Growing Older Not Wiser

My mother.  My mother is both free-thinking and liberal and the most childish, emotionally stunted person.  She asks me for $60, I give her $20 right away.  Later she says let's make it $100.  WTF.  I'm on unemployment.  I get less than $300 a week and have a $400 per month car note.  Are you serious?  Today I give her $30 more because that's all I can afford to part with.  I have a life, it takes money to socialize.  She comes in my room inquiring about the balance, irritated that I can't pony up the rest.  She sees I'm doing homework, reading at that.  She asks me if a book she brought with her is mine and I say no.  She continues to say, you must read this book, if you don't you won't be a good English teacher.  What?  I've had to deal with her manipulative, overwhelming personality my entire life.  This is why I can be so stubborn when I decide on something, because I'm hyper-defensive.  As I've matured, I've tried to be more communicative and less angry with my mother but she makes that virtually impossible.  I tell her to put the book in my closet on my bookshelf.  She does so begrudgingly.  I try to express my frustrations with her manipulative tones.  She avoids my confrontation, takes the book back and closes the door.  How am I supposed to be emotionally well-balanced with her as my model?  I feel like her love is a blessing and at once the most detrimental force in my development.  How am I to contend with her?  Is the answer as easy as separating our lives, our living situation?  I doubt it, she's my mother no matter the geography.  I doubt therapy is something she would participate in.  I can't even focus on my schoolwork right now.  I have to address this. 

All Matter

Bilal Oliver's new album Air Tight's Revenge is incredible.  I've been living off of First Born Second and his unreleased Love for Sale all of these years and finally his new music has arrived and breathed new life into me!  My favorite song "All Matter" asks, with yearning, "what is love?," answers descriptively "cool on the outside hot in the middle...you ain't even gotta try, all you gotta do is realize."  It's all matter.  That's what life boils down to.  Things composed of matter, colliding, interacting, reacting, loving.  On to that oh so elusive subject - love.  I feel like LL Cool J these days, needing love, hearing my conscience call.  Have I ever known love?  Have I ever held it in my heart and loved someone unconditionally?  I doubt it.  I doubt that romantic love is some latent ability that activates when you encounter your soul's mate.  Highly doubt it.  Instead I believe it is an accumulation of lessons you learn from significant others.  This is how you should love me.  This is not.  And so on.  My lack of relationships has me in a lurch.  Not enough lessons learned, which impedes my desire to learn with anyone new!  What a mess.  A lonesome mess.  My heart keeps telling me that I will know when someone is worth the agony, the trials of being taught to love.  So I will date with trepidation, and one day fall with my eyes wide open, into the most informative experience of my life.  Here's hoping. 

P.S.  Katie and I are going to see Bilal perform at BB King's tonight!  It's going to be an amazing day I hope I have the wherewithal to blog about it!

Goodbye Summer, Come Again!

          Haiti

My feet and South Beach

KMack and I in BK

Tomorrow is the 3rd day of my freshman year of college.  No it's not déjà vu, I'm 27 and a freshman once again :)  This summer was incredible.  There was hardly time for lazy days and lounging around, I was in the streets!  A lot of lovely evenings were spent in BK with my homies Katie and Steph, strutting through midtown, chillen in Prospect Park, drinking at the Beer Garden or Habana Outpost.  Met a nice guy out there too.  June the big deal was my Hawaii trip, July was all about Brooklyn, but August - August was international!  First my Uncle Glenn took me and my cousins to this awesome amusement park, Knoebels in PA for the 1st weekend of the month to celebrate me going back to school.  Great times!  One of the few situations where I could assume the role of a kid again!  Then the Monday I returned me and mom hit the road for...Miami!  We road-tripped and made it there Wednesday evening, with a kitten in the car!  Mom is still crazy, nothing changing there.  3 days straight I drove to South Beach and lay comatose underneath the summer sun, bronzing and basking in the fabulosity of it all, even had an impromptu lunch with a friend from Jersey.  Bought way too many beach towels but that's another story.  That Saturday, the 13th, we hopped a plane to...wait for it...haven't been there in 6 years...my mom was born there...that's right...HAITI!  It wasn't the wreckage and misery CNN would lead you to believe.  I believe that every time I visit Haiti I'm seeing it with different eyes.  I went often as a child, then at 10, 18, 21, and now at 27.  So many life experiences and so much maturity divide those landmarks.  So each-time is a first time.  Mom and I went to visit my grandma Monday and stayed till Wednesday.  The heat and mosquitoes made it a long, long, visit.  We were in Haiti 6 days total but I really want to go back next year, it's a part of me and I always feel a renewed sense of self and purpose when I come back to the states.  Best.  Summer.  Ever...so far ;)