My Life: A Change Done Came

I am a private person. I like being a private person. After learning through trial by fire that if you want something to remain your secret, you tell no one, I curated a small group of confidants. Even within that group, I’m private. So this post is kind of a big deal for me. I was inspired to share this after my mom and I sat down to Easter/birthday brunch last week and she told me in her sage, Yoda-like way, “You have a gift with words, and you need to share it. You don’t know how your story will affect others.”

So here it goes: my transition that I’ve alluded to in previous posts is that I’m between jobs.

Even typing that makes me cringe. Ever since I could legally hold a job, I’ve worked. It’s part of my identity, connected to my self-given purpose. I remember clearly going to pick up my checks – yes, that paper slip that conferred moneys before the ubiquitous direct deposit most of us use now – and how it felt to have funds to put gas in my tank and get me some grub on the go. Ahh, the days of simpler needs.

Now, to be without a place between 9 and 5 is a supremely foreign feeling. This is not to say I’m not doing anything. I’d been preparing for a change for a while, feeling that God was leading me elsewhere. I stayed prayerful, started making contacts and thought about my purpose and passion. I had quite the reality check from my inner circle when I began to stress about bills and if I could buy my first house this year. The statement affected me deeply, and it’s become my thinking: You are a child of the Most High, why do you have so little faith of the great things He has prepared for you?

The past month restored me. I didn’t realize how much I was internalizing my stress, thereby blocking my creativity and personal drive for success. I’ve been reading for my own enjoyment again. I have a growing wish list of inspirational books on Amazon and the fact that spring is coming doesn’t hurt. As an April baby, and after experiencing a true winter once I moved to north Texas, spring has a magic. The dry and cracked branches suddenly burst forth with white, pink and yellow blooms, the temperatures produce a warming effect that has everyone walking a bit lighter and all the bleakness of the previous season is left behind to nourish the harvest of the next.

It feels like I’m in my spring, blossoming and growing. I’d love to hear about your season of transition, share with me!

So, Is This Marriage Thing Contagious?

“Just stop…I don’t even want to talk about it.”

We’re sitting at happy hour, all of us young, educated…and unmarried. The topic that has upset my friend is the running list of college friends who have either married, reproduced or both. I merely took a sip of my drink and laughed. Even though I’ve been engaged before, it was more of a formality than a true belief in “happily ever after” and the relationship didn’t pan out. I’m not in a rush, though I know myself well enough to know that marriage is a requirement of any future relationship.

It’s the 27th birthday of one of my sorority sisters, and clearly she’s having a hard time of it. Actually, not really. She, like me, has a sarcastic wit that belies a tender underbelly, and it’s not often she truly shows her emotional undercarriage. She does make a good point though. The wedding and ultrasound posts being shared in our group of friends and associates has reached the critical mass point, and the claustrophobic, though mostly imagined, feeling of judgment is upon us. Does one seek out a beau strictly to fit the norm for what should be happening at this point in life? On what date do you bring up expectations? And what if they don’t have the same long-term goals, what then?

For me and mine, we had the expectations conversation fairly up front. Pragmatism and maturity made it a necessity to get that out in the open. Two years in, and apparently I’m following all of the latest trends: cohabitation before marriage and being highly educated and yet unmarried. (For a counterpoint to the “highly educated and yet unmarried” piece, the latest news says that college-educated women have a better chance at marriage than those who only finished high school.) (Also, good gosh, do NOT search “educated black women and marriage” if you want to believe in your fairy tale ending, that was a depressing result list.) While I understand folks who choose to keep separate households until after the vows were exchanged, I believe in knowing what I’m getting into before signing a contract that is supposedly irrevocable – that includes snoring, cleanliness, fiscal responsibility and the like.

Much like my friend’s reflection on her life and that of her peers in light of her birthday, I have the same circumstances coming up. I was recently chatting online with a male friend who I have known since our halcyon days of undergraduate, when we used to act like our twenties would extend forever into the future in an awesome collection of boring classes, entry level jobs and kicking it for Homecoming every year. He didn’t keep up his end of the bargain though, and our conversation was not about how much we were looking forward to happy hour together, but about how happy he is that his two kids sleep late regularly and that his wife doesn’t know he does a 15-minute rush cleanup before she makes it home. Happy wife, happy life – he learned quickly! It’s the weirdest feeling to consider him as a father and husband, but it’s the reality of his life.

Thankfully, very few people I interact with regularly ask me when me and my boyfriend are getting hitched. They’re smart enough to know that the answer is a blank stare and a subject change. Just like it’s rude to ask a woman if she’s pregnant, it’s equally as rude to inquire about wedding plans. Until I get to that point, and don’t expect that much will change when I do, I plan on avoiding the drinking water sources of the newly pregnant friends and wives of friends, and being happy that I don’t have to schedule sleeping past 7 a.m. on weekends. Sorry I’m not sorry parents!