#pwblgposts

[pollywannablackgirl]

yal know the “girl you’re thicker than a bowl of oatmeal” gif lmao

[pollywannablackgirl]

my favorite thing for the last few months has been nibblerz from zaxby’s dipped in hot honey mustard. i literally think about it at least once a day. not much to look forward to other than zaxby’s these days

[pollywannablackgirl]

just needed to vent really quick. 

I feel awful. I went out yesterday to go see this guy that I hook up with occasionally, despite all the warnings to practice social distancing. 

It’s not like I didn’t know that I was doing something wrong, I just rationalized it. I’ve been running errands for my family, going to stores and banks, so I figured that if it was okay for me to be around all those crowds, then what’s so wrong with hanging out with one person at their apartment? 

I think I feel guilty mostly because the likelihood of transmission feels higher because I had sex. When I’m running errands, I do run into people, but not intimately. I make sure to wash my hands vigorously when I return home. But me and this guy literally exchanged fluids, so if either of us have the virus then we definitely transmitted it to each other. 

And I’m self-isolating right next door to my grandma. My entire family interacts with each other all the time. I feel so selfish because I could be putting her at risk. What a shitty thing to do.

So, I’m just feeling a lot of feelings now. Since I’m in a house full of people, I need to be extra careful to keep myself and my area clean. I was already planning to go back to Auburn next week for a couple days, but maybe I should stay longer? I think the CDC is suggesting that you self-quarantine for 14 days if you suspect that you might have been exposed to the virus. That’s a long time to stay at my apartment by myself, but that might be the best choice right now. Idk. I’m going to talk to Nakia about it and see what she thinks. 

I hate that I feel so guilty. I feel ashamed for the choices I’ve made. There’s also some shame about making sexual choices for myself that are all wrapped up in this, so it’s just a shame storm right now. 

The only defense that I have against shame right now is to talk about it. Writing this out has been a good first step. I’ll talk to my sister about it more later today. 

[pollywannablackgirl]

I get crushes so easily. I like being able to exist in the in-between that comes with having crushes. Like there’s me, there’s you, and there’s this space called possibility. 

And you can do whatever you want with that. You can dream in it, you can ignore it. You can pursue it. But the best thing about a crush is the anonymity, which means there’s really no one to hold me accountable for what I do with that space. Because to my knowledge, you don’t know. So no one can tell me that I have to bridge that space to make it into anything more than pure possibility. 

And with a crush, because there’s no accountability, there’s no responsibility. I can just project all of my hopes and dreams of love onto you without being responsible for your needs. You’re not responsible for mine. I feel like I’m stealing from you. I’m stealing a silhouette of your love. 

I get to try on love with you, and return it. 

I feel a little guilty, keeping this secret to myself. I feels like lying on top of such possibility. Especially because we know each other so well, and we always have. I feel like staying loyal to our friendship means not disturbing the atmosphere. To admit to this means to potentially crack the foundation of this friendship that we’ve allowed to building over the years. It won’t destroy the foundation necessarily, but It could blemish it. And I’m not sure if the foundation is strong enough, which is difficult for me to admit. 

But that brings me back to this lie that I’m telling. I’m pretending that being with you affects me on just this one plane, when the reality is, experiencing you touches me on different levels. So when I talk to you, when you share yourself with me, I think I’m storing this in a different part of my heart than you are. Maybe? That’s what’s so confusing to me about this whole thing, the spectrum between friendship and something more. Because what if this all exists on the same plane and we’re just standing on opposite ends. 

[pollywannablackgirl]

12-12-19

I spoke to Lamaria on the phone yesterday about being so bored now that classes were done for the semester (I’m in grad school now btw) and we ended up talking about how my life isn’t what I thought it would be at this point (even though I’m actually in grad school now). 

She asked me what I liked to do. 

And I said that I didn’t know. 

I said that being broke and being anxious had combined forces to limit my ideas of what I liked. Of what I considered to be fun. Like, my current situation wouldn’t allow me to think of one thing. 

And I know that she was trying to comfort me and give me ideas, but by the end of our conversation I felt so sad. I felt like I wasn’t doing enough, like I wasn’t trying hard enough to not be miserable. 

I can distinctly remember two days since I’ve been here that were “good” because of being in Auburn. The first day was when Tarauna Burke came to campus. The second was when I had a really good first meeting with my advisor that made me feel excited for my future as a counselor. Every other day here has been at best, bearable, and at worst, totally miserable. I will say, the miserable days have more bearable days between them now than they did at the begging of he semester. That’s an improvement, I guess. 

I went back to some of my old Tumblr posts dating back to when I was in high school. It was kind of sad, for reasons that I’ll write about later, but it was also interesting to see my patterns of being. And through reflecting on those posts, I realized that I have slipped back into one of my old patterns, survival mode. 

This isn’t new, I know that I do this. I just wasn’t aware of how being in this place was limiting me from expressing myself and just enjoying my life. For the past few months I’ve put all of my effort towards maintaining my class and work schedule, finishing my assignments on time, eating at least three meals a day, drinking water, exercising occasionally, and talking to my friends and family. I was so worried about falling into a depression that I tried to conserve all of my energy. I couldn’t give too much of myself to anything. It was good enough to just make it through the day. 

This year was the first time in many years that I did not resolve to attempt to lose weight. In fact, I resolved to make myself bigger, to take up more space. And as I reflect on the past year, I feel like I have accomplished that in some ways. Through speaking up for myself more in my friendships, through being honest with the people that I care about, through being honest about my (lack of faith).

But in some ways, I feel like I’ve made myself smaller just to survive being in another white ass, racist ass, homophobic ass place. And think that I’m just afraid to use the energy that I would need to express myself because I know I’ll need that energy to keep my self when the racism and homophobia of it all try to beat me down. 

That’s what it is. It took me three days of writing this to finally put my finger on it, but I’ve figured it out now.

If I were to make myself vulnerable to the possibility of enjoying this place, to possibly finding something that I love here, then I open myself to more harm and disappointment when this place inevitably hurts me. So I keep myself small, I keep myself close to myself and nothing else, to prevent myself from getting hurt. 

...I’m doing a cost-benefit analysis in my head right now. I’m asking myself, “Is there something great enough and beautiful enough for me to possibly find here that would make pursuing it worth the risk of being hurt?”

[pollywannablackgirl]

here are some article topics that I want to come back to

Losing my faith as a formerly devout black Christian woman

Surviving my first semester of grad school (ptl 🙌🏿)

surviving my first semester of grad school cont.: me at another white ass institution

Navigating blackness and fatness

Prioritizing romantic love

Deportation and family separation as tv show plotlines

Dismantling fatphobia and still having the desire to lose weight

EXISTENTIALISM 😅

*edit

when your town/city betrays you

[pollywannablackgirl]

shout out to me for making it to another mother’s day without becoming a mom

[pollywannablackgirl]

im trying to say more, express my ideas more.