(Above photo: I recently invested in a Chromebook for blogging, and by signing in, I found a slew of old pictures in my Google Photos. It seems they’re camera roll uploads to Google’s cloud from my pre-iPhone days. This particular image says it’s from October 2011, and if you read the title to this blog post and thought “that must be a picture of the author and her first boyfriend,” ding! ding! ding! You got it.)
30-Day Writing Challenge, Day 2
It’s 11:41pm and I’m only now sitting down to churn out a blog for day two of this 30-day writing challenge. I’m supposed to complete one of the writing prompts, from a WordPress blog graphic I found online, every single day in the month of June. Yesterday, I spent entirely too much time on the writing prompt, just like I used to do during standardized testing back in secondary school, which caused me to spend all of day 2 finishing day 1’s prompt. I’m skilled, but I’m slow. Hopefully by the completion of this 30-day writing challenge, I’ll have picked up some speed.
Write Something That Someone Told You About Yourself That You Never Forgot
Oop! Now it’s 11:47pm, giving me all of 10 minutes to answer this writing prompt. Either way the cookie crumbles, I’m pressing publish by midnight. Think, T.K., think.
What is something that someone has told you about yourself that you never forgot?
Darn, four more minutes have passed and I still haven’t thought of anything in particular. I suppose I’ll keep typing to type, because referencing grade school again, didn’t they say that writing something was better than leaving the question blank? At least I’ll be able to give myself partial credit for this blog post.
I’ll always be alright.
There it is. That’s the something that someone told me about myself that I never forgot.
My first everything, Gary, taught me so many things about myself. I think about him when that song by Estelle plays that says, “and I thank you for making me a woman.” From ways of thinking to self-maintenance as a young lady, I learned so much from that man.
[It’s 11:59pm and I’m pressing publish, so everything from this point on is cheating a little bit, but now that a response to this writing prompt has come to me, I at least have to finish the thought.]
What could a man have taught me about self-maintenance as a woman?
I know this is slightly off-topic, and that’s probably a part of my problem, but I must explain. For example, no man had seen my lady parts before him, and I didn’t have a close relationship with any mother figure as a teenager, so beyond keeping my girl clean and I what I learned in Honors Anatomy and Physiology, I didn’t know much about down there.
This is way too much information, but hopefully no one I know personally will read these daily writing prompts.
Though I’ve been shaving my legs since having to wear a skirt for pep squad in 6th grade, it never dawned on me to remove the hairs from between my legs because that area wasn’t ever visible to anyone. We’ve laughed about it since, and he has denied it, but he went down there when it was a forest. Though we were “best friends” my senior year in high school, we didn’t become boyfriend-girlfriend and make the move into physical intimacy until I was well into college. So here I was, living on my own, paying rent, maintaining a household, thinking I’m a woman, yet with a baby kitty below that was in need of grooming.
My first serious boyfriend was the first person to take me to get a Brazilian wax.
He was some years older than me, and much more experienced, if you know what I mean. I remember making some sort of comment implying that I was going to continue getting waxes for him and he stopped me dead in my tracks, “nah, this is for you; you do this for you whether I’m going down there or not.” It was these sorts of lessons I learned about being a lady from him. (And now, approaching a decade later, even when cobwebs are collecting, hair removal from my private areas is a part of my routine self-maintenance.)
Let’s get back on topic.
Back in college, my first real boyfriend told me something about myself that I never forgot.
It’s now 12:42am and I refuse to stay up on this computer typing until 3am the way I did for day 1 of this 30-day writing challenge. [Sets timer for 15 minutes]
“One thing about you, T.K., you go’on always be alright.”
Before dating, Gary and I were the best of friends. We hung out often, as one of his closest homeboys lived three doors down from my grandmother’s house; my grandmother knew this neighbor (Gary’s best friend’s mom, and knew she’d be home), and for that reason alone, she’d let me spend my evenings over there, an arm reach away from her. What she didn’t know is that there was a boy sniffing around my lil’ butt over there.
I told him more than I told anyone, and he told me plenty too. He immediately knew when my clothes were thrown out of my grandmother’s house. He was there to pick me up from work at the outlet mall when my people were in a mood and would refuse, leaving me standing on the sidewalk before the locked store doors looking like a motherless child. He witnessed the tumultuous interactions between me and my family. He watched me work to pay for anything I wanted to do at school, from prom to graduation fees and college applications. He loaded up his Tahoe with my belongings and moved me off to college when my parental figures had washed their hands with me. I was still an adolescent child then, and those were very crucial moments to the building of my character, to the making of the young adult I was becoming, and he was there for it all.
Years later, (we weren’t even in a relationship anymore, if I remember correctly,) when Gary told me that I’d always be alright, he meant it, because he’d seen it.. and I felt it.
And I will.
Tenacity is one trait that I’m most thankful for. It felt good for it to be recognized in me by someone else, and it’s also very inspiring to be believed in, making that simple comment from my first real boyfriend stick with me forever.
I’ll always be alright.
Related: 5 Ways to Win My Heart
