happens, people tend to forget that you are hurting and grieving. Eventually, it won’t be a topic of interest for anyone, unless I make it relevant. 

I haven’t figured out how yet, but I will make sure that her name lives on. 

[christopherjpaige]

[christopherjpaige]

Mom, continued...

I’ve decided that I should put together my thoughts and document my feelings. Maybe this could be something that could help other people. 

It’s been 3 days since I lost my mom. I’ve been a bit numb with periods of tears. I keep wanting to look at her picture, but I know that I will. I wanted to listen to songs that she liked, but I’m not sure that I want to do that. I struggle between feeling like I should have been there at the moment, and knowing that my mother thought me fragile enough to probably not want to have me there when she passed. She waited till my sister left the room and she let go. 

I don’t have regrets, and yet, my head keeps traveling back, thinking about what I could have done differently, and realizing that there isn’t anything else that I could have done. 

Our last day together was 12.6.2016 about 2 days before she passed. That was the day when I saw her, really struggling to breathe, worried, frantic, gasping to survive. Then the visiting nurse gave her morphine and bumex according to the doctor’s directions to calm her and allow her to breath more deeply. The face that I saw when she was struggling was the face that I saw her body when I viewed her on Thursday. The face after she was calmed was the last image of life in her body that I remember and one that I will not forget. She was somewhere between here and there. She asked me to hold her hand, and asked me to squeeze it hard. It was difficult because her hands were so cold. They were as cold as her body was on Thursday, but just there there was life in them. She has glimmers of her real self, answering questions from the visiting nurse in a lucid manner, and strong voice that I could hear from another room. She also was so out of it that she asked out loud if I had left and I was standing right there. She called me my brother’s name once. 

I do wish in a way that I had been there in her last final moments but I do believe that everything happened in a certain way for a certain reason. I’m still working to tell myself that she is not alive so that I can stop have the expectation that I will speak to her again. The most important thing is that she is not in pain anymore. I hated to see her struggle. The way that she winced at the last injection that she received confirmed to me that this wasn’t the way that she wanted to live. She outlived the expectations. In the first week in September, they expected her to only have 24 hours or so, so to outlast those expectations by 3 months makes me so proud. She would do her physical therapy with as much strength as she could muster. She tried to eat, but had no appetite - this wasn’t the life that she wanted, nor that anyone would want.

I remember her saying that when you get older, a parent ends up having their kids or other people witness their devolution, in a way, to some behaviors associated with children. She was so afraid of being incontinent in front of someone else. This fear overtook her in some ways and led to her panic attacks. Who wants to live worried, afraid, not eating, not moving, just a shell? My mom’s mind was really strong and I’m sure that if she wanted to, she could have lived more, but I believe that she had had enough. The look that she gave me on Tuesday said it all, that she loved me and loved us, and loved life, but it was too much to fight anymore. My mom always fought to stay up when I was there, and I didn’t want to prolong the inevitable. 

We had some really good times this year, and I plan to document that too. I celebrate her legacy. 

[christopherjpaige]

Goodbye, Mamita, my love,my favorite lady

December 8 2016, I said goodbye to my mother for the last time. She was gone, but I could still feel her body and felt some warmth in her legs, which contrasted the cold of the rigor mortis that set into the upper parts of her body. Truth is, I felt the beginning of that cold on the Tuesday that I had visited her. She asked me to hold her hand really tightly and turn down the TV really low. It was like she couldn’t feel me but she could hear everything. 

I could have spent more time with her, but this is what life allowed. I keep thinking back to the image that I saw, of her lifeless body, and though it gave me closure, it also makes it a little less real. I keep thinking that I am going to go see her again, I keep trying to tell myself that I witnessed the morticians take her body away and that she was cremated, and then I keep thinking about that process and wishing that I could protect her from that. I shook her, just to make sure, just to imagine that there was some eleventh hour miracle that would be accomplished by holding her or jolting her or something. I’m not ready to accept that she is dead, but I am also equally as aware that she is. 

I haven’t done anything all day but eat. I watched a little TV, but I didn’t leave the house. I cried a lot. I know that this is morbid, but I took a picture of her. I needed to allow myself to see that she was just asleep. She looked peaceful and beautiful, with her hair perfectly done and wearing the earrings that she decided to start wearing later in life. 

I know that I need to “pull myself together” but I am not ready to rush this. I want her to life forever. I’ve gotten through every family death with her, and I don’t know how to proceed without a parent. I want to sing the songs that she liked and I want to have a piece of her history as part of mine. I want to lay in her bed and pretend that this is just a bad dream that I am having when I took a nap as a child, and she put on that song “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys”

I’m rambling, but I want to record this as I feel the need to add thoughts. This is a portrait of how fractured my heart is. 

[christopherjpaige]

Good morning IG! Celebrate your choices and successes big and small, and respect those of others, even if theirs are quite different from yours. Take my positivity challenge! The word "not" is essential to our vocabulary, but it also essentially negative. Could you go one day without using the word "not"? It's a great way to think of ways to view things in terms of good and better, instead of absolute right and wrong. Example: "I don't like that" becomes "I like this option more". Tell me about it when you do! #justsomeguytalking #JSGT #affirmation #morning #instachallenge #instaquotes #instainspiration #positivity #thenotdiet #scenery #challenge

[christopherjpaige]

Let people love you in the best way that they know to express love, and learn to love yourself in the ways that no one has, or may be able. #justsomeguytalking #JSGT #affirmation #afternoon #positivity #dailyquotes #instaquotes