two+ months and i've just mustered the courage to click SUBMIT…
Friday, May 6th 4:20pm. I've decided to write this entry on a subject that is near to me more than many others: Friendship. It's a subject that I've been tested on numerous occasions during this short 2011, more than I would like to count.
It just feels like one thing after the other after the other with certain 'friends' in my life. As Dominicans eloquently put it: Cuando no estoy presa me andan buscando (When I ain't in jail, I'm a fugitive they're looking for). God really has a sense of humor because I've been sent test after test with certain 'friends' in my life. From situations that had been festering and rotting for years, to some that were relatively sudden. some with womyn i didn't even consider friends, they were dam near sistahs (all heart wrenching regardless of their 'expiration dates').
But something happened one morning, I woke up and decided that I would CHOOSE to be victorious and not victimized. I would take these situations as learning experiences; experiences for growth and love instead of balling up into a corner and crying about it (as I had been doing for days, months and weeks..too long!). I would stop being so angry and cold. I wouldn't ask "WHY ME God?" I wouldn't commit that disservice to myself.
What I did was I took that magnifying glass i had been using to scrutinize these individuals and turn it into a mirror to help me see what God was trying to show me via these experiences.
No longer just glancing, I now took a serious look at myself in the mirror of my soul and placed Miguelina smack dab in the middle of all of these situations and tried to decipher the role that I play in all of this. Yes, the other womyn in each situation are still guilty for doing or not doing, or saying or not saying certain things, but they are no longer my concern. you see,using a mirror as opposed to a magnifying lense (that form of alchemy is called FORGIVENESS) doesn't mean i no longer hold these individuals responsible, or that i 'let them off the hook'; what this simply means is that i stopped carrying all of this deadweight around and wasting so much energy on these situations and decided to expend my energy on much more productive things, things like GROWING!I do all this because i KNOW there is no coincidence that I'm in different situations regarding the same matter. I took the high road, the lonely, cold GPS-less road, but I hear it's the most rewarding.
Now I'm not complaining and getting worked up about other people….well not as as much at least(i'm still a work in progress ya'll), i'm trying to do much more productive (and harder) things with this situation (and ignoring it isn't one of them). I've had to sit with myself and do something that I never thought I would ever have to: re-evaluate my friendships, the role I play in their lives and the ones they play in mine. I had to weigh the pros with the cons and evaluate whether certain people were assets or debts in my life. I felt cold, 'corporate', as if I was having an outer body experience. I'm learning that this sense of alienation is normal, it happens when you do something new. I HAD to. I learned that if you are doing the same thing and obtaining the same results (results that you are not happy with) than you have to start doing something new. And at times this can be uncomfy and hard, but needed.
As I thought about friends and 'foes' and prayed and cried and pretended not to care, than I cared too much, all I thought of was my mother and her age-old saying "Un amigo es un peso en el bolsillo" (A friend is a dollar in your pocket). My mother was never fond of this notion of 'friends'. She felt that a friend was a mother, a sister (especially a twin one like I had), but not a 'stranger' never! My mother is not an ignorant, 'dumb' sistah, she was coming from a place of experience, she was just trying to protect her cubs. She was coming from a place where she was born in the 40's in a rural (SUPER rural) town in the DR where she was the youngest of 10. Where she never needed friends because between her siblings and her cousins she didn't need them (and the same goes for the other Dominican sistas I've spoken to about this same topic). She is coming from a communal society, not an individualist one with the nuclear family (mom, dad, dog and 2.5 kids: your dog is considered family before a 3rd cousin or a great-aunt. no offense to my dog lovers/owners). My mom and her generation from the DR (not all, but most) just feel that friends are unnecessary, lead you astray and will only end up hurting you (or taking yo man…that's for a later entry) in the long run.
But I worked HARD to break that thought process. I worked my lil butt off to show my mom that there were many exceptions to her rule. I helped her realize that she had raised us with enough integrity and values that helped us become womyn who would become loyal friends and that I wouldn't like it if my friend's moms were comparing me and my friendship to a dollar bill in someone's pocket.
Gris and I worked hard and prayed for and attracted some exceptional womyn into our lives, friends we've had since we were 8 years old (smile!!) to ones that we made during our graduate careers, but all AMIGAS! My mom slowly began to let her guard down to the point where now she is asking for those of you she hasn't seen or heard about in months or years. She LOVES each of you who consider her child a friend. She may not know your name or your language but via some adjectives, physical attributes or country of origin she knows who you are.
So after working hard to convince my mother to give friendships a shot and to trust her daughters the roles have now reversed. I am the one waving the dollar bill and shoving it into my pocket, I am the one feeling a certain way because there is a slight possibility that mami was right, wasn't she?
But although I am hurt, I'm not bitter, I'm not angry, I am just growing. As already mentioned, I've decided to take the long road, to actually let my heart grow and love and nurture those relationships I do have left. I've realized that the whole 'Reason, Season, Lifetime' mantra we all know so well is actually true, I am not immune to it- I'm simply human. I am learning that God ain't never give me nothing I can't bear. And if I'm here it's because the most high knows I am equipped to handle the situation and to soar from it, not wither and die.
I am learning who I am as a 'friend'. I am learning that having a twin sister in relation to friendship with other womyn has been a gift and a 'curse'. The gift is that it's made me a very self-less person; someone who is not only willing but eager to share many things with friends: from my feelings, my corny long-winded jokes, my fashion-tips (ericka my first real client!), my family, my other friends...myself!! But on the flip side having a twin sister has made it so that I think that I can have the same relationship with friends that I've had with Gris. One where we used to beat each other up physically, verbally, mentally and 5 minutes later invite the other to play super nintendo and pick up as if nothing had happened. One where I am comfortable enough to tell her how I feel about her--straight gully! No hair on my tounge and know that she knows it's coming from a place of love and it will only make us stronger as a unit. Not everyone has the same conditioning and may not have that tough skin that having siblings offers you, especially those of the same sex. Some people are not ready to hear the 'truth' or what I think is the 'truth' about them. I've learned that not everything that comes to my mind needs to be said, especially if it's said with the sassy, sharp tounge that I am oh so famous for =/.
What has also been revealed to me is that because of those dynamics mentioned above I can easily allow people to walk all over me; I can easily make up with anyone because that is how I learned to love my first and only best friend, Gris. It can lead me to stick around long after a friendship's role has been fulfilled. These are all painful and shocking revelations but simultaneously liberating.
Expectations are a mother...they are what lead to a relationships' demise. We expect people to love us the way we want to be loved, instead of letting them love us the way they know how to love. We say: 'well i did this and this and I expect the same from so and so' and when so and so doesn't meet those expectations (usually unrealistic ones) she automatically becomes questionable and unloyal.
God has taught me that I must let go and let her/him/them lead my path. that i cannot fathom god's capacity to handle our situations, capacities that lead to solutions that our heart and minds aren't capable of conjuring up. i've learned to sit still and stop trying. trying just ends up hurting me more, making me almost jaded and i do not want that.
one month away from being 30 i'm learning that if you don't love yourself you really truly cannot love someone else. and loving yourself doesn't mean you are 'successful' (especially in the western form: an education, job, a partner, a fancy car, a house and money). loving yourself doesn't only mean you pamper yourself, and get manis and pedis and buy yourself the latest gear. loving yourself doens't even mean you visit church on a regular.
loving yourself means taking a look at yourself in that mirror in your soul, at ALLLL of your perfect imperfections and being OK with yourself exactly where you are in life. it doesn't mean you manipulate situations, ideas and even people to get your way. lieing won't get you any closer to that true love, only the WHOLE TRUTH will.
life has taught me that if you cannot accept yourself as you are and if you are lying to yourself about where you are and doing ugly things to get to where you think you should be, could've been, would've been… than that only means you will never accept me and my imperfections.
what i am working through right now is : do i accept someone KNOWING who they really are because they have been my 'friend' (especially those who have been my friend for so long?) or do i gracefully bow out and take the lessons with me? The word that comes to mind as i ponder all of this is: loyalty? where is mine? but at the same time i am thinking of another 'ty' word…SANITY? and mine is priceless
in my meantime, as i work through this and grow, the mantra radiating from the depths of my first chakra via my 5th one is...
TO THY OWN-SELF BE TRUE!!
