I was told to redirect my anger to a constructive format.
I honestly cannot tell you which is worse; a sharp, intelligent person criticizing valid tactics for social equality or a dumb person minimizing a personal gripe. Either way, I feel I live at a school (more so a social space) where socially inept people get some pass because they just don’t know any better. Hard to believe. When no one talks or acknowledges them as people, when they have to fight and or whine for attention or they refuse to recognize alternative viewpoints.
However I can state what kills me most about these situations. No matter how, often times but not universally, just my anger is, I am vilified as being mean or bullying. It takes serious frustration and aggression for me to openly. I am in no way walking around “keeping it real” or “letting people know the truth”. That’s unnecessarily bitch and condescending. If I in a moment of weakness on my part show you HOW FUCKING FRUSTRATING you make me. You have got to warrant literally none of my respect. I must literally see no benefit in you living in a fallacy.
I know a lot of things thus far have been the worst, and what “kills” me but this is a compounded issue, the same people who hate and judge and criticize this socially oblivious people behind their back allow are the first to run to the aid of the butt of their jokes. Yet, I’m the bad person.
Fuck all of them. I knew I needed my distance. I knew it was only a matter of time. I’m done. If they are going to sit around and allow this travesty to stand, I’m done.
I have to watch the fucking State of the Union tomorrow. FUCK MY LIFE.
Literally there is too much good going on in my life for me to allow this bullshit to linger.
I swear, IF THERE IS A MOMENT WHEN I OFFEND OR ANNOY OR AGITATE YOU I DO NOT MEAN TO AND WILL STOP. It is rarely YOUR problem if you don’t like me. We live in a world with other people we have to be considerate and aware of how others are affected by our behavior. Obliviousness is only partially an excuse. Fuck it.
creating spaces and giving voices
This new year has brought a mélange of new feelings and emotions and for the most part I am pleased by them. I remember how I felt as I left for Thankgiving break to go to Westport, the uncertainty of my love life and my social experience. I am going to address those soon. Currently though, I am caught in a space of happiness. Things are looking up for me.
I have a significant amount of money coming my way, I am taking amazing classes. I have a great internship (hopefully) in the works for this summer. I am so excited for the dances that are coming up this spring. I am so happy.I am moreso happy that my happiness doesn’t scare me. Nor do I anticipate some impending doom. It has also given me a space to find and forge new voices for myself.
In dating Chris, I realized one thing about myself, whomever I date has to be able to keep with my differing facets. I am a social animal and connect with people all the time. I need someone who can keep up and play the game with him. I need a cut buddy, I need a bro. The sexual side wasn’t enough. I needed a friend who I could cry to and fight with and rely on. A guy, sweet, timid, mild, like Chris was no match. His skewed view of our friendship now is completely annoying though. I thought we could one day be social friends but he wants the new degree of closeness with whhich I am just not comfortable. I’m not a drop everything person for virtually anybody. Chalk it up to laziness or disinterest but I do not give 100% to anyone friend. That is not to say that I would go the mile for some, but for most debatable. He wants to constantly have my ear and be my best friend (with occasional benefits). It is ridiculous. He consistently facebook messages me, and gchats me. Get out man, you are just embarrassing yourself.
However, SIg Ep has been AMAZING. The process though hard and frustrating, I love my new Brotherhood. They care for me so deeply, it is refreshing and comforting to feel that in the male space. It seems so rare to have legitimate connections and through the process I feel forever bonded and connected to these guys. Next week we start rushing for the new pledges and I am so pumped to get new guys under our wings. This break just sitting around with them and being in community with them has been everything I have ever wanted. If I fall asleep, I’ll get blanketed, if I’m sober I’ll beer and a hit. Things are always looking up and Im always invited. It has been all I ever wanted.
I am looking up in this new year. A stark difference from my mental breakdown last year this time.
Identity modifications: performance and domesticity
Its strange to imagine how drastically different my life has become in the last month. More importantly how different this entire school year has been for me. In no way have the changes in my life been, traumatic or spirit break but I have found validation in 2 aspects of my life I have been extremely insecure about.
1.Masculinity:
In high school I consistently felt pressure to perform my gender/sexuality in a prescribed way. I did theater, danced,was a tv personality in my town. I was over the top, charismatic. While charisma is a integral part of my personality, I used it as a buffer. Being a character allowed me keep a gap between my secretly inverted nature and the social space that my presence demands. While I feel safer in a small pond, I’m definitely a big fish. So coming into college, I honestly considered going back into the closet and coming out after creating my identity. I didn’t want my sexuality to define how I was pressured into performing my gender.
Upon arriving to school, I lost the need to hide who I was. I needed to be myself because being reserved and closeted is not who I am. I did however work on interacting and engaging people on a more true to self level minimizing the over the top dramatics. Honestly? I think it worked. I for the first time in a long time am extremely happy with how I present myself.
The consummation of my presentation acceptance is in my pledging (joining) of a fraternity on campus. I have dominated one the most exclusive and heteronormative spaces in academia. They have been welcoming with open arms. It is in this space I have thrived, and explored nuances in masculinity as a whole and fluid it all really is.
2.Dating
Ironically, around the same time I started pledging, I met this really awesome guy, “Harmonica Kid.” I saw him around campus playing harmonica and whistling and after a while I said to myself, “if I see him again, I’m gonna say hello” and sure enough only hours after I made that pact I see him serendipitous. We had a most awkward exchange of greetings (I walked away without saying my name), but we ended up having lunch and getting coffee. After about 2 weeks of this we started dating.
It has been a mostly joyous experience. He has been a great addition to my life. I’ve basically moved in with him, and its been a month of laughter, conversation, and a myriad of other benefits of dating. I also became hyper aware of how much I flirt. Which has presented its on problems. More on that later.
+
Excitement with minor streaks of anxiety fill my life now to see where both of this additions take me. I want to be the best pledge/brother/lover I can be, so I am coming to terms with what all those things entail.
when you speak there are literal flames on the sides of my face.
please, i beg of you, shut the hell up. you wannabe sort of psychologist think you can just shrink everyone around you.
i beg of you, you are embarassing yourself. also ms., do not engage with this asinine bullshit you are being fed. I hate this. Why am I still here?
Black Death
It brought out the crazy in people. But consider mass hysteria. In times of limited techKnowledge, when things were still vastly unexplained how else can you justify such mass death.
As humans we consider ourselves so intimately untouchable. When something so massively challenges that we fear some deity so unjust is producing their wrath.
Accept humanity, accept life for what it is. It will make living exponentially easier.
Mystery of Fall Gloom
There, undoubtedly, is something in the air. A dreary unspoken static. Less than stoic, but more than serene. The cold offers a space but not peace.
Notice the wetness in the air.
Vilifying the Agency of Beyonce
Are their sweeping generalizations Girls (Run the World)? Absolutely, but understand it from her level of privilege. She has in most ways achieved the agency and social mobility that women seek. She also has the ability to embody so many different aspects of femininity.
As a young lady she was the sexually exploratory, high school crush, sisterhood/girlfriend hood Bey. She was the single twenty year old, lamenting on her success and her not needing a man, a rare feminine independence. She embody the woman in love, in a relationship where she can call the shots while also being submissive. She has the agency to move and alternate her power in her social and relational sphere. She know is moving to a place of maternal power. She is putting her career on hold to have a child. How ever she never once announced she was retiring. She knows she will always have the option to do what she loves. She controls how her image is perceived in the media, she controls how her songs are released. She has so much more say about her sound, than the many comparable artists.
She is on a platform that most women are not, where she is as influential as she is influenced, as sexy as she is pure. She holds the power several gendered dichotomies. Just because she does not outright create gay anthems, because she has different gender performance than lady Gaga, there is no reason to villify her, by saying she doesn’t care about her queer populations. Or to say she doesn’t nothing for women. Girls may not run the world yet, but with women like her to look up to, in time it will be a legitimate reality.
Limit to Your Love
There’s a limit to you care
So carelessly there, is it truth or dare
There’s a limit to your care
There’s a limit to your love
Like a waterfall in slow motion
Like a map with no ocean
There’s a limit to your love
Your love, your love, your love
- “Limit to Your Love” by Leslie Fiest
This song has been ruminating in my mind for a few weeks now. Enjoy.
I have attached the James Black version.
Speak of Me as I Am: musings of ImagoJayy
This is not the first time I have tried to blog. I have tried to keep daily posts on my ongoings, but not even I find things in my life so inherently interesting to announce them in an consistent forum. I cannot even say that I do now. However, for someone who is constantly thinking I need to control and place them in some sort of organized fashion. In an effort to be more transparent, I am going to essentially think openly. Relating my own personal musing and perspectives to the worlds and spaces I inhabit. Dance spaces, queer spaces, black spaces, and more recently male-centric and activist spaces. They are all so often separate in my life. I tend to compartmentalize them into very clear set boxes, I want to collect them.
In collecting these facets of my perspective, I will be essentially be proving to myself their inherent worth. My perspective, as it adapts to the spaces I am in, is made in the image of me. It has my sensibility. It has my tone.
I don’t want this to be theraputic. This is not going to a space for me to get out my angst. While I may speak from place of passion or frustration, I have other social media outlets for my rants (e.g. twitter). I want to simply collect my thoughts through words. I will post minimal pictures or video, I want this to be about my tone and written presentation. My visual aesthetic can be found elsewhere.
While this blog is for me, I would love to hear feedback, critique, questions. If there is something you want clarification on, or you want my perspective on, I would love to respond and offer my proverbial “2 cents.”
Lastly, the name of this blog is taken from Shakespeare’s Othello, in the final act when Othello has committed his crime of jealousy, he does not want his history to be removed. He does not want his slate wiped clean, he wants to be known for what he was. A respected military officer, a passionate lover, and sinner. All that he was he took on even in death. As I continually, aspire to be a more genuine person I want to be remember for all that I am. So when my time is up, the world can speak of me as I am.
