twdg season one and two had no business being as funny as they are

think i lost my best friend

as a small child my first first best friend was a boy named omar. we met in daycare when we were two. we were the smallest in the class but had the biggest mouths. we ended up going to the same schools until 4th grade. at our elementary school anytime someone claimed me as a best friend, he would explain that we went way back to diapers and they weren’t my best friend lmao. 

in pre-k i met a boy named hakeem. (our mom’s ended up being friends, they still talk occasionally and sometimes my mom will tell me how hakeem and his siblings are doing. because she know my weird ass cares about that sort of thing). hakeem brought these lemon cookies everyday for snack. i liked them too but in strawberry, so he would have his mom get me some and he brought me those cookies everyday until we changed schools in first grade. we always sat together, did our work together, played together. we had other friends but we mostly did everything together. 

in first grade i had 2 best friends. a boy named franklyn and a girl named melody. melody moved away like 4 months into the school year but to this day i’ve never forgotten her. franklyn, i thought he was so cool. he was a really great artist.. for a 6 year old lol. he was real funny too. he had the funniest facial expressions. and he was real serious which i was entertained by because i’ve always been “silly”. 

in 4th grade i met a girl named shanelle. we were the shortest girls in the class and the smartest. we were really similar in general and we instantly clicked. it was a whole lil group of girls that i’d known since first grade. but shanelle and i ended up in the same class in 4th grade and we clicked idk. that was my mf girl. when i first moved to florida we talked on the phone every saturday for hours. i also met a boy named anias that year. he was one of my best friends too. he was also my first crush lol. unrelated but it’s interesting to look back at how i handled the fact that i liked him, because i still handle liking people that same way.

fifth grade was my first year in florida. it was real hard for me to make friends. the other day, my mom said to me she realized that in new york i never had to make friends. i have bout 5011 cousins, so that's built in friends right there. and they were my friends back then, they're my friends now. then most of the kids i went to daycare with, they went to my elementary school. so again i never had to make a friend really. i knew everyone in my life since i was a literal infant. 

but yea i did end up making friends eventually. got my first white friends ever lol. (one of their dad’s called me a nigger which is still hands down one of the weirdest things i’ve ever experienced.) i started to befriend more girls which was cool because before then i always had way more guy friends than girls. 

in middle school i went to one school for 6th grade, then another for 7th & 8th. in 6th i met my friend nijah. and she was my best friend then. she treated me like i was her little sister and i’m still grateful. she really looked out for my little ass and defended me no matter what. she was present after i got into my first fight lol. and even though i held my own, the girl had scratched my face. that shit set nijah off and she proceeded to beat homegirl’s ass even though i just did.

i struggled to make friends in 7th again. in 6th grade i went to the same school that most of my elementary friends went to, so again i didn’t have to make friends for real. i did make new friends but it was different because it was a group thing. not me alone trying to fit in somewhere. in 7th grade i finally got into a school i applied to in 5th grade but was wait-listed. i was and am very reluctant to speak to those i don’t know for a list of reasons. so i didn’t. i would just observe the people in my class. eventually these two girls named janae and keely who were best friends, kinda let me stick my ass in there with them. then i met bart and this girl dani. i remember marcus and i had ended up befriending one another bc our history teacher sat us next to each other when he was reassigning seats. (i remember every mf thing but marcus was also my second crush so naturally i remember every detail of that shit). so yea those were my friends. at the time janae was my best friend tho. she was the only other black girl in the class that would talk to me and didn’t think i was weird. it was because her ass was weird too lol. i didn’t act like the rest of the black girls and they really only spoke to me to make fun of me. which i knew, but i’ve never been one to entertain shit unless “you got beat my ass about it”. 

in 8th grade janae and i met this group of girls. morgan, dejahnna, atlantis, and jarvayssia. some shit shifted that year and morgan and dejahanna became my best friends. they were the first friends i ever hang out with outside of school. it made me feel so good to be invited to shit and to feel included. to feel like a normal ass 13 yr old felt amazing. 

so in high school there were two schools all the magnet school kids would usually apply to. stanton and paxon. with the exception of keely, bart, and a few other people i didn't mention here. every single person i was close with in middle school, went to paxon. what's crazy is most of my friends were going for stanton because in jax it’s the “better” school as far as ranking goes. i don't even remember why but when i toured paxon, i liked it more than stanton and i wanted to go there. it’s still funny to me that my ass didn’t want to go to stanton but was one of the only ones in my close friend group to get in. 

so yea at stanton is struggled. a lot. personally but also in the friend department. to put it plainly i had none. people didn't really talk to me or acknowledge me really. at first i didn’t mind it. but then having a fucked up home situation and having no friends just made me feel real shitty. there was that thing again, with people talking to me only to make fun of me. some of those same people would turn around senior year and try to be my friend senior year which was hilarious to me at the time. it was like they forgot how they treated my extra depressed ass back then. i met this girl chelsey in 10th grade and she was hella sweet. she basically forced me on her friends and they became my friends.

okay so anyway, in 11th grade i met a girl named ahmani. she was in my chorus class. i remember our first encounter, it was towards the beginning of the school year. stanton was playing paxon and it was the game everyone went to ya know. i wanted to go but my mom couldn't take me. so everyone is talking about it and someone asked if i was coming. i said no and why, ahmani ended up asking me what side of town i lived on. we realized we dead lived like 7 minutes away from each other. she offered to pick me up and bring me to the game w her. i was amazed that she was willing to, i know that dont sound like a big deal but to me it was. people weren’t nice to me bro. like ever. so for her to do that it meant a lot. she ended up being my ride every mf where. she is dead the reason i hung out w people outside of school w my friends. she took me everywhere with her. sometimes we would just sit in the car and talk or listen to music. we had a group of friends, it was 5 of us. but i was the closest with her. 

i admired her. i thought she was so strong and resilient. she's hella awkward but she owns it. she's low-key/highkey anxious sometimes but she works through it. no one i’ve ever met works harder to achieve shit than she is. she sings so beautifully. she is beautiful. she's a caretaker of basically anyone she knows. she is a light, she was my light for so long when i needed it. we’re pretty different but also a lot alike. we just worked. i always told her where i fall short she picks up my slack and vice versa. we might be a bit of a mess separately but our heads working together is unstoppable. we’re kinda a mess together too honestly but it’s us.

in college we didn't spend as much time together. we both stayed home for two years and went to a community college. we would hang out like weekly i think. i’m pretty sure we saw each other once a week at the very least. but then she went to orlando for university and i went to UNF which in jax. we didn’t talk all that much and i understood. i wasn't necessarily too busy, but thats because i just never am that fucking busy lmfao. idk the way i go through life is weird. i only make time for the shit and people i want to make time for. i refuse to do anything i dont want to. and that isn’t necessarily my best trait but I'm working on it. but yea i guess she was busier than i? idk when i don’t speak to people for a while i dont make a big deal. i tell myself it isn’t on purpose and i move on. i often tell myself not to apply more importance to my life than what is necessary. especially when others are involved. again, not my best trait but i’m working on it. 

so yea though our communication got limited i still considered her my best friend. when she would come to the city, if she had time we hung out. i always have time lmfao, always. again i know other people’s lives are more full than mine. well i assume so. anyway. we spoke on the phone. we were there when the other needed i think. i try hard not to need people. like not to call them or burden them with my issues. i try real hard. but when she needed me i was there. not to say i’ve ever needed her and she wasn’t there. because that isn’t the case at all. 

recently we planned to move to chicago together. a whole chain of events happened and now we aren’t. i’m still moving and i’m pretty sure she is too. just not together. the way it happened is really fucking with me. i don’t wanna get into it bc of privacy and shit. but i will say that i am hurt. im really hurt and im confused and im beating myself up over some shit that everyone keeps telling me isn't my fault. feels like my fault though. that feels like the only explanation. i dont know.

i’ve been thiniking a lot. about friends and how i never really had any. i just spoke to people so i wasn't alone or sometimes i just spoke to no one and made myself be okay with it. and now i have this group of friends and we’re like family. everyone that is my friend currently is my family. all of my friends i have currently i made over the internet. and i was bothered by that im not even gonna lie. it felt good to still have ahmani bc i would see her more than i see my other friends. i still have some i didn't meet yet. idk i just.. im the only person in my like personal life with internet friends. like in my family. and i felt like i just fed the fact that my family thinks im not even the least bit “normal”. then i started to feel bad. because it felt like that meant i was ashamed of my friends.and i’m not. i love them. i dont wanna lose any of them any time soon. and i’m realizing i dont need anyone’s approval to make those friendships “real” or valid. because they are real and valid to me. 

but yea i dont think ahmani and i will be friends anymore. or if we do end up being friends again, we probably won't speak for a while. i don’t know what that means. but losing a friend sucks a whole lot and i wouldn’t wish it on anyone. 

I remember when dad couldn't pick me up after our 2nd transfer bus got pulled out from dropping me and the other kids in my neighborhood. It was bus 130.

That whole end of my 7th grade year, I walked the way home by myself. I cut through northern high parking lot and around that big ol' man made water basin that they had there. It stood across the view of a gas station and a Publix. Man, did they have some good ass chocolate chip cookies, not too hard and not too doughy. It was like a soft, hard cookie dough cookie that barely browned in the oven, but just enough for the thick chocolate chunks to melt in your mouth with that buttery dough. I never walked over there though because...mom wouldn't have allowed it...and I was way too scared and nervous to run across the street with those cars there. (Vs now, I do that as a fun, little escape running super speed as soon as the walk light comes on lol 😆 mom and dad think I'm nuts for doing that cause they're afraid I could get hit. But when you blast Jasiah, Denzel Curry, and Suicide Boys in your Ear you feel like you can do anything. So I kick in nitro)

Anyways, the walk was about two to three miles, and at the time that was the longest mom and dad had ever let me walk by myself. Mom wasn't there because she had already moved to Mississippi for her new job. I wanted to help out Dad, since he had to pick up my sisters from school at the same time I got to our base for school bus dropoffs. It was so fun back then to ride the school bus. I always sat near the window, or at least tried....I hated sitting by people I didn't know because I was afraid people were gonna make fun of me for being big or having sweaty armpits. I have noooo idea why, but even my sisters went through it to around their puberty time. It's like our glands produced so much more sweat when we were stressed, working out, or just barely even sweating in Florida. Like all of my shirts always had this itchy, cracked, dry spots in the armpits because I had to swipe sooooo much deodorant on it was crazy. I remember counting it out, like 16, 27 times I would whip cream my damn armpits because kids make fun of you for being fat, now everytime they saw my sweaty, funky pits and yes they used to get that bad it was annoying as hellll. And Bighead used to make fun of me for that. I used to call him all types of names cause he was such an asshole to me and my friends, practically tortured me for fun all through out middle school until we later on had to move to Mississippi too from Florida.

I walked that walk because I never wanted to put my pride to the side and just ask Bighead, the idiot who lived in the same neighborhood as me, like I literally stayed about 10 min walk away...and I could see him and his mom and his sister, who I was friends with...drive pass me each and every day. I would listen to music on the radio with my earbuds in my turquoise mp3 player. They kept playing "There goes my baby" by Usher alot at that time.

I even remember reading The Giver on the walk home, because I really didn't wanna miss my favorite home TV shows like iCarly, sometimes Arthur or whatever cartoons on Cartoon Network.

I used to think about Bighead alot when that song would play at the same time his mom drove by. I still hated his guts though, always picking on me, being a hassle...it was a honest waste of a crush to have even liked him. He never changed as I found out later on in high school when we both reached back out to each other, on and off. Total jackass. Probably a narcissist...

Speaking of books, Ms. Simmons gave us this book about the holocaust called Night by Elie Wiesel. It was a good book and Im shocked crazy earring Ms. Simmons thought it was ok for us to read about kids and people getting hung, but I was glad she did. It had an audio book that cams with it, I almost wanted to watch it if they ever made it into a movie.

I think Ms. Simmons might have inspired me to wear different, quirky earrings like that. Cause she was the 1st white woman I ever seen wear them like that or even asymmetrical earrings. She loved alot of color and if she wore cherries, she had cherry earrings, sorta like that. Matchy-matchy. She even had a candy cart after school so I sorta liked her for being creative. That was until she pissed me off about a test,

And I don't play about my tests.

My ass was on the line, that's why.

I hated getting bad grades at home, because who do you think starts checking up on you more??

Yea, and I hate being micromanaged...if I even got a C or a low B, dad would lecture me on doing a better job cause he didn't want my grades to fall 😒 I always tried to explain myself when I felt like it was an unfair grade cause some people put trick questions or essay sections. And I used to hate those. Now I double check everything and I have alot more to say, instead of being afraid that I'll get it wrong, fucking up my chances to get a closer chance at an A or a B. Daddy said to always go for A's, always do your best. But that meant cramming my short term, photographic memory with alot more papers and notes.

Boy did I used to hate taking notes. Now after everything, I see I need notes to keep up on knowledge and bullshit from misinformation given to me by other people.

I used to actually be so innocent, only caring about not disappointing my parents and not making them look bad when we go to school or go out with them in public. And of course kicking Bighead in the nuts everytime he made me feel like the ugliest girl in school just because he made a comment about my fat rolls popping out in my bright, tight, stretchy cotton tshirts or from me not smelling good from being sweaty 🙃 he had a whole bunch of people I didn't even know, just laughing at me just because he made it seem like it was ok for them to laugh at me because he was. He started it. And it kept going 6th and 7th grade...it followed me all the way until I....well until I realized Darius wasn't my person either 😑

Fairytales and movies blew up these love scenarios, and even in anime or Korean dramas (based on Japanese anime) where the quiet, shy girl ends up falling for the aloof, emotionally unavailable guy who's cute and he's popular, "but oh, he would never talk to me or look at me that way" sighhhh, babygirl feeling.

Then at the end he reveals his true feelings and it turns out he made her suffer and wait for him for so long, just because he was too shy to tell her or too ashamed because he didn't want to be made fun of by his friends. And then they kiss and live happily ever after.

That's what the old me in middle school and high school used to think of love in high school was like. Boy, was I stupid 🤣 that's the most dumbest shit I ever heard. People wtfff???!! Why the fuck is it expected for us to be submissive, take this boy's bullshit and commital issues to just you, as if him showing you any kind of attention is worthwhile the wait as if he's the best thing in the world, letting you into his circle like he's vip. Which is not true. Because when you look at somebody like that for so long and then you let them get away with treating you like shit, just because you like them...is so not cool and you deserve better. Looks can only last so long.

And maybe that's why I had to look at that lesson again from somebody like Jay, chubby, but cute, but still not as masculine as Bighead, where at home in Florida, boys who didn't care about you as much, athletes, and mixed/black/white/Asian skinnier people were popular and you weren't....because of your clothes, shoes, your big hands, big feet so you had to wear boy shoes, your thick, strong legs, your height, your double chin, your sweaty gland disorder from puberty, your fat rolls on your back, and even your backpack....was not cool or even popular.

You were different so you just didn't fit in with everybody. But it made me feel alone, cause nobody new looked at me, talked to me, or even asked me where I got my new Adidas (cause I actually did like Adidas).

After awhile I stopped caring and didn't care to give new people a try. I'd rather eat by myself than to eat with people who made me feel unwelcome with stares, stressing me out because I don't know what they're judging me on or was gonna comment on me next. It was so aggravating for me just to speak to someone random unless we had to because of class. I really don't remember nobody was calling me ugly, but just for them to comment on anything little thing or how my hair looked like momma did, really hurt.

And it was mindfucking me. Because the people I ended up running away to, did the same thing as them. Reminding me of home in Florida, where comments felt like mom's pinches. Reminding me that I'm not doing a good enough job of representing her, or just looking good enough to be liked or told I looked great today. Because I rarely got compliments until I got a perm redid, or I got braids. I'm glad I rebeled against perms because my ends kept breaking off and I would hate how rough the texture would get and I wore bonnets/wraps that kept falling off because I'm a wild sleeper, always kicking and moving around. Maybe that wasn't a good mattress match for me idk....but taking care of permed hair was so frustrating. They said don't use too much heat to flat iron or flat iron too much, but your hair don't look good as is, not being straight and I hated how that Florida humidity would poof up my hair because our school was not an all indoor school. There was only the 7th grade hallway and the gym in AC, but everything was fucking outdoor, concrete style. So you was always hot, always sweaty. So not the same in Michigan. I always thought I looked like Dora with my orange tan and black Bob hair. I never liked taking pictures in middle school because I felt so ugly just because no boy at school had asked me out, and the boy I wanted was a little ass, scrawny, bony bully, picking on me at school for how I looked and how I dressed, and my sweaty, funky pits and even my boobs. He made me hate my big boobs. He always made fun of them in how I ran when he would pass me on the track with his friends. It was hard enough to have older boys say something when you got DD's at such a young age....I hated them. I would have donated mine to the girl with A cups because I hated them being made fun of or being commented on. It was embarrassing for me when ppl would ask me what size are they and I felt pressured to say what size. I hated when a group of people would come up to me to say something, I would go defensive, excited, anxious, tense, and then almost ready to fight if they said something I didn't like to hear cause constant criticism made me not wanna hear any of it. And mom didn't make it no better "do you want people talking about you?" It was just a hassle to please her and she almost always bought clothes that either felt uncomfortable to wear, but was cute for her, so she made me wear it, or she just wanted it because of the patterns she liked. I rarely had a choice or say in anything. And that I didn't like too, because it's my body. But to them, it belonged to them and I had to do what they said. Wearing clothes that felt unreal, unmanageable because most of it in my closet weren't really mine, they were hers.

I guess she got the memo, so she started doing gift cards. I can't believe I used to wear fuchsia or hot pink so much and my skin color down there looked like a browned, golden-orange. We used to wear alot of orange and bright green too. Green and gold used to be mom's favorite colors. It reminded me of Christmas 🎄 which I also miss too.

Christmas in Florida used to be the greatest because we had a house full with aunty and uncle and the cousins. Flint used to feel the warmest because when we visited got the holidays, everybody was there. All in one place. We were together, celebrating, eating homemade country style, traditional food all night long, with the kids in my other grandma's basement watching movies and playing games, and the adults upstairs. I always felt like the baby and later on the middle child between both, child and adult.

And I'm kinda seeing now I got stuck this way, people pleasing towards both sides, between the adults and the kids because I was so used to being the middle man, the negotiator, the even-steven, fair and square, Charlie Brown in my family as being the oldest. I always felt the need to keep both sides on one accord, because sometimes we misunderstood each other. Cause that's the way dad brought it to me, he was Mr.negotiator between me and my mom growing up. He got to have fun and play games and sports, watch cartoons with me as a kid, and then at home with mom he would do romantic, adult stuff for mom like drink out of these expensive looking wine glasses and chocolate strawberries 🍓