“Ugh. Girl!”

My friend’s voice, laced with exasperation, came huffing through my iPhone. He was going through a lot and as a result had taken to disappearing for days at a time. This was a few months ago, and I’d been lovingly needling him about it for the past twenty minutes.

“Listen”, he continued. “If I don’t check in with my mama, I’m not gonna check in with you.”

Kinda true, but for the most part he texted me at least once a day to let me know he’s okay. It’s all I asked and I appreciated it more than he knew. For reasons I haven’t yet identified, I can’t help but mother my friends.

Mothering my friends started when I was in high school and my parents had my youngest brother. At 14, I was definitely old enough to help out with the baby, and I spent a lot of afternoons and weekends making bottles and changing diapers. By college I was already more responsible than most other students my age, but not in a way that provided a benefit to me. I was unmotivated to go to classes or study, but I took care of others when they didn’t budget for food or got too drunk. I wasn’t the friend to turn to with questions about classwork, but I always had a big bottle of Tylenol and a ready ear.

After college I made friends who didn’t need me to make a lasagna or nurse them through hangovers. Since I was a few years older than they, I had a lot of advice on how to get through the pitfalls of the early twenties that they were all experiencing for the first time. I knew the major relationship red flags, how to get along with overbearing bosses, how to schedule a doctor’s appointment – life skills like those. All the things we learn once and then, much later, wonder how we ever didn’t know.

Now I’m in NYC, where everyone needs a mother (myself included), but no one needs their friend to step up as a surrogate.

Again I find myself surrounded by people who are a few years younger than I am, brimming with mid-twenties angst that looks and feels so familiar. I want to take everyone by the hand and explain that things will be okay, that heartache and long nights and tiny apartments don’t last forever, that one day you’ll wake up and it will all click. I want to give good, sound advice, and I want it to be heard. But as any parent knows, children don’t always do as they should.

My friends are not my kids, even though sometimes it feels that way. I woke up at 7 AM today not because my alarm went off or because I had a bad dream, but because a friend had a flight to catch and I wanted to be sure he was awake and headed to the airport. I had to force myself to turn over and go back to sleep without calling him. This is who I am and this is how I love, but I know that I. Am. Not. Anyone’s. Mom. My challenge is making an effort to not act like it.

When I see my friends going down a proverbial pothole-covered road, one that I’ve already traveled, all I can do is give my best advice and pray the fall doesn’t hurt too much when I see them continuing anyway. I had to learn for myself and so do they. It’s okay, I tell myself. I survived, and they will too. I don’t want to be the “mom” of my friends. But I have been in that role for sixteen years – I’m not sure how to stop.

—

I don’t ask that friend to text me every day anymore. He is climbing out of his grief, and I trust him to take care of himself. But I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t help that I can usually find him online anyway.

Healthy food is gross and anyone who thinks it isn’t is insane.

Okay. Maybe not all that. But I just polished off a plate of salmon and brussel sprouts and this meal tasted not unlike a pile of spicy wet tissue paper lovingly mixed with sliced dead dog eyeballs. Why does food that’s good for you have to be this way?

Why can’t cheeseburgers with a generous side of sweet potato fries provide amazing benefits like shining hair and lower cholesterol? Why can’t polishing off a cheesy lasagna (not stuffed full of zucchini or whatever the fuck) regulate my blood pressure? Why can’t I have all the lobster rolls and tempura sushi and grilled cheese sandwiches my heart desires?

I know the answer to these questions. Intellectually, I know why I have to eat better. But I also know that dammit, I just don’t wanna do it and I’m a grown woman. Who gon check me boo? (Other than my blood sugar levels.)

I don’t dislike everything that’s good for me. I love almost every fresh, raw fruit and vegetable I’ve ever tried. I’m a big fan of salads. I drink tons of water (I’m not big on pop although I love a big cup of hot, milky, slightly sweetened coffee oh god please just drop a mug on my desk right now). And of course, I’m not obsessed with all things diabetes-inducing. I don’t like snack cakes or most candies. But overall, I prefer the fried. The saucy. The carbs, the cheese, the bacon. But healthy food is never going to taste better until I start eating it more often.

Living in NYC has made me much more aware of my body and how what I eat and drink affect the way I feel and act. And New York is a very active city – I have to walk here way, way more than ever did in OKC. I walk more in a single day in Manhattan than I would have in two weeks back home. So I have to feel my body now in a way I didn’t have to before, and let me tell you – it is pretty fucked.

I’m heavy. Not just fat. I am physically heavy. I’m hard to carry. My knees don’t easily support my rolling thighs and round belly and wide back. I’m huge and I have to feel it, every day. Being fat sucks in a lot of ways, but by far this is the worst. Having to carry around weight that I know I wasn’t built for is a miserable feeling.

So I vent a little about how gross this kale salad is but then I pick up my fork and resume eating, because I’m way too inherently lazy to carry anything I don’t need. Here’s to me, and a lighter burden to hold.

You don’t realize it until you have to, but you are an oak tree. We are all the sum of thousands and thousands of days wrapped and packed so deeply inside ourselves that recovering those memories feels like living them all over again. But this time around, there is a warmth surrounding the lesson. I learned this once, I tell myself, and now I am finding out why.

I’m going through life as my own reflection, as a girl on both sides of the glass. I am on the one page in every book that changes the entire course of the story. I know that the new me is right there, glowing, reaching out to me with neon fingers. I am becoming her.

But I am also made up of all the people I used to be. I see me in slow-burning Oklahoma mornings, feet caked with red dirt as I fed the dogs. I see me in my plastic blue glasses and swaddled in hurt ten year old feelings, reading in the private retreat I made for myself between two old evergreen trees on the edge of the front yard. I can still see the old me approaching the fence between the life I’ve always known and the one I was created to live, unsure of anything other than the time to change had come.

I wanted to say goodbye, but I’m already gone.
Nothing left in the mirror but dust.

The only season I haven’t experienced in NYC has arrived as I am entering the fourth quarter of my first year here. Spring marks a new beginning for me – a rebirth of the thrill that died during winter and a fresh wave of air for my spirit.

Last summer was such a frenzied blur that I don’t think my brain fully realized that we were in a new place. I was in shock like someone dipped headfirst into a freezing lake, and just trying to get through every day. I was emotionally uneasy until September, which brought my thirtieth birthday, a new job, and the first time I’d ever experienced a real autumn and the joy of going to a workplace I love. And as the days grew shorter and colder, I put away my favorite hoodies for the black wool coat I bought three years ago in Oklahoma but never needed to wear until now. Trudging through filthy slush and whipping wind has certainly not been the most pleasant part of my journey, but NYC has taught me to find comfort in every undesirable situation. Yes, I hate snow, and no, I’ve never been in any city quite THIS cold, but it is certainly beautiful to lay still at night and listen to snow falling softly atop my seasonally quiet neighborhood.

It’s still 40 degrees outside, but winter is officially over and my heart sings for spring.

I finally feel like I’ve figured it out. In a little less than three months, my first year in New York will be over and I could not be more content. I’ve made and trimmed away friends, turned my uptown micro-apartment into a makeshift home, and strengthened my once-wavering faith. It has been nothing short of miraculous to see how every lesson I learned in my twenties has proven to be a survival skill in NYC, especially saving every piece of loose change for the days when dollar pizza was all I could afford. Sometimes I wonder how much better my life could have been if only I didn’t wait so long to move, if I’d just managed to find the nerve to get up and leave sooner, until I remember that everything in my life has happened for a reason. I am where I am supposed to be, in the exact right time and the perfect place, and my tiny apartment has no space for regrets.

It has, after all, been a marvelous nine months. Six weeks after I moved, I met Jay-Z and Nas. I saw Beyonce at the United Nations and again at the premiere of her documentary. I survived two fashion weeks and rubbed elbows with Tim Gunn, befriended dynamic black women who are changing the world, and walked away impressed and humbled by people I have admired my entire life. I grew up when I thought I was all done growing. I learned to be easier with my heart and gentler with my words. And I am growing my own business, which is a strange juxtaposition of learning to market myself and staying true to who I am.
All of this has made me so much fuller inside.

I had to leave my sweet mama in Oklahoma in order to pick up a true appreciation for what it must mean to have raised me. My mama loves to tell of when I was born, a screeching red-skinned bayou baby with a thick head of hair and a relentless voice – a voice that has not quieted thirty entire years later. I am so much more grateful now for my mother’s hands and the way they shaped a woman out of a screaming pile of girl.
I am loud, and kind, and here.

I am so full of love that I could shout it to everyone I pass.
Can’t you see it on me?
Doesn’t my face tell my story?
I am enamored by the beauty all around me, and wholly in love with New York City.

This movie is not for the people who already don’t like Beyoncé.

It is not for those of you who are sick of her (2013 is going to be a rough year for you, just FYI). It is not for anyone who thinks she and and her talent are overrated. It is not for anyone who thinks she is more robot than human and enjoys picking her apart. It is not for those who have never purchased any of her albums, solo or otherwise. I could go on and on, but this movie is not for those people.

Life Is But A Dream is the type of film most fans want to see about their favorite celebrity, especially one who has worked so hard to guard her privacy and protect her image as Beyoncé. We see home movie clips from the 80s shot by Beyoncé’s father, Mathew – and no, not the same clips we’ve seen in her concerts and interviews before. We see Beyoncé in the most natural-looking makeup of all time, relaxing barefoot on a couch with her blonde box braids twisted in a high bun atop her head, being faux-interviewed by a young man whose face is never totally shown. And although Beyoncé is answering his questions, she is also the director of the film – which means that even though she appears candid and honest, she is still telling us exactly what she wants us to know.

While the Beyoncé detractors (a word i don’t like to use, but “haters” is so incredibly played) will be turned off by the admittedly narcissistic premise of the documentary, the 90%* of us who can’t get enough of King Bey are only too grateful for these intimate peeks into her life. The opening scene is a modern-day shot of Beyoncé’s childhood home, and throughout the film she takes her fans inside her world in a way we have not seen before. We learn more about her personal and business separation from Mathew, her outright disgust for the ugly rumors that she hired a surrogate to carry daughter Blue Ivy, the pain of losing her first child to miscarriage (including audio of the song she wrote shortly afterwards), and her ocean-deep love for husband Jay-Z. For in all the ways Beyoncé is not like anyone else on the planet, in some ways she is just like every other woman you know – she plays in front of Photo Booth with her sister and best friend; she takes her nephew swimming (albeit in France); she has her mama put her hair in rollers before she gives birth.

For those more interested in the business that is Beyoncé, we are treated to a glimpse of just how much work it takes to keep this empire moving, to keep Beyoncé a step (or two, or twenty) above the rest. She is meticulous and strong, and demands the same from those she employs. Rehearsal scenes are a frantic mess of beautiful girls learning choreography and Frank Gatson yelling at everyone to get their shit together, and Beyoncé reviews stage setup and lighting with a critical, exigent eye. At times she comes across as “mean” or “bitchy” until one remembers that she is solely in control – and if things are not done to her liking, why are they being done at all? She may be a typical perfectionist Virgo, but she is also signing everyone’s paycheck. It is evident from the film that she is still adjusting into the attitude required to be Beyoncé’s manager, still trying to balance her sweet disposition with calculated, no-holds-barred criticism.

So yes, Life Is But A Dream is Beyoncé’s version of Beyoncé’s life, all shot and directed and produced according to Beyoncé, filtered through the Beyoncé lens, packaged and promoted in the Beyoncé way. And for those of us who understand that her personal life is truly none of our business, we are only too grateful that she allows us inside anyway.

(*I totally made up that number. It’s probably closer to 99.99999%.)

I didn’t know just how much I already loved you until we lost you. Feels like my heart has been scraped away.

This train smells horrific, but that isn’t enough to make me switch cars. The elderly man next to me wheezes loudly and then violently coughs into a dilapidated handkerchief.  His eyes roll back slowly into sockets pleated with what I recognize as drug abuse. The stench of living underground radiates from him. He smells like hard packed green mucous in lungs that wanted to give up long ago; it is not unlike that of death.

But I’ve had a trying day, I’m tired, and this funk isn’t enough to make me move. As soon as the train goes above ground, an iMessage from my sister-in-law pops onto my phone. Every day she sends photos or videos of my nephew, and I smile as I unlock my phone. I could really use a boost just now.

The photo is indeed of my beautiful nephew, sleeping soundly in my brother’s arms. But at the bottom is a positive pregnancy test and the caption “It’s a secret ”.

Not since her last pregnancy announcement have I felt this ethereal swell in my heart, this joyous rolling from one component of my soul to the next. Before I can reply to her message I am back underground, and instantly the man next to me shifts awake. He is sadder than I first realized, soaked in tiny puddles of urine and covered in weeks of crust. But it is not enough to make me move.

I can feel hot tears pricking and I will them away just long enough to pray, to thank my God for this blessing, to plead for a safe pregnancy. All I can I ask is a happy delivery, a healthy baby, and another soul to keep.

Seven months later, New York City finally feels like home. Lately I’ve felt my attitude shift about this too-much city; the pavement here will always be cracked, but now I can dance my way around it.

The things that used to amaze me are so ordinary now that I don’t even notice them anymore. The same buildings that were looming concrete monsters in June are just part of the landscape today, the way stretching horizons are back in Oklahoma. I’m no longer a tired tourist with lazy legs or an overeager transplant bounding off the train in the wrong direction. I feel myself moving through the city now with a firm confidence. I belong here, and I know it.

I spent my first six months in New York replicating my life back home as best as possible, trying to pull all the pieces of myself together in a manner that made sense, holding on to every ritual that connected me with the girl I’d always known myself to be. For months I couldn’t change my alarm ringer or replace the dilapidated wallet my mother gave me years ago, afraid that I’d lose myself too quickly in these neon New York nights. The person I am now is a maturation of the free spirit I wanted to be at 17, back when I would lay out in warm Tulsa fields and dream a sky’s worth of wishes with my closest friends.

The wound of leaving is crusting over, stitching itself closed. The gap between the two sides of my heart is pulling shut tenderly, one deliberate thread following the other. The fullness of my new life is defined by the heavy sweetness of my nephew, the short breath swallows of steep staircases, and the surety I feel with every step. It all reminds me, when I am in a frozen fit and missing my mother, that this is still where I am supposed to be.

Making my way through New York is a softer storm now, an easier way, a cleared path.

it is one thing to be at work digesting the news that twenty children were gunned down in cold blood.
twenty babies in a warm classroom, twenty lunchboxes in twenty cubbyholes, twenty cots for naptime.
twenty coats hung up, twenty names taped onto tiny desks, twenty bodies that won’t go home again.

it is one thing to hear and read all this news and shake my head, and say a prayer, and read and watch and work and e-mail.

but then i go home where the lights are off and no one is going to pull me into a meeting or ask for a favor,

and i get in the bed, where it’s dark and my nephews face glows back at me from the desktop of my computer,

and the enormity of today slams into me, the grief curls up and toward me like a burning paper, til it has rolled over itself.