Life By Kim

lifehackercom:

By Thorin Klosowski

Starting something new is hard. It can even be a little terrifying. Maybe you don’t know where to start, or maybe you’re scared of failure. But the only way you’ll ever get anything done is if you just get up and do it. Here’s how to conquer those fears, get off your ass, and actually achieve those goals.

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Never mind how poorly this is written. I’m thinking aloud via typing and i have to get this out.

I think we were sitting on the couch watching an episode of Sopranos. A character, speaking in Italian, said, “gatto (Italian word for cat)”. I repeated the word aloud in recognition and said, “like in Spanish (gato)”. Just kinda thinking aloud. My boyfriend at the time gets real excited like he was about to tell me some serious shit and goes, “you know, Italian and Spanish are real similar so a lot of the words sound the same.” I thought, “yup, I know” but I just nod and go, “ohhhhh ok. how cool!” or something like that. And I rolled my eyes on the inside.

Lately I’ve been reading quite a bit about how Black women “shift” in their lives. I just finished readinga chapter in Shifting: The Double Live of Black Women in America about the delicate balance Black Women have to manage with their Black men significant others. And I kept thinking about “the gatto incident”. It probably stands out because it’s so fucking absurd. It’s a very silly example but I’ve never forgotten it. It’s a silly, poignant reminder that I was in a relationship with a man whose ego would’ve been seriously bruised if I let on that I knew more than him. It would’ve been one more thing I knew that he didn’t. I would’ve been a know-it-all. Or a think-I’m-better-than-him. There would’ve been one of his smart ass comments about “my fancy lil education ” (one of my personal favorites). There were lots of gatto incidents in that relationship. Me always knowing more than him, being able to do something that he couldn’t, having gone places and seen things he hadn’t, me just being more awesome than he could deal with. And I suppressed lots of what I knew and lots about my experiences because I didn’t want to fight about it. I didn’t want to make him feel like an idiot. And he wasn’t an idiot. He was bright, creative, carefree, and philosophical. But somehow admitting to what I knew would’ve undermined that.

Black women are expected to do whatever it takes to advance. Our community puts that pressure on us in a way it doesn’t with men. Hell, we put that pressure on ourselves. We get out in the world and make a way out of no way. We learn, we grow, we advance. And then we get penalized for it in our relationships. It’s like, go to school, get you an education, get you a good job, and make sure you leave that high-siddity shit at the door when you come home. All so a man can still feel like a man. Whatever that means. So his ego can remain intact, I guess. It’s like it’s ok for them to benefit from our portion of the rent check, but they couldn’t give fewer damns about our knowledge or lived experiences. 

So yeah, I’m not into the whole “work with a brotha” who isn’t at or near my level (and this is obviously contextual and complex). I just have no more room in my life for another gatto incident. Whatever. Ugggh.

the most revelatory shit ever is running through my head. shit about hope and forgiveness and love and future and fear and death and insecurity and redemption and growth and maturity. but i’m on rum. Barbancourt. and i gotta go to work tomorrow. so it’ll probably all get lost in my dreams. goodnight. i guess.