A few photos from the double-header snowstorm that swept through the Washington D.C. area. I’ve been holed up in a hotel since Friday, and it looks like I won’t be leaving until Thursday. Oh joy, what fun! I’ll keep adding photos to this album as I get them. Photos by Liz Anderson
Helena Andrews, author of ‘Bitch is the New Black’, on relationships and the single life..
I enjoyed and related to this piece because I’ve been battling my uterus for 10 years.
I don’t feel sorry for my uterus. I love it and hate it. I love my uterus because it regulates hormones so I’m not a raging itch-bay, but I hate it because it insists on growing these little bastards called fibroids.
I am not whining. This is how I feel based on the relationship I have with my bastard baby bag. My GYN is aware of this hatred.
“I don’t want it.” That’s what told my GYN before walking to the imaging area for another ultrasound—just to see how big the creatures had grown in six months. I sat in the waiting area, watching pregnant women and their significant others wait to see images of their offspring, while I waited to see images of…
“This don’t make no sense,” I told myself, hating my bastard baby bag even more.
My uterus, and the fibroids it carries, intrudes upon my quality of life. Before invasive surgery some years ago, I, then an anemic twenty-something, had to wear depends, yes, DEPENDS to make sure my fibroids and the gift they gave each month didn’t ruin my outer garments once an hour. Forget trying to dress sexy. And I had to plan my life around my period, which lasted 15 days at that point. Nowadays, things are better, but the ultrasounds tell Doc and me that my bastard monsters are making a comeback.
“We just need one shot,” Mr. GYN replied. Translation: When we squeeze a kid out of you, then we can take the baby incubator. So I turned to him, right eyebrow raised, head cocked to one side.
“So are you telling me I need to find a baby-daddy?” I asked.
I could put out a personal add “Single Black Female seeking baby-daddy.” That’s not an option because I don’t want a baby daddy. Don’t want my uterus either. But my doc wants to preserve fertility. I’ve had three surgeries already, and may have more in the future. What’s a girl to do? I suppose I can just marry the first person who asks. But that’s not an option either.
“Have you tried sites like eHarmony or Match.com?” Doc asks. I have profiles on both sites. Let’s not talk about how active the profiles are (or aren’t).
My main point is that my uterus is guilty of being useless, but my doctor and I haven’t decided on a sentence yet.
And the journey continues.
Drawing boundaries is nice and healthy, but being distant isn’t either nice or healthy… especially if it prevents one from engaging in potentially meaningful relationships.
In undergrad, a fellow student advised me that I should let my barriers down. Now, I don’t know what HIS underlying motivation was for that admonition—or even if their was an underlying reason—but I believe his words still have merit more than a decade later. As I navigate my way through my thirties, I’m finding that some of the advice people gave me years ago is coming in handy and making me rethink how I conduct myself in daily life. I now figure that there is a reason why some words of advice, that seemed random when bestowed, stick in my mind while others fell by the wayside… and I’m also finding that other words were temporarily forgotten, only to resurface when circumstances summoned them forward.
Once upon a time, my Aunt Bonnie advised me that in the professional world, people may want and might even expect me to sleep with them or involve myself in not-so-professional ways that I might find compromising or just “not right” for me.
She was right.
I learned that the code of sexual-liaison-speak is real, and people won’t always be as forthright as Bell-Biv and DeVoe and say “Do Me Baby!” or even Color me Badd, “I Wanna Sex You Up!” Hints are thrown (I wanted to listen to this great band before I go back to my room in this hotel), and the catcher is expected to have a mitt, and if they don’t catch or if they just watch the ball fly through the air and land at their feet, the pitcher throws in another direction, I guess. I also learned that people will find what they want. If what they want from you isn’t what you want to give, it’s on to the next taker, plain and simple. No need for any panties or drawers to get in a bunch. It’s life, and that’s just the way it is.
But I, you, we don’t have to get “got” in the process. That wouldn’t be meaningful relation-shipping.
And THAT’S just the way it is—what it be like.
It’s amazing. This is the start of a new decade. It is wild how time flies. When the 21st century started, I did not imagine that we’d have the first African-American president of the United States. I also never imagined my country being embroiled in two wars, and that the World Trade Center would be attacked and leveled by airplanes and the Pentagon would have to repair a gaping hole caused by a plane commandeered by terrorists carrying school children and other passengers. I wouldn’t have imagined that the Supreme Court would have to decide who won a presidential race and that Chads could become pregnant.
I also didn’t think I’d still be single. I’ve had and lost boyfriends and a fiancée. When I run across old college friends, it seems some are amazed that I haven’t settled down. And that’s the key… up to this point, for me, “settling down” would have involved settling.
Couldn’t do that.
All my close friends from college have either married or had children, and I’m so happy for them, but I’m not quite sure that’s the life for me. Instead of finding a life partner, I’ve worked to transform some of my dreams and aspirations into reality. I will continue to pursue my dreams and do what I must to make them come true.
Of course, I’m doing the customary re-thinking about the year winding down and thinking what I can do to make the coming year better, to make self-improvements. I, like many, have resolutions but they aren’t anything especially ground-breaking or novel. This coming year, I plan to do the following mundane, yet personally meaningful things:
• Write more and work on two personal storytelling projects
• Be more giving, while maintaining healthy boundaries
• Dare to be more open–I’ll need a little work and help with this one…
• Take opportunities to develop creatively and share my gifts with the public
Each year is a conglomeration of moments. I plan to maximize the moments and do all in my power to create the year I desire and weather the bumps as they come along.
To a year of smiles, realized dreams, peace and spiritual fortitude… God bless!