STILL IN SEARCH OF AN ENTRANCE

 "People are capable at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of." - Paulo Coelho

I have not been able to blog as regularly as I like because I have been … well, lazy.  Not that I would have actually called the reason “lazy” as the reason for my stretches of deep absences, but, the truth of the matter is that I did not muster the energy to write down what I was feeling.  Having a blog, a commitment to myself, is one of the hallmarks of my journaling.  Journaling forces me to slow down and analyze and digest my daily comings and goings, and clears some of the constant fog that comes with living each day.  There are times where there is a line between what I call “being conscious” and what neurotypicals mean whenever they refer to “conscious”.  And I mean by ANY state or feeling, any interpretation of what that word means.

Meditation helps me greatly.  It slows everything down for me and it allows me to ‘go through the details’ of my day and pick through the things that I need to go on.  Which leads me to something that I DO NOT think I need anymore, my once and current girlfriend.  She had a problem with her vehicle, an expensive brake issue that I had taken care of a few years ago.  But due to her negligence, the SAME THING now threatened her vehicle.  While I did not want my journal to be full of “drama”, stories of careening from one avoidable circumstance to another, I am unable to write anything without first talking about the elephant in my thoughts.

She has been in a state that was approaching failure in her affairs from the very beginning.  Yet, I was, as I have said before, taken by the way she made a first impression upon me and that was that with that.  As I got to know her, I began to see why she had remained single, as she is a mediocre homekeeper, with a tendency to knick-knack clutter and pet slovenliness.  Based on my initial assessment, I threw myself into trying to help her in all ways of the home, to no avail.  No matter how much laundry, cleaning, dinner-making, and shopping that I did, nothing improved.  She did not need someone to absorb some of the slack, she was more than ready to transfer it all off to me!  This became a point of contention thanks in part to a conversation we had after the brake repair.

With my daughter’s KT visit bearing down on me, I was at a loss for what this meant for her visit.  Getting the work done on the vehicle for my partner at this critical time in my life forced me to juggle my priorities.  While admittedly, she, herself, did not come out and ask for me to help her out, c’mon… what choice did I really have, if we were indeed to potentially share our lives together?  So what went wrong??

This is where I get a little off topic and talk more about why I have not been regular with journaling.  Omaha has been a really good place for me (relationships be damned..!) and I am very comfortable with being able to take care of myself.  But the past 5 or so years I have been languishing (LOL@Beth) as the world around me has found a steady “thrumm” to each day, almost hypnotizing me as entropy streams me towards the rather unspectacular end of my tour on this mortal coil.  While we were a couple, the constant dissonance between the life we were leading together and the life that I felt was worth changing my goals were becoming an uncrossable chasm… unless I left when I did.  

I do not know if I altered her course in life.  Were I to make a case for “no”, it would be because I think that she was headed for this path without me.  Part of my “why” for pursuing her was due to my empathy as I got to know her and her story.  Besides, if I have to “own” my choices bringing me to this experience of ennui (ooh! Another scrabble word!!) that I am now enduring, then I feel that whatever is left between us, is being left adrift, and fairly so.  After her unfair comparison to her daughter’s new boyfriend, f*ck her.  To quote my man Dres of Black Sheep, “keep your problems to yourself kid, ‘cause I gots my own”.

We are sitting here a week from hosting my darling daughter! But in even BIGGER news, my youngest daughter has tentatively reached out to me about a relationship!!  That has really gotten me stoked and once I manage to get through this patch of uncertainty that I am currently going through.  See, when I started to blog again, I wanted to avoid the dramatic distractions that were becoming more and more a part of my life, thanks to someone who did not listen, and had their own agenda that was completely opposite of what I had expected of myself.  For instance…

Whether or not KT brings her math books, I am STILL going to go to school and do maths!  Even if I fail to get a Pell Grant!!  Somehow I am going to figure that out and add to my growing character story!!!  Which brings me to one more reason I wanted to forego the typical whining of a journal… as my disease progresses, I feel more aware of how much time I have in so many ways that I do not want to waste it on dead ends or chasing ghosts from the attic of my mind.

One of the things about the continued existence of this journal is that it will continue to be an accurate barometer of where I am at in reality.  Maybe I will get a neurological test and be diagnosed with PD (cause I am feeling it in my bones) to go along with the suite of conditions that come with a traumatic brain injury.  Again, trying to avoid the self-pity and woebegone hopelessness of being lost.  After all, my life is not that dramatic and I cannot willfully drum up any drama either.   One of the things that I hope to establish by blogging is building a clearinghouse for my ideas, hopes and dreams.  As far as my last relationship experience is concerned...

BLACK MEN AND WOMEN ... GETTING ALONG LIKE CATS AND DOGS...

Over a month ago I caught an entry on the Surviving Dating blog that asked a very penetrating question—“Are MostBlack Men Sociopaths?”  The comments went back and forth, offering up their own personal testimony as confirmation for why their view is right, as if that is confirmation enough… “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED TO ME!”  That seemed to be a rally point in the comment section for most of the women.  Of course, the men countered with “I AIN’T THAT WAY” in their comments and mainly gave examples of how black women seem to flock to the kind of men that possess the traits that were being condemned in the post.

Now I only half-follow the blog because I think of it the same way I think of Faux News.  Whatever story she has to share already has a definitive bias without any explanation as to why that is.  But the notion of ‘what is wrong with black men’ is one that in the black community that gains little traction when it comes to discussing the problems in the relationships between black men and women.

As a young boy trying to make sense of how relationships were supposed to work, the framework was essentially the same across the board.  Men had certain responsibilities and women had their responsibilities, and if both parties were able to fulfill their part of the bargain, then the relationship works out.  Thanks to being allowed to watch liberal amounts of ‘That Girl’ and Norman Lear comedies, along with watching the ebb and flow of boy-girlfriend relations in my observable vicinity, one of the first things that I remember telling myself is ‘don’t do what doesn’t work’.

Treating black women with respect has definitely been a problem since my generation.  Black men, it seems, have colluded among themselves to do all that they can to degrade and slander black women, treating them with all the disrespect that they can muster.  In fact, it has almost become an industry within the community, and has been exported to where the image of black women in society is as negative of any demographic you can come up think of.  All the while that black men participate in this exploitation by perpetuating the same anti-social behaviors that fit the clinical diagnosis of sociopathy, black women remain among the staunchest defenders of the black male-female relationship model, even at the expense of their own personal fulfillment.

In one of her replies, the hostess of the blog Deborrah Cooper uses a crap made-up statistic that 99 out of 100 brothers could be called ‘sociopathic’ and the one good brother who doesn’t fit the DSMV diagnosis of sociopath is with a white women (what about the ‘undercover brothers’?  She left them out… sheesh!).  But her larger point, which I take as a defense of the choices that black women make in men, that the dating pool is filled with sociopaths is credible.

To me, the issues that surround black men and their fail in relationships aren’t new and they add unnecessary complications all relationships between brothers and sisters.  When you begin to solve for external reasons such as racism and the attendant problems that stem from it, I think that it comes down to being able to fulfill ones ‘natural role’ and living up to those expectations.  Basic functions of responsible behavior in relationship seem to be too much to ask from many black men and that aggravates the problem that are faced by both as an ethnic group.

Unlike the Hispanic culture of ‘machismo’, there is little honor in the behavior of black men towards their women and I think that it is more mainstream within.  It is very nihilistic and it has toxic fallout that affects how black girls develop into black women.

The post’s title comes from my ex-wife.  It was something that she would say repeatedly when engaged in one of her many diatribes with other equally disillusioned young black women (never mind that she HAD a husband… that is a different conversation!) about the state of their relationships with men.  Each one had a story and for me it all boiled down to what should have been covered in ‘freshmen relationships class’ in high school.

A huge issue is one of trust… and not only when it comes to fidelity.  Can black women trust their black men to lead them through difficult times or to be able to provide a source of security and comfort, and to value black women and their contributions in a relationship?  These are areas that black men (myself included) have consistently failed at, and it really impacts how black women see relationship.  Do they see all men in the light that my ex-wife does, and they feel that they have to keep their guard up when they commit to be in love?

There is even a big difference in how each sex regards the negative stereotypes that they are saddled with.  Many sister-girls are strident in their denials of being a ‘Jubilee’ or a castrating, man-loathing woman.  But the brothers embrace and still aim to be like the caricatures that fuel the rap music industry, and expect that kind of behavior to be codified as ‘authentically black’.

AND WE CAN ONLY HOPE THE INFECTION DOESN’T RUN TOO DEEP

I don’t think that the black relationship is in danger of flatlining but it does not look good.  The problem is not with ‘nearly all’ as Deborrah asserts but the large group among the groups, that there is a plurality among the different types as well as an absolute count among the different valuations of archetypes that are caricatures.  Not all black men are dogs… and not all black women are Jubilee’s… but when it comes to the former, enough of them are and that spoils the entire bunch, it seems.