Friendship

I never fully understood friendship. This was made very apparent to me by the events of the past weekend. One of my good friends got married. I am happy for her and her new husband and I wish them nothing but the best.

I have never understood how people place value on a friendship. In my experience either your are a good friend or you are not. Either you are friends with me or your are not. I have never fully grasped the process of making new friends it seems because I really have a select group of friends. In my opinion my friends are friends with me because they have found something about me that they like. As far as I'm concerned a good friend is a good friend and there is nothing more or less. The qualities of a good friend are to great to name but it seems that the value of a friendship varies from person to person.

This particular friend of mine, we went to middle school, high school and graduated from college together, she was even the maid of honor at my wedding (a description of a great friend!) I was a maid and not a bridesmaid at her wedding. It was my job to hand out programs and make sure that people signed the guest book. I did it with a smile, it was not about me is what I had to tell myself. PUT ON A HAPPY FACE is what I did.

What became weird was having to tell people who I was when they asked. I said that I went to middle school with the bride and we graduated from college together. I overheard her mom explaining to her family who I was. Weird right? I knew the the main reason people were asking was because I was black at this all white wedding. Must have been hard trying to explain who I was and why I was handing out programs. So this one thing put me out of place. AWKWARD!

I think what stings the most is that the bride, told me that the reason she didn't ask me to be a bridesmaid was because she didn't think that I could afford it. REALLY!?!? Bridesmaids have to pay for things for the bride and I didn't make the cut. Who says things like this to people? The thing about this was I did not think that it was a requirement of a friend to have MONEY!

I understand that you are the company that you keep, but I don't think I ever gave the impression that I ever needed money for anything. Or that it was a requirement for me to be someones friend. All I can say right now is that you learn something new everyday!

I feel shafted and belittled because a friend that know this long doesn't value the friendship that we have in the same way that I do. I felt out of place at the wedding and now that I look back on it, I would have rather just been invited as a guest. Had not my niece (biracial) been her flower girl, I even wonder if I would have been invited at all.

Again it was not my day, it was not even about me...but now that that day is over, I can tell you how I feel.
I feel that being the token black/beown makes events like these hard when the people aren't expecting you. To know your child is friends with a black/brown person probably scares a lot of people. Why? I don't understand other than they are afraid they will be some NIGGER LOVERS or something.

But the money thing brought about so many different things of classism and social norms that are and are not accepted by certain groups of people. I think that in this case, the color of my skin didn't allow her to fully incorporate me into her day. I would have be a sore spot to the picturesque bridal portrait or they would have had a hard time trying to find brown groomsman to even out the color line. I really think the money issue was a cop out for bigger picture of her perfect world.

I don't think that I will fully understand not being able to afford to be someones friend. But I do understand that people place different values on friendships. After this weekend it seems like a master-houseslave relationship in this particular instance. I am a bit hurt and taken aback because of the words she said to me and the entire wedding day, I was in the way...and I felt that I shouldn't have been there.

Life Goes On. You LIVE and LEARN!

A drink going down the wrong pipe part 1

I want to start with the beginning of the marriage. I don't remember most of if right now but I can remember some key points that I will talk about later. I want to start with the days after the wedding.

Well things were weird only because we really didn't have a place to live. Aaron was always in a rush to find a place to live that was not in his parents house. He was very persistent so much so that he wanted to move me and 2 kids into the worst ever neighborhood with the nastiest houses ever. One house he didn't even show me because he said the smell was so bad that it was unbearable. The other house was in the same neighborhood, as the one mentioned before, and that wasn't a good selling point.
Upon walking in the house there was a smell of something rotten. And as the person shows us the house, we find that there is someone living in the house. To cover this up, the person states that the person living here is only living here because they are doing the repairs on the house. So a 3 bedroom one bathroom house, in which the bathroom was in the back of the house behind the kitchen was a very real problem for me.

The 3rd house was in a middle neighborhood, meaning that is was in the middle of a good and a bad neighborhood. How that happens is a mystery to me, but it happens. So this house was a 4 bedroom, 2 and a half bath house. It was great, owned by white people, no offense intended. I like the house but it brought many problems to the marriage. The house failed on us. It caused more problems that we could handle. The bills started to skyrocket because of the failing foundation of the house. The house was caving in and the landlord didn't have enough money to fix it although she tried to fix the worst parts.

Things seemed to be getting worse and so we had to abandon ship and lost a lot of money and minds doing so.

Part 2 will be about roomates

Rumble in the Jungle

SO it is at this point in my relationship, as with many other points, that I desire a need to get the craziness out my mind. This process allows me to function daily and without it I feel that my mind and my being will be swallowed by the chaos.

My 2 year marriage hasn't been dedicated to happiness at all. And you might ask why. Answering this question alone would probably take me ten years to sort out every detail but I will talk about one.
From my point of view, although slanted at times, will try to stay as neutral as possible. I can't guarantee that this will stay this way, but only that I will start this way.
My husband and I got married in 2009, amid some discussion that this was the right thing to do in order for each of us to make some sort of positive progression towards some fantasy of a life.
Granted that we had shacked up for 2 years prior to that and despite some red flags we got married.

The first year of marriage summed up as the following: A drink going down the wrong pipe.

The second year of marriage can be summed up as the following: All the drowning possibilities there are!

And as we go into the third year... all can say is that we might not even get that far....God Help US!