Reflecting and Remembering...

Today is my mother's birthday. She would have been 52 today. I have passing moments of sadness but overall I am okay. It's been a little over 3 months. This has been a LONG 3 months.

My brother and my dad went to her grave this afternoon and placed fresh flowers there. I.....well I was 100 miles away. No literally. I got the hell out of town. I'm not really ready to go back to the cemetery. I just don't feel like she's even there. If I talk to the ground, she's not gonna talk back to me. So I don't feel like I should force myself to go. They don't understand me and they think I'm being selfish. But I have to place my feelings first. I have comforted others to no end....but I don't feel like that's being returned. So I gotta take care of me.

My mom wouldn't have wanted us to sit around and be sad. And I didn't forget (...as folks would like to believe). I choose to remember her in happy ways. I think about her all the time....and I miss her. More than anybody knows. Happy birthday, Mama!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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30 Day Letter Challenge: Day 6 - A Stranger

Dear Stranger,

Hello there, nice to meet you. There are many things that you will never know about me just by looking at me. First of all, I just really want you to like me. Above all else, I am always looking for new friends and contacts...like-minded people. I know that I may seem shy and quiet. Maybe a little aloof. I don't really know you, so I have a hard time just putting myself out there. I am really working on expanding my comfort zone, so I hope that you would be patient with me.

I know that I may seem stuck up on the outside, but that is really only because I am kinda shy. I hope that you will want to know me SO much that you take the extra time to be patient with me while I warm up to you.

Love always,

Kat ♥

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30 Day Letter Challenge: Day 5 - Your Dreams

Dear Dreams,

This is my first time writing a letter to something that I couldn't really talk to. So here goes. Over the course of my life, I have had a lot of dreams. You are my 4 constant dreams....or should I say life goals and desires. Sometimes I feel as if some of you are getting farther and farther out of my reach. Others of you seem well within my grasp. So I will address each of you and my plans for you.

To be a licensed attorney: Okay.....me and you have been on a whirlwind journey since August 2005 when I started law school. Law school was struggle that year, but I hung right in there with you. Brought my GPA up from the depths of hell to get out of there with my juris doctor and most of my sanity intact. The bar exam is the only thing keeping me from you. 4 points away from passing on the first try. Ugh! 10 points away the second time....double UGH!!! Next is was the money that was keeping me from you. Then just when I thought I was going to reach out for you again.....the death of my mother placed you on the back burner again. But this February it is going to be me and you.....I hope you are ready!

To be married before the age of 25: The joke is on me for thinking that I could put a time limit on you. I turned 27 last month. No husband. But you and I both know that I have never been closer to you than I am today. When I was 25, I was in a really bad head space with the relationship that I was in. Marraige was not even an option. I am SO thankful for the mental capacity to even know that. My current relationship.....pure gold. If things stay on the same track (and my first dream pans out), I will most likely be making wedding plans in 2011. I have never been with a person where he knows my inner most thoughts, who can look at my face and instantly know how I feel. I think that this is THE ONE. And as many times as we have put off an engagement.....I am truly excited for the day that we officially are.

To be finacially sound: I know that you are best friends with dream #1 up there....so go hang out with him.

To have a greater sense of family: I thought that I had more time to work on you, but it seems as if I have been put on the fast track to make this work. The past 3 months have been.....a whirlwind with losing my mother. I am just now realizing that the relationships that I have with my brother and my dad were really facilitated by her. I don't even know how to go about having real conversations with my dad at this point. This one thing that needs to become more than a dream....NOW!

Love always,
Kat ♥

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The Problem With Islamaphobia

This past weekend Americans commemorated the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It is amazing how on that day many emotions arise that make it seem as if the attacks happened only yesterday. I remember the feeling of never wanting to EVER get on plane. I remember looking at every single person that I thought was of Middle Eastern descent with conviction. I thought that they all had something to do with it and my trust of the world was lost. That was 9 years ago, though. I was an 18 year old college freshman.....young and dumb, for lack of better terms. As I grew up and advanced in my knowledge of the world and other cultures, I expected that America would as well. I was dead wrong.

In recent months there has been another surge of Islamaphobia. This is in large part due to the Park51 Islamic community center that is going to be built near Ground Zero. Not only is the center being protested, but mosques and proposed mosques all over the country are being vandalized, fire-bombed and terrorized.....for lack of a better term. What the opposers would have you to believe is that Muslims build mosques on areas that they consider conquered territory.....hence the location near Ground Zero. HUH?! There is a mosque about 5 minutes away from where I live. I highly doubt that any "conquering" happened there. There was a mosque of sorts INSIDE one of the towers. There was also a mosque already in that area that was destroyed when the towers fell. So the idea of Muslims worshipping peacefully there is not out of the norm. What is really killing me out of all this is the blatant racism and ignorance that is being shown by a LOT of people. How a Christian could condone the burning of a holy book of someone else's religion is beyond me.

Lots of Muslims are being looked at with a second glance as if they were planning an attack. As a black person, I just can't get down with that. It is hard enough to live in America and just get by. But add to that mix being a minority and not have a "favored religion?" That has got to be enough to make even a sane person go mad. Common sense and research tells me that Islam is an Abrahamic religion, meaning simply that I can relate to a lot of the teaching of Islam if I am a true Christian. The origins are rooted in the same God. How can you hate something that you know absolutely nothing about?

I don't know any Muslims personally.....but my fast Blogspot friend is Irendi, who is a Muslim. Just reading her blog and the blogs of other Muslims that she follows make me long for the type of devoutness and honesty to their faith that they have. It prompts me to pray for ignorance to be removed from the hearts of all of these misguided people pretending to be Christians.....

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Happy Black Girl Day!!!

Today I stumbled onto a new "holiday" while I was in the blogosphere. I ran across Sister Toldja's blog and discovered that she created Happy Black Girl Day. It is celebrated every second Wednesday of every month. I'm not too late because this is only the 8th one. But I am glad that I stumbled across it.

Too many times black women have a complex about themselves brought upon by the many statistics that the media places out there about them. (Personally I don't take these things with a grain of salt for I am a hopelessly optimistic person.) Black women are too often too angry. Black women have a slim chance of finding love because the black man is either gay or in jail AND the ones that aren't either are just too dumb. (I'm not making this up.) I think that in today's society that it is hard enough to be a woman....but then to add to that being a black woman......things get a little bit tougher. So many stereotypes to overcome, so many pressures to get over. I wake up and thank God everyday that I was born a black woman. I wouldn't have it any other way. There is something about the inner strength of a black woman that makes me lift my head up high. I wouldn't be here today or be the woman that I am without the strength and courage of a black woman (I love you, Mama...RIP). 

But today is a day to just sit back and take stock that is the beauty that is.....us. Happy Black Girl Day! Thanks to Sistah Toldja for such a wonderful idea.

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30 Day Letter Challenge: Day 4 - Your Sibling

(PSA: I know that I have been slacking with these. I am going to do better about them because getting all these feelings out have been therapy.)

Dear Brother,

There have been many times in life that I have wanted to write this exact letter but I always thought that I could just talk to you and you would understand exactly what I was saying. I have learned many times that I am mistaken....so here goes.

First off, I have loved being your older sister. Being 6 years older than you has given me the opportunity to go out there and make a lot of mistakes in life and later be able to tell you how not to do what I did. Somewhere in all of this, you have gotten the idea that I would try to sabotage you in some way. I really do have the best intentions when I give you advice (that you ask for....might I add). It hurts my feelings that you will look at my advice as cray and let people who you KNOW mean you no good lead you into dumb and dangerous situations. You get mad because when you call me later and tell me that you should have listened to me.....I don't really listen anymore. I hate to tell people "I told you so" and I hate talking to brick walls.

I feel as though a healthy brother/sister relationship was stolen from me the moment I turned 14. Both of our parents worked far from home and I had the responsibility of helping to raise you in their absence. Til this day you look at me as more of a parental figure than a sister and that bothers me. Even when they were home, I still had to handle issues going on at school, make sure you had everything done for school....teach you life lessons, lecture you when Mama and Daddy couldn't make you listen. I much as I love them....I think they quit a little bit once I got older. I have to be honest that I feel a little bit of resentment because of that. I just wanted the chance to just be your sister. I still do. But I am going to be as real with you as I am with everyone I deal with. I am NEVER going to hold you up in bullshit....I owe more to you than that. I can't support your self-destructive behavior.....so if that bothers you, you can wash your hands of me. I will still love you.

Your behavior in the weeks leading up to Mama's death.....I can't even begin to explain how hurt I still feel about that. I didn't appreciate you telling everyone that I never did anything for her and that I never came to visit. I hope that made you feel better because it made me feel awful when people were coming at me sideways at the funeral. You know damn well I was there almost everyday those last 2 months.....even when you had every excuse in the world not be while at the same time telling Facebook a different story.

It would be so easy for me to wash my hands of you altogether. That scares me. So I have been trying to work on it. If you want to meet me halfway....I will be waiting. Please grow up soon. You will enjoy 21 better with a little maturity.

Love always,

Kat ♥

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Back From Hiatus.....

Sooo.....I took a little bit of a break from blogging. I have been so busy trying to just get my life together that I don't have much energy to blog about it. Well I take that back. I can tweet all day long. But Twitter feeds more into my ADD than a blog does. Sad thing about it is....I write almost everyday. Never hit post. I hate that I do that. Always going to come back in and proof or add or change some things. Rarely do. So I'm gonna do better. Gonna just hit the post button periodically throughout the day. 

I will have a brief confession moment though. I feel sometimes that I struggle to get it together. I had a life goal....a plan of sorts to have the career, the husband, the kids, the lifestyle that I wanted all by the age of 30. Well....I turned 27 last month and I had to come to grips with a lit of things in life. 30 just may come and go and I am going to have to deal with the fact that I am still just working on it. My career....passing the bar exam is still a goal. One that is ever elusive but that I will have licked on the last week of February 2011. I have a good relationship....but no marriage. At least not yet. We aren't ready. Close.....but not yet. So many things that I want to do before then....like have the career on point. Both of us having jobs that don't require a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle. (That's a subject for another day.) So no marriage means no kids. I refuse to compromise on that. Accidents happen....and I am prepared for that. I just do everything to reduce the chance of that happening. Lifestyle....well I gotta stop being broke....so that travels back to #1.

I am by no means complaining.....I just imagined in May 2005 that my life would be so much different than it is now. Reality is much more harsh than a dream.....so I'm dealing with it.

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