There's something about my attitude that's all wrong. Let me give a good example:
When I was in the eighth grade, there was a contest mid-year to see who could write the best stuff to read at our eighth grade graduation. We were poor, and this was back when kids like me were killing one another over price-inflated sneakers. I didn't kill anybody, of course. I was just subject to that kind of shit, that kind of fear, because it was all around me, everywhere.
What I did was read, and my "mommy" braided my hair in four braids like a little kid, and I didn't fit in and by this time I was relatively cool with that already. Such was just the way for me. Didn't really understand it. Just was. It was go crazy or accept. I chose to accept.
Anywho, I wrote several things for that graduation. And then I forgot about them. I ended up leaving school two weeks early for various reasons. I didn't think I was going to graduation. However, my mother and grandmother got together and got me the prettiest pink dress anyone ever saw, my first pair of heels--short one's, but heels nonetheless, and I got those four braids done in a style that the girls around me were wearing. I showed up for graduation day out the clear blue. No one expected me. We wrote no letters and signed no forms--just showed up at the high school and went to the auditorium.
I remember feeling really weird all dressed up. From jeans and t-shirts to breasts and heels in what seemed to me at least to be thirty seconds. The boys treated me like they'd never seen me before. The same boys that had been throwing shit at me all year all of a sudden were so very helpful. But... more important than that--more life lesson-y--is the moment when I walked into those big alien auditorium doors, never having been there before, not knowing where I was supposed to be going, tottering on those little pink heels in the stage lit darkness...
...and hearing ...
"G" is for graduation...it's finally here.
"R" is for Room 101 where we spent our final year ...
I can't remember the rest of it. I just thought: "Hey, I fuckin' WROTE that..."
And I didn't win the contest and no one told me they were going to use it or any of the other stuff I heard that day as the boys helped me get were I was trying to go with a kindness that I didn't even know they possessed as many spit balls as I pulled out of those braids during the course of the year. Again and again that day, I heard my words ring out over that auditorium. Every thing I'd written, they'd used. Every word. I wrote that graduation.
I never got a thank you. I never got a 'nice job'. Hell, I never even got told they were going to use my shit at all. Had I not just shown up, I would never have known. Ms. Johnson was my homeroom teacher and her niece, Tiffany, won the contest and was the best, the smartest and most talented. Damnable the things lurking around in one's subconscious, eh? Names. Places. Shit you thought you forgot until nights like these.
Imagine that. And then imagine going through it about a majillion more times.
I suppose I'm telling this story because I'm hot-ish and sticky-ish and my landlord is an annoying creeper of epic proportions...and I'm just generally annoyed at the moment.
But, mostly, I was just thinking about the silence and how very, borishly, familiar it is.
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On the flip side, playing Sims 4 legacy, paused, because I can not allow my sexy sim to get old. He's got plenty of kids though. I think six now. And always hunting for more people to impregnate. His oldest son is pretty sweet though, even if he's kind of bad, and has fallen for a hot piece of ass he has no intention of cheating on.
Has this young Sim found the love his father brushes away so callously?
Stay tuned for the next exiting episode.
Okay... not really. I will though. I think I created the roguish thot just to see what he would do in the face of real love. And it's his son, so, he can't just dismiss him. Or that relationship. Thus far, it just seems to be annoying the shit out of him.
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Poor pathetic kind honorable noble decent good beautiful sad heroic Chelsea Manning
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Saw the headline: "Another black man killed..." and just looked away. Beginning to sound like "Another day" " Another sky is blue...". How fucked up is that? What kind of monster am I becoming from the inside out?
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