The Pursuit Of Nappyness…

I remember when she first walked by, instantly catching my eye! I’d wondered who she was, if I’d even actually seen this girl, that I’d thought I had. It had been a long shift already, but it was the first time I’d seen her that night. Maybe she’d been serving tables on the opposite side of the room as it wasn’t till the very end of the night that I’d encountered her. I honestly couldn’t tell you what it was about her that had drawn my attention. I mean she was a pretty girl, not that I ever told her that, but that wasn’t what had caught my attention, in fact I didn’t even really notice that till several months later when a friend pointed it out to me and I was like “Ahh yeh, true…”

No this was something else. I was drawn to her, maybe it was her spirit, her essence, I don’t know but I had to talk to her! So I did, asking her about tablecloths or something…hey, it got the conversation started. I couldn’t tell you everything we spoke about but the more we conversed the more I thought: ‘Yo! This is a cool ass girl!’ I hadn’t met anyone like her before, I haven’t really met anyone like her since. I mean there’ve been other “Cool ass girls” but none like her. I wanted to talk to her more, find out more about her and talk more we did. I walked her home after the shift, it was 3am, and my house was 8 miles in the other direction, I didn’t care! I think this is where, if I went back and met myself on that night I’d be like “My nigga, you just fell in love and U.O.E.N.O It!…” And that naive me would respond with “Nah, don’t be silly…” Either way I wouldn’t have cared because I’d just met this amazing girl. A beautiful, flawed, complex woman, who would feature prominently in the next 4 years of my life.

Different people at different times told me I was in Love with her, but I didn’t see it. My friend hated her, well not her but he hated her affect on me. He hadn’t met her and it was a few years before he finally did. So to him she was simply this girl I spoke about, this girl I was stuck on, this girl who I wasn’t with but kept me from allowing anyone else in. That is till, he finally met her and saw us together. He understood, as he eventually reluctantly admitted.

But he was right, no other female could compete. There were million of other girls out there but I didn’t see them. It was irrational. Why was I stuck on this one? When other girls walked away I never chased, why would I? I didn’t like them as much as I liked her. When they gave me cause to walk away, I didn’t look back, what was the need?

Yet in all this I never thought I was in love. The reason being I always thought I was merely on the cusp of falling in love with her, I readily admitted I liked her, those feelings were pretty strong and clear. I simply believed I merely stood at Love’s precipice. I knew I could fall at any moment, but it wasn’t something I could allow to happen unless I knew it would be reciprocated, because I knew if I fell it would be so deeply, so completely, that to be alone thereafter would have been far too painful. And when standing there holding onto all these feelings became too much to bare I would tell her how I felt and with every rejection I would find myself back on solid ground, emancipated from my feelings…only to unknowingly restart my journey back towards that cliff edge.

This is how I came to my belief that love isn’t constant, it ebbs and flows, it grows and shrinks. It takes work and care, requiring constant nurturing! To fail to realise these things is to doom that Love. Some days they’ll hate you, but that’s merely the other side of the coin, understand they still care, you can find your way back to Love. Apathy though, is the opposite of love, and I’m not sure how one find’s their way back from apathy. I believe the process of Love is to be constantly falling in Love with the other person, flaws and all. And the point at which you no longer fall in Love with them, is the point where you’ve reached Loves end.

That said falling for her was so effortless. I Loved who she was, who she was becoming and who she could be. I Loved who I was around her. She’d helped me become a better me and inspired me to keep striving to be a better man. I Loved hearing her stories and telling her stories, she taught me and I taught her, I Loved seeing her eyes light up as she took on new information or watching her clumsily try to grasp something new. I Loved seeing her smile, I don’t seem to be able to express it without resorting to cliche so I won’t try. But I Loved that I could make her smile without even saying a word. With one look I could turn a face filled with worry into a smile. Effortlessly. How could I not fall for her?
The laughter we’d share. I Loved making her laugh to the point it was too much for her and she’d ask me to stop, but I’d simply make her laugh more because you can never laugh too much! I’d listen to her worries and laugh because at the end of it all she’d acknowledge that it was nothing to be worried about, but even still she couldn’t help worrying. That was just who she was, she cared, sometimes it was too much, sometimes it wasn’t enough but it was enough that she cared. When she had real problems, I’d hate that there was nothing I could do about them. Seeing her in pain would break my heart, but I also knew she was strong, strong and stubborn. We’d debate things and she’d simply end the debate with a “Maybe…” There’s no maybe! I was right! But it’s cool, it wasn’t that serious.
When life got too much for me, she was there. Just seeing her was enough to set the world right again. Talking to her enough to return perspective to wherever it had been lost.

She’d often apologise for boring me, but I was never bored, I was just happy being around her, I told her that, though I don’t think she ever believed me. But I truly was happy, I cherished it all, the smiles, the laughter, the quiet times, the stories, the memories, even the tears, they were all a part of the moments we shared. Moments where we didn’t have to be anyone else but us.

I was thankful for everything we had together and everything we didn’t. She was one of my closest one of my best friends and I was in love with her…

I’m glad our relationship didn’t go further, I don’t trust that I would have been able to not lose myself inside of it had, that in itself is a recipe for disaster. But who knows, maybe I’d have been able to grow inside of it. But the real reason is I don’t think she would have been able to Love me the way I would have Loved her, the way I would have wanted or needed her too. To me that too would have been unacceptable, the rejection was preferable in fact.

So as I stood there for what would be the last time I would say this. I found myself stumbling over my words, unable to articulate my feelings. Feelings that once had me so liberated, but were now suffocating me beneath their constriction. When I finally managed to deliver a withered reflection of the contents of my heart, I heard once more “I don’t love you…” and it was ok, because I knew her well enough to already know. This was the response I expected, that was truly the source of what made it all so difficult to say. But the reailty was that the things I needed to say weren’t for her, they were for me, for my own freedom, my own growth.

With that I walked away, that weekend I disappeared, not that I think anyone noticed I was gone. It was the escape I needed to face and accept it. When I returned I took my first steps down a new path, one that didn’t lead me back to that precipice. I didn’t know where this path lead and I couldn’t tell if this was a sad thing or not. But I wasn’t sad, the next few months were some of the happiest I’d had since childhood. Maybe that’s why I didn’t quite realise, a little part of me had been lost. A source of joy and happiness was no longer there, replaced instead with an emptiness. An emptiness that was nobody’s responsibility to fill but my own.

“There are no Epiphanies, no Grand Life changing moments…”

Even when people do have them, they are merely inflection points, pivots. They are the moments of cognisance in which people decide to dedicate themselves towards constant Self Improvement or the focused pursuit of a goal or a mission. It is the moment in which they made a choice and wholly dedicated themselves towards that choice. So there are no epiphanies, no grand life changing moments. There are only choices, so make your choice…

The only thing that can make you unlovable is you not allowing yourself to be Loved…

We finally came to rest, continuing our conversation flanked by the streetlights that chased away the prying darkness. I stood there taking in his advice, but I couldn’t help but feel that something didn’t sit quite right. I knew it all came from a place of Love but I didn’t feel I could follow it, at least not wholly, not with the intentions behind which he had delivered it. He explained further, detailing that he wanted to lend me his experience, his wisdom. So that I wouldn’t have to experience the same pains that he had already been through. I think it was this that didn’t sit right with me. I’d learnt enough at this point to know that Life isn’t that simple, it’s not that easy. I had learnt enough to know that growth and strength don’t come from avoiding pain but from experiencing it. It is a part of the process. Going through it, drawing from it the lessons that are delivered alongside it.

It is the thing that is so wrong with our approach to life. We seek to avoid pain, overlooking the benefits, never seeking to become resilient to it, or learn from the lessons that accompany it. We experience it and vow never to go near it again, closing off all roads to our hearts, all paths to our higher selves. And that becomes what we pass along to our children, teaching them to avoid pain, instead of how to respond to it. So we are left with a society of people who are barely coping because they walk through life with the expectation that they aren’t supposed to feel pain, that it’s not supposed to be this way…

So much as I knew he was right, I couldn’t follow his advice, not wholly. If pain was to come I would have to experience it or rather embrace it and therein learn and grow from it. For it is as much a part of the journey, as the joys I had experienced till now. So abandoning the path at the point at which I saw pain up ahead felt too much like avoiding life for me to begin to contemplate it…

“The only Failure is to give up…”

It becomes dangerous when the line between “Being The Best Version Of Yourself” and “Being Perfect” become blurred…

One is making the best choices that you can in the moment. While the other is a fools errand, the pursuit of a fallacious, unattainable goal.

You ever run into someone you knew as a kid and their hairline’s become an urban legend, like it may or may not have once existed, and you first thought is ”Fam, when did you get that LeBron hairline?”

Then you’re next thought is “Why does your hairline look like you’ve got a wife, 3 kids a mortgage and overdue car payments? You’re younger than me!”

Like I ain’t seen dude in years so I thought it might be a bit harsh to ask but isn’t it more dishonest to not acknowledge it?

Then as you’re pondering this you remember that dude is also a barber and you’re like can you trust a barber with a disastrous hairline? Like would you trust him with yours, knowing that that’s the hairline he walks around with???

I often struggle when people ask me what I eat. Not because I don’t know what I eat, but I really don’t think about my eating habits in that manner. I have a framework or a checklist within my mind that I follow:

So I don’t eat:

• Animal Derived Foods (Eliminates Meats, Dairy and Fish)
• Processed Foods (Preservatives, Artificial shit, Flours, I aim to eat wholefoods not chemicals)
• Oils (all oils even Olive Oil, more so when they are cooked! I avoid them with prejudice!)
• Gluten  (Eliminates Wheat and it’s brethren)
• Soya (and it’s derivatives)

If a food isn’t eliminated by the above list then, then I’ll probably eat it. What this does is eliminate most conventional and pre-packaged foods – but I’d stopped eating most of them before going vegan anyway. I don’t eat at restaurants as the food at most restaurants – even Raw Food ones – won’t make it past the third checkpoint on the list – Oils!

Exceptions to the above checklist are white rice, and dried fruit – dried fruits are not whole foods, as their wholeness has been compromised by the removal of water.

If you’re asking what that leave’s then:

• Fruits (There is a world of fruits that we are unaware of! The supermarket aisle does not do justice to the extent of the bountiful fruits the earth has to offer!!)
• Vegetables (Same goes for veg!)
• Roots/Tubers (Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Yams, Casava etc)
• Legumes (Beans, Lentils etc)

I just figure it out from there and put together something from what’s available and meets my criteria. So the answer to the question what do I eat is “Whatever I feel like…and lots of it!!” And that’s usually somewhere in the second list 🙂