So: analogy time...if you're up for it.
When I was a kid (ok, even now) the collective we had names for overgrowth, for the sparse and kinky sections of hair that would grow up and against the relaxed, chemical treated sections. The portions we went over attempting to smooth, smother, slick against humidity, against inevitability, against, well, poetic nappiness. It would work until it rained. Until the growth overtook it's six week pledge to be well behaved. Then it would erupt, realness, frizziness, in a fit of kink and candor.
Over time, well, you just cut off the treated and "good" shit. Commit yourself to Sundays at the Dominican salon. Adopt other riturals to let your hair be who it could and should be, in any weather. Or you continued that strange and startlingly un/complicated relationship with perm until further notice. #shrug
Neither approach was/is wrong. Neither made you (or me) a higher powered person, more moraly stable or lovable (I think), but a choice you made on your head and in your mind about what your mane would look like.
And lately I'm realizing there is some carryover. Friends aren't buckshots, but they can be just as hard to work with... Case in point, I have a close friend. We formerly referred to each other as sisters. Fighting-@$$ sisters, I'll tell you that. But what sisters aren't?
It was one of those relationships where she hurts your feelings, and I came off as a know-it-all. And it's deeper than frenemies cause y'all do care for each other and the goal isn't to bring each other down. Y'all think: I can get this joint smooth. I can deal for another six weeks. You can't. At least we couldn't.
And like clockwork, our typical exchange went its necessary route, starting playfully, then superfically, moseying into someething markedly less official. We talked about hair, to hoes, to family. Perhaps health. Mental health even. We later fell over the deep end. It became very #teamWTF
The expectation on one side was that I'd provide unwavering support, perhaps a yes or two. Perhaps I was supposed to remain quiet. However, in order to do so I'd have to sacrifice something I strongly believe in, uphold myself to. I'd have to be the lady version of a yesman...But I couldn't/can't/won't. Love is one thing, right is another.
I semi-realize now my homegirl wasn't wrong, our rights just didn't see eye to eye. Not for years I think now. And perhaps not for years to come.
So, like a fade, like a good barber, the lines have started to taper, not abruptly, not cuttingly sharp or fierce, but subtlely into the skin of silence that is very necessary and for the time being. And I've not ever been one to speak to forever. So I can't/won't go there.
That, and I'll admit, sometimes I miss her. And sometimes I want to pull over and scream (I'm damn near always in my car) and say how selfish of you not to let me be the friend I can be/must be/have been...
But I'm realizing, I didn't let her be who she was either. And I perhaps, can't.
And what is this life if we have to be who another makes us be? Or crafts us into?
Nothing very zen about that.
I said goodbye to my mom once (ok, five times). Our goodbyes lasted years. they were angry and coarse throated. People say it's different with family, that you can't ever truly let go or truly move on. You know what, it actually isn't. I just decided that I didn't want to do let go or move on. I very much just wanted to see her age. I decided I would attempt growth, indifference, but still me-ness with the time each of us has left.
And this committment has worked, if bumpingly, if nappily so.
But you make a decision, as an adult, as a grown-@$$ whatever you are, and sometimes your sources of support aren't necesarily supportive, or relective, or reflexive. And sometimes you need some of those -ives more than the others.
And so for now, and for my own mental stability, I won't be continuing with that strange and startlingly complicated relationship until further notice.
Goodbye friend.
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