Back to myself....

I sit here, close my eyes, and inhale myself back into my lungs.

My lungs expand and I feel myself seeping through pores and circulating back into my veins: first down to my toes then upwards, stabilizing the erratic beats of my heart, and finally (and most importantly) waking up my brain.

See I exhaled myself too quickly. All for embraces and kisses that dulled my senses and left my mind and body withdrawing from the effects of infatuation.

Why didn't I learn to guard my heart? Probably because for so long I wore it dangling from my sleeves hoping that somebody would love me. So blinded was I by thoughts of being apart of an idea that I couldn't see that in reality I am already loved.

See God loves me and I LOVE ME! And that's all I need.

Mr. Big

"If you can get a girl to smile, you can get her to take her clothes off."
~Uncle Charles

I admit that at first I didn't want him because I was being shallow. I met him at the grocery store as he was coming out and I was going in and he stopped me because he recognized that I was in the sister organization to his. I was looking tore-up from the floor up!!! I rushed through the whole encounter embarrassed about how I looked. Later my friend Jessica said "Your frat brother was kinda cute" but I couldn't recall his face, I just remember that he was BIG. I nodded in agreement and tried not to think about it because I thought I would never see him again....wrong lol.

I had gotten his number to send to my other frat brothers because he was new in town and didn't know anyone outside of work. I sent him a text to let him know that he should be contacted soon. My text didn't say "Hey this is Moe, I'm horny come holla at cha girl!" No it was "Hi this is Monique from HEB, I sent everyone your number. Expect some calls." I don't see anything suggestive in these words plus the embarrassment of our meeting was still fresh on my mind, but something told me he was going to try and talk to me and sure enough he did...And I was annoyed. Again my annoyance was due to my shallowness and I immediately projected on to blank space his face held in my mind cross eyes, a couple chins, and unsightly facial hair. Plus I thought he was gay because he looked at my shoes: that could've been because he works as the manager of a shoe department at the mall but if you're me you don't let things like that slide. Unfortunately, this is usually the case, and I thought "Why are hideously deformed (or mentally disabled or GAY!) men always attracted to me??" (Aaah!)

So we're texting back and forth, my one word responses followed by another one of his inquiries., when the worst thing that could ever happen HAPPENED!! HE MADE ME SMILE!! An uncle of mine once told me "If you can get a girl to smile, you can get her to take her clothes off." I looked at him at the time like he was an ass, but after further observation I have found that it is kind of true. All women are looking for someone to make them smile, and when you smile you have all these chemicals released to your brain that distort your vision and next thing you know you're waiting on this bastard to call you so you can hear his voice again and you want to be held by him again because his embrace is so strong and you want him to kiss you again because his lips are so soft and his tongue is amazing and you want him laying between your legs again with his head resting on your stomach!!!....... Not that this is what happened to me.....But you get the point.....

Somehow I went from not wanting him to craving his presence. It could be that I'm just bored (school is out and I don't have to go back to work til the 5Th and I'm in this deserted college town without a car) and our first date...at his house...ended so well...I didn't sleep with him....well I didn't have sex with him but we fell asleep together. He wasn't like I imagined him when I finally stopped giving him the run around and said yes to a date. Yea he was BIG but in a sexy way (and in more ways than one) and his eyes weren't crossed (Yes!!) just deep and dark with a hint of false innocence, and now I'm caught up in him trying to unravel the lines of his snare. It's not that I don't want to be in a relationship, it's that I'm scared of losing myself in those eyes, those embraces, those kisses... I have a tendency to do that with men.

We went from texting to talking because my phone screen broke, but now we haven't talked like we did in the beginning. We would talk on the phone til like 4 in the morning and we both had to be at work at 8. Now it's short little conversations that leave me wanting more. I'm fighting this urge to call him and "Do my own thing" like my friend Jazzy has advised. She says I need to focus on myself, which is a duh! but it's hard when there's nothing to do. So I'm going to start exercising more and doing more spa days and that's when he'll pop back up. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," she says with a smirk because she has never seen me like this.

Damn his gift of gab! Damn his swagger. I know that in the beginning relationships are games and I have to keep playing 'till....I don't know. I guess I keep playing until I find out he's an ass or we live happily ever after, but I'm trying to fall somewhere in between all that bull. I just want him to call me and not worry that it's over before it has truly began.....Is that too much to ask?

Penny

A Penny for Your Thoughts

Car rides

I remember these car rides with my cousins, auntie, and Mother. They would take us out to these secluded places and turn off all the lights in the car. We, my cousins and I, would huddle close to eachother in the backseat excited by the adventure we were own, but scared of the unknown. Then another car would come up. Turn off all of its lights and either my mother or aunt would go get in the car and stay there for a long time. "SSshhhh be quiet!" They would say and we would hold our breathes in obedieance. Later I would find out that they were sleeping with men in those cars...actually I think I always knew. So began my confusion on men and sex....

Missed Call

Why is it so hard to return a phone call? You might as well not call at all if all I'm going to do is see that it's you and freeze completely. Hesitating, saying I'm gonna call you later. NO, the battle is in getting the nerve to even hit send and see the numbers turn into a name that represents you because there is the possibility of you taking me out of my misery. This is what I asked for right? So why is it so hard to return a phone call when all I want is to hear you say my name? I'm not one to play games but this game of wait-and-see is torturing me...I asked for you...now here you are....and here I go again retreating from the chances that God provides in our lives. Returning your call does not mean that you will be my cure all, this does not mean you will be the love of my life, it only means that I am showing you enough decency to return your call after you've called me.

Hypergraphia

I have finally defined my passion, I am a writer!
I know you think you know this but you don't understand the power that circulates through my body when I have a pen in my hand, or pencil, or chalk, or a rock, or a stick, or make up, or anything that makes a mark on a surface.
When I was little, I would write on the walls of our house "My name is Monique. I live in CKT with my grandmother. I am __ years old" over and over all over the house. These were my first lines when I had only a few words. I wrote all that I knew. I had to write.
There was a woman in church who would read poems and she wielded just as my power to sway as the preacher. I wanted that power! And I have it.
I am powerful beyond measure and writing is my light.
Do you understand?
Without friends, without being a college student, without being a Zeta, without wearing a mask of false confidence I am a writer, I am a poet, I am a thinker....
If I lose everything tomorrow that is used to externally define me I will still be a writer.
I think about writing all the time: on the bus, at clubs, during class, before I sleep, when I wake up in the morning.
Without paper I will write on walls, on my skin, or dig into cement.
Without ink I will write with mud, my blood, or on the imaginary chalkboard.
If I lose my hands I will write with my toes in the sand.
Do you understand?
I am a writer. This is my first truth....