An Ode to my 20s….

Before starting this blog let me make the PSA now. Nothing that I will discuss or talk about is aimed at anybody specific. These are my experiences, names retracted and other hinting characteristics, and no shade intended to be thrown at anyone. So, if you would choose to be offended, that would be between you and the God you serve. Amen?

Friends. What they really are vs. what I thought they were. It wasn’t until the 27th year of my life here on Earth that I even actually took the time to truly evaluate mine. At the time, if asked, I would have begun to rant and rave about the friends that I had. I would even talk about how my relationships look across my family. And if I trusted you, I would tell you about my love life too. I was an open book, to this day that fact still remains. I would rather tell you before you would assume anything about me. If I did it, I’ll own up to it. I’ve always been able to accept fault, even if slow to it at first, I own up to my own shit.

In order for me to be able to bring this full circle it would be good for you to be able to understand the pattern. Now somethings in my past I’ll never speak of again. Either you were there for it or you missed it. It’s some discretion that I am forced to keep because at the end of the day my character means more to me than whatever character flaws that the said individuals may have displayed against me. Basically, ion air out dirty laundry no matter how dirty people may play. I am a FIRM believer in reaping the seeds that you sow. I’ve experienced enough based off of my own merit, so the last thing I’m going to do is purposely taint my own future. Message.

I was 19 years old. It was the summer after my freshmen year in college. The year was a disaster looking back on it, but at the time I thought I was LIVING. THEE. LIFE. You couldn’t have told me that the lesson I Iearned that summer would continue to shape the dynamics of the relationships that I would call my own moving forward, but it did. To cut out the pleasantries, I told a friend some stuff that I overheard when I was supposed to be “sleep” one afternoon while visiting my boyfriend at the time. I told said friend the stuff I heard because I felt like she needed to know. Well it backfired. My then boyfriend, denied the whole thing happened and later said, “I didn’t know you wanted me to tell her the truth.” In hindsight, I should have known then that it wasn’t going to last much longer, but nonetheless me and this friend did NOT speak for the entire summer.

Before returning back to campus that Fall, we had a conversation and decided to let it be water under the bridge, but that moment taught me two lesson that I would continuously learn in my 20s. 1. When someone shows you who they are the first time believe them. 2. Not everything meant to be said needs to be said. And I’ll throw this one in for free 3. Does it even matter at the end of the day? Baby. Listen. If I would have adhered to those three simple life lessons that God so graciously allowed me to see at 19, the years 20–29 would have been so much of a breeze. Now to this day, me and said friend have never had a falling out since the incident, she’ll probably read this and be like WTF I forgot all about that. But she taught me something.

One, she gave me grace. If I haven’t learned anything else, as it relates to self-care, it’s to give myself the grace to forgive who I was when I needed to be. Ion know about yall, but I have done some REALLY REALLY REALLY embarrassing shit. Like I mean, just tf embarrassing, but I have to accept the fact that, in that moment, I thought it was okay, and I had justified my thoughts with actions. If you know me, you know ion do NOTHING unless I want to do it, or you get it passed me. But it’s the stuff that I thought was okay to accept that used to keep me up at night. It literally took an encounter with God to give me the peace to be able to rest in the fact that it happened, and I survived it. Now before yall think I had some man beating on me down here, that definitely was NOT the case. But I did allow him to abuse me emotionally for years. But again, we’ll get into it.

Now I won’t go through each year and talk about every unfortunate thing that happened from 20 until the time I finish this blog, but I do want to shed some light on a few situations that stood out to me as I started to do the necessary healing, I needed to be the woman I am today. So, friends, relationships and spirituality. I’ll break it down into categories to make it easy to follow and we’ll wrap this thing up with a huge conclusion on what I learned in it all. I know you’re thinking, “that was a long ass introduction!” But guess what, you gon read it, because you’re interested, now shut up and learn something lol!

No shade, no tea, but I have had some HORRIBLE friends. Like if I would have asked God for worst friends in some scenarios, ion think I could have even gotten worse than what I’ve had. Now. In the same breath, I have had the fortunate blessing of being able to recognize the true roots in my life, even for just the season, and I appreciate those who stood solid when I needed them and never folded on me. But to the rest of them niggas, with all due respect, FUCK YOU. And I don’t say that from a bitter place, that’s from a really healthy place. And the therapist in me understands that you can say that and mean it and not have the slightest ounce of hate in your heart for those people, but I said what tf I said.

It was a few months into my twenty year to realize I didn’t like a lot about me. I didn’t then know how to vocalize how or why I felt the way I did, but there I was unhappy. I thought that if I created the life, I wanted that I would be able to fill the void that I felt. I was 29 years old by the time I realized, I can’t make ANYTHING happen that isn’t meant for me. The frustrating reality that God’s timing isn’t your timing may be the hardest part of healing your 20s. Thinking about how many forced relationships I made last FOR YEARS because I wanted to be able to write the perfect story of me and my friends, but we aren’t perfect. I put so many different relationships on life support and I was the only one fighting.

At 25 years old I understood, thoroughly, for the first time the concept of being someone’s friend, but them not being yours. I was going through the hardest year of my life thus far, and often times I feel like life hasn’t bounced back since that year in a lot of ways to be honest. That year was the year that made me have the tough conversation with myself, that often, I was the problem. Yep. It was me. I was the toxic friend. I had thought I was the rock to so many, but was I actually the weight holding them back from their truest potential? One of the hardest roads I walked, but I had to walk it alone.

That year I was stripped, in so many ways, from the comforts that I had learned. Almost finished with my master’s program, I was slowly feeling like the support I had built over the years had diminished. People met rather from church growing up, high school, or college, were starting to disappear out of my life. The people who would know EVERYTHING about me were becoming strangers and there was nothing that I could do to fix it. This was tough for me. I hadn’t yet accepted my “Fixer Complex” and thought surely there was a way that I could “fix” it. But that was the thing, I couldn’t fix it. Some relationships were just broken, and I had to accept that. But how?

In my teens, I felt voiceless. I felt like I couldn’t or well didn’t have the vocabulary to be able to truly articulate the rage I truly felt. I was enraged because I just wanted to be like everybody else, but I was set apart, now I know what I was set apart for, but then, I was pissed. The crowds I desperately wanted in to, rejected me and being the token black girl at a predominately white high school I hated how I looked. This was the era of the introduction of social media. Sex sold but sold ODEE from 2005–2009. So, I also dealt with the hate I had for my own body as the other girls my age was a size 2 as I stood statuesque at a size 12. I felt like a whale, but I also had parents that told me I was hottest thing smoking, so an internal conflict grew inside of me.

I also didn’t fit the stereotype of the girl that needed a mentor. Because of the perception that I was a leader, no one ever really checked out for the leader. I had friends who had mentors, but I just had me, no shade to my parents, but I didn’t want to vent about them to them lol. But I wasn’t afforded that option. The wolves in sheep’s clothing that pretended to be a safe place only would transform themselves into a sponge to regurgitate every word I said back to my parents. I hated adults but I didn’t really fit in with people my own age. I withdrew and had friends that were WAY OLDER than me. I never had a trauma story that I need to confess now, but it did prepare me for situations I wasn’t yet ready to face, and it was too much for someone 16, 17, and even 18 to handle.

So, by the time I got into my 20s I had grown accustomed to have a terrible ass attitude. I came off mean because I didn’t want anybody to get close. Because if they knew that I cared, would they try to take advantage of me too? So, I had a wall up. I had a crew and a few associates, but I didn’t have much else. So, at 27,28 trying to be the “nice girl” after spending years being and being labeled the “mean girl” I had a hard time accepting the fact that I wouldn’t have women lined around the block to be my friend. Now some stuff I earned. I would snap on anybody. I wanted everybody to know, in the words of Cardi B, “be careful of me.” This false exterior didn’t show my truest intent and the truest forms of my heart, so I don’t honestly believe I met my fullest potential with friends.

It also doesn’t help being loyal to a fault. I could have 99 reasons to cut you off, but I’ll still hold on to that 1 reason why I should keep you, because I honestly do value and honor relationships. I understand that it’s a blessing to have people who actually want to be in your life. It’s a blessing to actually have people who care not only about you, but about your heart. On my 29th birthday, my Golden Year Birthday, I asked God for genuine relationships. The ones that I know He sent me because they aid in my growth and not hinder it. And my 29th birthday may have been the best one, if not the best one, of my 20s. Not because I got a lot of gifts or traveled somewhere exclusively, but because it was the first one that I felt genuinely loved. I felt like the people who were there wanted to be there and the ones that couldn’t made their presence known.

Having had friends spread my business to people and me finding out about it, literally stealing from me, I have had it ALL done to me. Some people, I let off scotch free, others, they FELT where I was coming from, but all of them taught me lessons either individually or collectively. My friends taught me to love me and love me for real. They taught me that I don’t have to do this thing called life by myself. They taught me patience; I was a HAND. FULL. (separated it for effect because I needed yall to understand) I wasn’t always healed. To those who loved me through my own mess and dysfunction, THANK YOU ! I appreciate you for who you are, and I don’t regret it. I will never forget the roles you’ve played in my life and once I make it, we gon EAT GOOD FOR REAL !

*This is an added paragraph. I also saw a constant trend of people not giving me the benefit of doubt. I would notice people would cut me off and wondered what happened and it would literally be based off an assumption or he-said-she-said. I learned that if you can’t decipher what’s truth or not OR be able to communicate with me what the issue is, we aren’t even close enough for offense to even have taken place. Communication is CRITICAL as an adult. Learn to use your words or get a therapist that will give you the tools to express it. I may forgive, but I don’t forget. I will make SURE that you’ll never have to worry about any more miscommunication on my end, because now ion even want you as my friend lol. You ruined it when you questioned my character.

Relationships. JESUS. Lol. I may jump in and out of actual relationships, but I want to speak from a birds eye view. I don’t want to diminish anyone’s character, so I’ll just speak in general. I picked wrong my entire 20s. All of em. Wrong. Nothing was wrong with them, but remember when I said I had this whole “I’ll just do it myself” thing with God? Yea this is where I really flexed at. I just knew I was supposed to be married by 30, and since I am typing this still single, safe to say it didn’t work. Let’s dive into it shall we…

My Father is the BOMB. Period, point blank, Kenny Paramore is the shit. He has always showed up and been there in my life, so me picking wrong ain’t got nothing to do with the lack of a fathers love. I just made really terrible decisions and I stood behind them, relentlessly. I can say that now. I don’t have to feel pressured to put blame on anyone but me. I chose wrong. I didn’t see the red flags for some and for others I completely ignored. But it was still MY DECISION, like I told yall, can’t nobody make me do nothing but stay Black and die, so I can’t say it was anybody’s fault except my own.

When I was a freshman on the campus of JCSU, I was hell bent on having a “Stomp the Yard” or “Drumline” romance. I mean HELL. BENT. So naturally freshmen year I went looking for a man, and me and my friends bullied him into dating me lol. That boy did NOT want a girlfriend, but we meant, yea but she wants a boyfriend so here we are. That is when I should have learned that you can’t make a man do nothing. That ended sophomore year and I said I would just be single until I graduated. I kept my promise, technically, but sis still went through relationship problems all three years I said I wouldn’t. But the common theme amongst that actual relationships and the situationships that followed, is that I didn’t listen.

Not to them. Lol. I know that sounds contradictory but let me explain. I didn’t listen to what God was saying and showing me during that time. I already told yall my self-esteem was some trash, so I continuously allowed men to disrespect me because sadly, I just wanted to be liked. I have come to terms with this a while ago but knowing that I’m writing this for someone else to potentially read it, scares me shitless, but there’s healing in vulnerability. But yea, I just wanted to be liked. That childish, gnawing, feeling ate at me until I addressed it a few months ago actually. I still have to have that “talk” with myself to remind myself that I am worth so much more because I often want to reset back to default.

Being the token Black girl at a predominately white high school where thin was in and was not, the “pick me” mentality started early. None of my behaviors were exhibited nor encouraged in my home, but it was what I saw. I saw women chasing after men and eventually the men would comply. I thought that was love. I thought for love, you had to suffer to receive it. So, when I felt the walls of a relationship cave in on me, I thought, this is love. Again, I have not had a man beat on me, but I have had the emotional stripes of a toxic man lash my skin. I know how it feels to feel small. Really small. And it was during my time in middle school and high school that those feelings of resentment started to play on the strings of my heart.

I always say that I am a hopeless romantic. The flowers, the surprises, the vacations, all of it. I love it. I love, love. I love the feeling of it. I love seeing other people in it. I really dig love. So, someone who has deemed themselves a lover of love, you can see where the quest to find it stems from. I fought tooth and nail to secure love from men who didn’t have the slightest clue what it meant. I desired them to love me a way that they couldn’t give, and the rejection fueled the low self-esteem. It was a cycle I was tired of being in until I said enough is enough. I begged God to show me how I could fix this hole in my heart. I’ll talk more about my relationship with God later, but that’s when He showed me, I didn’t love me.

I never really loved me. I didn’t even like me. So, it was impossible for me to be able to find a love to complete me, because I thought completion came from another man. I was wrong. If you’re reading this and this resonates with you, you are wrong. It doesn’t matter who he is, you’ll ruin a good thing because you don’t know who you are. You have to love yourself first. The things I allowed, I allowed because I didn’t think I was worth much more. I thought that I had to suffer. I thought that it was normal. It wasn’t. No one has the right to deny you of your happiness to make themselves happy. No one has the right to stifle your growth so that they can get ahead. You are worth so much more than that. I am worth so much more than that. I know that now.

I stopped putting myself out as prey. Don’t look shocked. You know the moves you do to get noticed. I stopped it all. I stopped it all because I was no closer to my happiness and it was turning me cold. I remember asking and pleading with God to soften my heart, because I could feel myself going numb. I didn’t want to be that girl. I wasn’t created to be that girl. Now every man I met wasn’t trash. Lol. Yall like Lord Jesus she’s a Tyler Perry play lol, nah it wasn’t all bad, but it wasn’t all good either. I learned so much from my actual relationships of my 20s. There were 3 that really taught me something and I would like to share that next.

One taught me that no matter what you do, the wrong person will never be the right person for you. My Pastor preached about blinded discernment and it changed my life. He said that God sometimes will blind your discernment so that you can get what you want, so that you can see why you were better off without it. I ignored ALL THE SIGNS! Every single last one of them, I ignored. Why? Because I wanted him. I had never met someone who I couldn’t have, and I set my desires on him. The tumultuous relationship that transpired from my desperate attempt for the approval of his love damn near killed me. Literally.

I met the family. I was invited to events even when he wasn’t. I had infiltrated his life in every way and even though I was the “girlfriend” it didn’t stop him from making a fool out of me every chance he got. But I forgave him every chance I got, so there’s that. No. He doesn’t get a pass for being a shitty person, but I didn’t have to stay. Looking back on it, if only I would have listened to what everybody was saying to me. If only I would have listened to what my damn eyes were showing me, I would be in a totally different place, but what if I wouldn’t. I can’t beat myself up for who I was when I was with him because even if he wasn’t always good to me, I was good to him. The seeds I sowed into him were planted from a good heart, I’ll reap them eventually.

The next taught me what self-love looked like. In hindsight he was a narcissist, but he taught me how to love me. He taught me what it meant to be proud of who I am. He taught me how to let stuff go. He taught me that I didn’t always have to be in control. He also taught me that just because it seems to be going well, doesn’t mean it’s going well. Most of our relationship was long distance and that man lived a whole other life away from me. But I didn’t hate him. He may have been the only relationship that I had ever had that was my actual friend. He was the homie, so he hipped me to a lot of game. Game that I had ignored with other gentlemen I spoke of. I will always be grateful for him and the role he played in my life.

He wasn’t perfect though. With him I learned that even being the best of friends with someone, won’t make them not do what they want to do. He hid a lot from me, which I guess I’m partially thankful for, because he knew I would have lost it. He was patient with me. He was also extremely strong willed. I was always used to being the strong willed one, but with him, I was not the one in charge. I learned how to relinquish control and allow the relationship to be whatever its going to be. With him I also learned boundaries. After we broke up, we stayed broke up. Even when he would ask me why I wouldn’t give him another chance, I couldn’t. I had started healing myself at that moment and at the moment I knew I could no longer allow him to play me.

The final one, he taught me a lot. Though we were together the shortest, he taught me about the “good guys”. You know the guys, everybody thinks will do no wrong in your eyes, but what do they do, WRONG. I remember the first time I accidentally saw a message to a girl. The begging and pleading that he did made me think that maybe I had actually found it, true love. I remember the exact moment I fell deeply in love with him. I stared at him trying to learn his entire face because I never wanted to forget that moment. Imagine my surprise when days later he would end things.

The breakup is what changed me. The relationship was straight, but the breakup…that break up hardened me. I couldn’t cope with the fact that he “tricked” me. He made me feel like I had finally found the “one”. Once I started processing the breakup, I realized that it wasn’t the breakup that really hurt me. It was the rejection after the love I didn’t want to give in the first place was given. He was the guy I didn’t want to date, but everybody told me to give it a try because he could have been the best guy for me. He knew what to say. He knew that I craved reciprocity, so he gave it to me in surplus. A lot of my relationship firsts were with him. So, the breakup literally took me aback. I couldn’t come to terms with a lot of it.

It was once I processed the fact that his rejection of me was not the end of me, I was able to start finding healing. A part of me felt like I wasn’t living my fullest potential because I wasn’t in a relationship. So many memories I wasn’t able to fully enjoy because I had this constant thought that I had to be attached to somebody. Learning how to not associate “Will this time be the time?” every time I do something has really took a world of pressure off. I had some other situationships that really did aide me in who I am today. I don’t regret any of them. All of them taught me things about myself that I wouldn’t have learned had I not met them.

I can sometimes be hardhead. I often pray that God allows me to see the situation through so that I can never desire it again. He did that for me A LOT in my 20s. I’m praying that I now have the wisdom to not repeat certain mistakes again. I know my weaknesses. I know my triggers. I know my ways to escape if I have to. I’m not afraid to be vocal about what hurts my feelings. I used to be scared to speak in relationships, afraid that I might say too much, so I would say nothing at all. I’m not afraid anymore. I didn’t even know that what I was experiencing were signs of abuse, because I didn’t have a bruised body when these relationships were over, but it wounded my spirit.

I haven’t smiled the way I’ve been smiling since I was a teenager. I’m restored. I’m still healing. I still have a way to go, but I am better now and for that I am grateful. During the back and forth with myself I learned that I have to give myself the grace to recover. I can’t take out the frustrations that I have with other people on the people that didn’t do anything. I had to learn to let God in and really heal me. I needed to take the time to really kinda hit rock bottom, because now that I see me at my worst, I never have to walk that path again.

Spiritually. I think I have always had a pretty good handle on what my relationship with God was. But it wasn’t until my late 20s that I really understood what it meant to have a real relationship with Christ. My day-to-day relationships were shitty because my relationship with God with just as terrible. I didn’t communicate, not well, I didn’t communicate. I didn’t honestly believe that He really cared about me, because I didn’t care about me. I didn’t see the correlation between how I treated myself and how I treated God. Let’s dive deeper.

At my weakest moments of life, when I felt the lowest, the worst in my life, I would seek God. Not because I knew He would pull me up out of my funk, but because I learned when I was a really little girl, that Jesus was a rock and would be my rock if I needed Him. So, I would “pray” and hope that things would get better, but I still doubted him. Now I’m not the Super Saint that says stuff like you can never doubt God. Life happens. Doubt is a natural human emotion that we are allowed to experience, even with God. The key is not staying there. I can’t believe that God can do anything AND doubt every single day that it won’t ever happen. It’s either one or the other.

I talk about the year 2015 often. The year my life shifted. I am still processing with a lot of things that were revealed to me and that I endured during that year. A lot of coping and therapy was and will continue to be needed in order for me to completely heal from that year. One thing that God did show me was that I have to “trust the process.” Easier said than done, but it’s a mantra, nonetheless. I had to keep reminding myself that no matter what the situation may be, you have to trust that God knew you would be strong enough to take it. And not like He sees us a video game character and He’s trying to beat us into submission, but because there is going to be a time in life where the lesson, we learned then, will help us now.

For example, after I graduated from Akron U, I felt like God I left me. I was applying to jobs left and right and didn’t get a single call from someone. Like I knew I was talented and qualified, and no one would give me a chance. So, I took a position in retail, I worked retail for 2 years and I hated it. I was being treated poorly because in Trump’s South, they assumed me being a Black girl and working retail that I must be stupid or less than and honestly treated me as such. I was so frustrated. I got a job doing therapy, but I worked in Virginia and would drive 2 hours to get to work and 2 hours back. It was exhausting. But all of those experiences helped me in where I am now.

I needed to learn empathy. Yes, I had it while being a therapist, but it extended to just that. Outside of therapy, my empathy was grim. I didn’t really have the heart I needed, in order for me to do the work I was destined to do. I worked out some pretty high and low end companies and the people that I encountered, taught me how to look at people through my heart and not my eyes. Seeing with my heart has opened up more doors for me than I would have ever had if I were not to have had those experiences. I had to be able to see people and not judge them for why they were there, and I didn’t have that prior to that experience.

I found myself being frustrated with God a lot. Especially as my 20s came to an end. Things that I wanted God to do that He didn’t do or wouldn’t do, I just felt frustrated. I felt like He was punishing me for seeds I sowed and repented for. I thought He was making me go through the ringer to see if I had the virtue of Job. I was tired. A few days into my 30th year and it’s still not clear, but one thing is certain. Nothing that is for me, has passed me. Everything that I thought God should have given me already, I would have ruined it, if I had the opportunity to have it. I wasn’t mature enough for it. I understand that now. I guess you just get to a point in your own spiritual journey where you understand that God ain’t dumb. He knows us better than we will EVER know ourselves. His timing is impeccable. He makes no mistakes.

But if He doesn’t make mistakes, then why does our lives look full or turmoil? I don’t know. I wish I did. I could give you a very cliché answer to help ease your mind, but it wouldn’t make the pain any easier to live with. What I do know is this, I have never felt alone in Jesus. Even the times where I deserved to be deserted, He showed up with seconds remaining and saved the day. I say this to be funny, but I also whole heartedly mean it, “Try Jesus, not me!” He truly has been the catalyst to every success I’ve ever saw. And I know He can be that catalyst in your life too.

All in all, my 20s were amazing. I have had some of my greatest highs AND lows and even if I could go back and do it all over, I don’t think I would change anything. Everything that happened has prepared me for the person who I am today. I still have the desire to love and to be loved. And now when I say that I’m not just talking about love in the romantic sense of the word. I want real love amongst my friends. I want real love amongst my family. And I’ve been experiencing it because I decided to shower myself with the love I didn’t really understand before. I pray this next decade supersedes all expectations. I’m ready!