All of My Stuff

As salaam alaikum,

Last night, I watched "For Colored Girls." As a result, I had a dream upon waking that my ex was trying to rape me. Yeah, not cute. Before then, I had a dream where I saw him, and I was just filled with hatred at the site of his silhouette.

Yeah, no more movies like that before bedtime.

But there was one of the poems that I really liked from the work that I just read for full effect. "Somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff." I liked it, because someone almost did. I especially identified with this part:


somebody almost run off wit alla my stuff
& i waz standin
 there
lookin at myself
the whole time 
& it waznt a spirit took my stuff
waz a man whose 
ego walked round like Rodan’s shadow
waz a man faster
n my innocenc


waz a lover
i made too much 
room for
almost run off wit alla my stuff
& i didnt know i’d give it up so quik
& the one runnin wit it

don’t know he got it
& i’m shoutin this is mine
& he dont 
know he got it
my stuff is the anonymous ripped off treasure
 of the year
did you know somebody almost got away wit me
me in a plastic bag under their arm
me 
danglin on a string of personal carelessness...

This was my ex. I made too much space for him. And I almost let him walk away with so much of me, and my dignity, which I regained when I erased all traces of him from my life, save the backpack that was a gift to me and is actually quite useful and a Chimamanda Adichie book that he lent to me that he may never get back at this point.

I don't know why women do this. We put so much of ourselves into relationships, give so much of ourselves...and the men don't care. They don't know how much they've taken away. We made a space to fill with them, and then they leave us, and now we've got an empty space. And we chase them for a while, for the sake of sensation and sentiment, and they don't want to have any part. They don't even realize what havoc they've wrought.

They can't get too far with all of our stuff if they don't know they even have it. It should be easier to take it back.

Sometimes I wonder why we were made this way, women, to nurture so much, so many times at the expense of ourselves.