Think the thoughts, feel the feels...write it down

You ever have those shower thoughts in which you revisit a memory out of nowhere and re-frame and rephrase? So now the memory is awkwardly mixed with what actually happened and what you wish you had said and realized at the time...I had that moment today, in the shower. Out of seemingly nowhere I revisited a memory from 2ish years ago when I was living in Concord with four other women and was in a really bad head space and heart space and literal space. I had been doing a lot of soul-searching and self-realization and was acting on it; my roommates didn't like it. I was transforming from the always smiling, (secretly) self-depricating, self-scapgoating, and exorbitantly self-sacrificing person that was so easy for everyone to doormat and 'love' to a woke, self-realized, self-loving, strong woman. I started speaking up for myself and asking for what I needed and addressing issues when they arose to the people who were part of the issues. In short, I stopped letting myself ...

In just a couple nights there will be a live performance, on NBC, of Motown’s The Wiz . If you’re not familiar with The Wiz , it’s Motown’s version of The Wizard of Oz . All different songs, same plot, all Black cast. The original came out in ’78 with Dorothy played by Diana Ross, Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, Nipsy Russel as the Tin Man, Ted Ross as the Cowardly Lion, Richard Pryor as the The Great And Powerful Wiz, Lena Horne as Glenda the Good Witch, and a few other stars! I grew up watching this movie at my grandparents’ house huddled around the giant wooden tv with my cousins. We sang the songs, tried imitating the dance moves, and felt at home in our brown skin as we watched other brown people be exemplar. This Thursday’s production has me overjoyed and anticipatory. Again, and as it should be, the entire cast is Black. All the main characters are played by pretty famous people including Queen Latifah, Common, Mary J. Blige, Elijah Kelley, Uzo Aduba, and Amber Ri...

Same sex couples baffle people. Every type of people. Even those in the LGBTQIA community. My girlfriend’s close friend is a stud; quick lesson in lesbian lingo: a stud is a lesbian who has a lot of masculine energy, typically wears men’s clothing and is stereotypically supposed to be more dominant in their relationships with their partners. She, KiKi, is kinda obsessed with gender roles; she adheres to the strict guidelines (there are no strict guidelines) to the Stud-Lesbian Code of Conduct. She believes she should be the pursuer, the aggressor, the leader, the bread-winner, the head of the household. When KiKi first met LeAnna, she thought LeAnna was a stud. LeAnna is not a stud. For the past several months KiKi has constantly been challenged and confounded by LeAnna’s gender and sexuality expression. So LeAnna and my relationship confuses her. When we started dating, KiKi, once again, had questions; they ranged from “Coléa, you’re a girl, do you like this bag?” to very intrusive...

“See that boy over there?! His name is Garrett Brooks and he’s cute and I like him.” Shari Tate confided; I anxiously nodded in agreement. It was my first full day of kindergarten and my first afternoon at after school. When Shari, a super cool first grader, picked me to be her best friend and protege she also introduced me to crushes, boys like girls like boys, and the dirty word ‘sex’, and to the male gaze. Garrett was also a big first grader with an expressive face, a whiny, scratchy voice, and round head with large ears. For the next couple years Shari and I would be best friends. We’d  join hips in the cafeteria after school and put our almost matching book bags together as we rehashed our days. She had a rectangular Beauty & The Beast book bag and I had the Little Mermaid one. We’d visit each others’ homes for playdates and when her dad died, I’d go to her dark house and play with her as her mom laid in her bedroom and cried. I was so proud to be her best friend. She cho...

Her and I are both anxious people. But when I'm around her, my anxiousness completely subsides; and when she's around me her anxiety dials down to a sensible realist level. Which is why a couple weeks ago, when I quietly asked if we could hold hands, she said 'no' and explained she felt anxious about it. I gently answered okay and we kept walking, unattached. Her hand-holding anxiety made sense, we were in Concord Mills Malls. It was once the largest outlet mall in the East, and as a former resident of Concord, I remember in great detail the guarantee of seeing at least two confederate flags per day when out and about. It turns out racism isn’t the only thing attached to that fucking flag. It’s something we’re always mildly aware of, hand-holding and general public displays of affection. It’s also not something we talk about; it’s unspoken when we walk closely to one another, but never make contact while walking through the aisles at the store. We pass by male-fem...

I was hanging with a friend the other day when I met a friend of her and her husband's. He apparently took a liking to me and offered to buy me a drink, he just "wanted to buy a drink for a pretty lady." I declined because I didn't want him to get the wrong idea/lead him on. She, my friend, then came over and asked why I didn't accept his invitation, I replied that I wasn't interested in his offer, although he seemed like a great guy. She then basically tried to convince me to try dating men again, as if now will yield different results from all those times before. This is a close friend of mine who, although her mom is gay, sometimes says some ignorant stuff about the LGBTQIA community. Typically, I try to educate/correct her, but this time she was persistent. And I was made really uncomfortable and offended. I'm not bisexual, although I did toy with the idea whenever I first realized my attraction to women was more than platonic. But all the soul-se...

I had a necessary/awkward/good(?)/brief/deep conversation with someone, a friend, recently that has me feeling some type of way. Long story short: I was going out with this woman, Pam (not her real name), and things were going great, then things started going less great, but I wanted to hang on because I really liked her and it's in my nature to allow people to repeatedly treat me like shit and still stay loyal to them. She broke it off with me and immediately dived into another relationship with Jan (another pretend name). Pam comes to my place one night to hang out and she reveals that she doesn't like Jan as much as she initially did and has cold feet about marrying Jan, and she doesn't really love her that way anymore; I try to give her advice, stuff like 'it's okay to have doubt as long as you're being honest with Jan about what's going on' and 'when you love someone you have to accept the stuff you don't like about them in addition to all ...