Who is Shelby?

No, really. Who the heck am I?

What am I doing here? What do I love and enjoy? What are my passions? What is my calling? What makes me, me?

How does this even work?? How does one begin to know who they are? And when? How long does it take? And what's to be done until then?

Just exist, I suppose.

Seven Two's.

Seven two's at my feet. More milk. I don't want it. Use your spoon Tommy. Stop playing in your peas. More milk! Don't touch him. Are you done?

Seven boys at my table. It's lunch time. Styrofoam plates and plastic spoons placed around the rectangular kiddie furniture. Only a foot and a half from the floor with lime green chairs.

It was a Thursday. Just one more day. I just have to get through one. more. day I thought as I almost pulled my hair from my scalp. (Every bit of it was almost worth the pain and baldness that would have resulted.)

Twenty-two with seven kids. Twenty-two with seven boys. Twenty-two with seven two year old boys.

I'm hunched over, trying to sit at the tiny table, while cleaning tiny fingers from the meal that was supposed to end up in their bellies, but is actually plastered on their shirts. I wipe a sticky palm as I'm day dreaming about God knows what, but God brought something better. Across the room, among the chaos and confusion, I spot a cardinal. He peeped his head from below the window frame, offering me solace. I accepted and smiled.

I smiled for the first time that day, and nothing could take that smile away. Not even the thought that I had six more tiny hands to wipe.

I'm in an LDR.

Long Distance Relationship.

The relation? My best friend from London... who I've only met once.

We met Saturday, July 26th, 2014. We went to the mall, ate greasy mall food, and went to the typical mall stores. But the greatest part about it, we were able to laugh and talk without any electronic devices. We were able to hug, and touch each others hair (which we were both excited to do), and just learn each other the way friends are supposed to.

Because I Need To

My theory is that sometimes our bodies need things to the point of force. When that something is missing, the body will find a way to either replace it or make it happen involuntarily, without our conscious consent.

Like the way our tongues always manage to wiggle between two teeth, the pink fleshy crater tasting of lead and silver paper clips. No matter how hard we try, muscle memory sets in and our tongues always find it's place abreast with enamel. As if it belonged, needing to be there, number thirty two.

Or the way our eyes draw thick as velvet curtains and demand an exit of thoughts and an entrance of dreams. Paralyzed, closed eyes, no matter how hard we try. Our heads nod and bob, struggling to make it through one more episode, one more video, one more tweet. We wake up with laptops that had fallen asleep not long after our bodies became wrapped up in our sheets. Our eyes know before we do. And we have no choice but to agree.

Nights when I don't know why I'm crying, I credit it to the fact that, perhaps I haven't cried in a while and it's about time. My body is probably ridding the toxic thoughts and poisonous people from my spirit. Or maybe because I yearn for something more that I don't know how to give myself. The way an infant wails because there's nothing else to do to get his or her needs tended to. I guess maybe I cry because I don't have the words to say.

As I write this I can feel my tongue gliding across my teeth filled with anxiety, and my eyes are swelling, filled with tears. 

I don't know why, but I would like to think my body knows what it's doing. 

And I just agree.

"I could use a little break from this cycle, to give myself some space to discover what I look like and talk like when I'm not trying to merge with someone. And also, let's be honest — it might be a generous public service for me to leave intimacy alone for a while. When I scan back on my romantic record, it doesn't look so good. It's been one catastrophe after another. How many more different types of men can I keep trying to love, and continue to fail?"

Elizabeth Gilbert | Eat, Pray, Love

Our Black Men

Eric Garner | Oscar Grant | Sean Bell | Trayvon Martin | Jordan Davis

& the list goes on
                      and on
                            and on.

I mourn for the Black men in this country. I mourn for the Black men of the world whose lives are considered insignificant. They don't see the strength of a Black men. His power. His intelligence. His life as a human being.

They see his skin. As if the eumelanin determines one's worth and value.

The Veil continues to be relevant and active. The lack of clarity to see Blacks as people, as Americans, is active in our schools, our workplaces, and our communities. We are invisible to the world unless they want to make a mockery of the design of our biology. Unless they want to profit off of our minds and our bodies. Unless they want to show themselves as the "White savior" by offering the same hand that enslaved us.

The war on drugs is the war on us. Prisons are built based on our little Black and Brown boys. ^[1]

I mourn for little Black boys whose mothers pray for their safety walking to the bus stop and buying Skittles. I mourn for the little Black girls who will grow up to feel like the least desired cohort and will statistically feel the truth of the numbers. I mourn for the Black women who don't know if their husband's will come home and how they will tell their children.

Black in America is possibly one of the worst things to be. 

Yet being Black is by far the greatest person to be. 

Excuse my bias, but I have every reason to be.

note to self:

Never say, "I do that to everyone." to anyone at any time.

Love me better

Only I know how to love me the way I want to be loved.
There is no one on this Earth I expect to love me the way I can.

But there is someOne who can love me greater than I.

I stopped putting my hope in things.
I stopped putting my joy in situations.
I stopped putting my peace in people.

I know how to love me, but He loves me better.