full circle

written in my journal at age 12

"...if he's light-skinned, he must have brown eyes with thick eyelashes, nice lips, and be really, really smart...oh, and his first name must start with a 'k...'"

because you know, i had my idiotic moments...
___________________

i don't know what made me look him up.

maybe it was because ever since i'd taken this new job with a university down the street from where we both attended high school, i've been cautiously treading down memory lane, my adult's insight the light guiding me through the morass of my adolescent past.

maybe it was because my brother and i had just discussed him maybe a week beforehand while reminiscing about all of the "yella" boys i crushed on in elementary school. (turns out every last 'boyfriend' i had from that era was some varying shade of either 'yella' or 'durty red').

maybe it was because i was sitting in my apartment last week asking myself if the ties had been permanently severed between me and the people who populated my 'wonder years'.

i really have no idea.

all i know is that i was sitting there on a networking site typing his name into the "search" field with that "i wonder what he's up to" inquiry cascading from a suddenly active volcano of curiosity. when his vital stats popped up on the screen i blinked in shock and stared. in fact, i was sitting there for about thirty seconds, the sentence "no friggin way...NO FRIGGIN WAY!" whispered in pubescent giggles through my mind over and over again.

i actually felt kinda foolish. i mean really...i'm on the other side of thirty and i'm sitting here at my desk at work damn near squealing because i'd found the guy i dated for all of a few weeks back in elementary school.

thing is, this was no ordinary joe. no, this is the guy i sighed over in elementary school, asked about through high school and not quite so nonchalantly inquired about during college. he was the guy i wrote about years later as an adult from memories held intact like dried flowers pressed within the pages of my mind.

he was the prototype against whom all future 'yella brothas' were measured.

now don't get it twisted...i wasn't sitting by the phone waiting for him to call me for decades or anything sad as all that (although when we broke up i swore i'd never get over him with all the melodrama a nine year old could drum up). i actually dated guys all colors of the spectrum from "midnight hued" to "when he gets cold his skin turns blue hued" and i've fucked my share of the male population of the eastern coast of the united states of america. however, when it's all said and done, the brothas just the right shade of sun-soaked saharan sand always made my heart trip just a bit more than the others and it truly began with this cat. it's as if i saw a little bit of him in every last one of the subsequent ones. i guess that's what comes from the first love that didn't occur from afar.

did that make me biased? shit, who really cares?!?

anywho, my breath was squeezing through my lips in a nervous whistle when i clicked "send" and sent him a request for me to add him to my list of contacts. i got mad with myself then. shit, i haven't seen this cat in over twenty years. in twenty years i'd been through all kinds of shit...rape, college, abortion, miscarriage, marriage, separation...in other words i'd lived a life and then some, so why the fuck was i sitting here getting all nervous/giddy about it?

i think there's still a little of that adolescent girl residing inside of me...

the one who checked her breath to make sure it didn't stink before she talked to someone

who checked the mirror to make sure her glasses weren't crooked

who slathered her lips with petroleum jelly so her lips never looked dry and cracked (although they did look like hamhocks drowning in their own lard, but i digress)

the one whose smiles were crooked and covert, timid glee leaking from lips only after a pointed joke punctured her insecurity

her laughter was silent because she was afraid she was laughing inappropriately and she thought the sound of her unbridled glee was too uncouth for the environ outside of her bedroom...

when i look in the mirror these days i almost forget that little girl, but whenever i step back into the time when she made up most of me, i have to stop myself from outwardly cringing. it's almost as if all of those emotions were shallowly buried, easily exposed with the lightest of tread across their surfaces.

so what made me look him up when he comes directly from that time i try not to think about?

in the end, i think it's cuz my mind just got tired of running away from that era. it saw that the past wasn't as traumatizing as it intially believed it to be and perhaps i wasn't the only one who thought her childhood was a time for constant discomfort within her skin.

maybe it's cuz now i'm old enough to realize and appreciate that little girl for who she was and how she contributed to who i am...

the woman willing to voice her opinion even when it's unpopular

the woman who is pretty damn comfortable with doing and being on her own and not 'waiting' for someone before she can 'live her life'

the woman willing to try new things and not censor her movements because it's not in line with 'the image she's supposed to project at this stage in her life'

the woman who pulls the scabs of her vulerabilities from her spirit and doesn't hesitate even though she knows that by doing so she'll be exposing herself to the infection of sometimes painful self-reflection

the woman who laughs long and loud and with genuine joy

the woman who makes damn sure she practices good dental hygiene and carries a tube of chapstick on her at all times cuz one just never knows...


so after the talk with myself, reminding myself that all pieces of my past created the finished puzzle of this singular person i am now, i calmed my ass down.

i mean, he's just a regular brotha, shit.






written in my blog on april 16, 2008

"oh.my.god. he actually said i was smoking hot! i think my face is gonna crack from this big ass grin on it..."

because evidently idiotic moments have no age limitations...