The definition of beautiful

I was reading an article this morning that spoke about the newly crowned Miss America and all the debate that was surrounding her winning the crowd as she is Indian-America. The author of this article pointed out how this woman would have never actually won a Miss India beauty contest in India because she wasn't what was deemed to be a beautiful Indian woman, which is apparently someone who is light-skinned first & foremost. The reason this article interested me was because I wasn't aware that being light-skinned was also an issue in other communities. According to this article this occurred in the Indian community as a result of an ancient divide that separated darker skinned Indians and 'created' lighter skinned Indians when Aryans invaded India way back then. You might recall the Aryan race was what Hitler deemed to be the Master Race: blonde hair, blue eyes and obviously white. 

Most black women are aware of the "Yellow-bone" craze that's currently dominating social networks, that is, the obsession with light-skinned women being the definition of beauty. It's just one of those things that has been brainwashed into our brains that a light skin equates to beauty, like undoubtedly. If you are fair, you are pretty, no questions asked. You would perhaps also hear things along the lines of: Oh, she's only pretty because she has a light complexion. Or even worse, some people would even go as far as saying to someone who isn't fair: Oh you're pretty for a dark-skinned girl. <insert shock, horror, gasp> No wonder then that the skin-lightening cream industry is booming...I'm sure, I don't know the statistics but by the amount of black ladies you see with damaged/burned skin or by women you know that became a lighter complexion overnight using lightening creams I would imagine it is.

It seems to me like an awful lot has been invested into making other ethnic groups believe that looking more...white basically is the ideal measure of beauty. The article I spoke about above mentioned how the "most beautiful woman in the world" & and a former Miss India, Aishwarya Rai, looks anything but Indian with "barely-olive skin, brown hair and green eyes." In the black community so many famous black women have also undergone skin-lightening procedures, have weaves (I mean the weave industry has taken black communities by storm), or have undergone facial reconstruction surgeries to make them look less like themselves basically. 

I guess we can blame the media for generally making us believe that "whiteness" is the beauty ideal to aspire to or maybe we can blame colonization for the many years of brainwashing into making us think that "white" is superior, "white" is better, "white" is nearer to perfection than you'll ever be. White is what you need to be to be beautiful. So the lighter your skin, the straighter and longer your hair, the less you look like your ethnic self the more beautiful you are. It's a sad reality and actually a really difficult topic to navigate because there is just so much that is wrong with this. 

I mean, it's not like we have a shortage of BEAUTIFUL dark-skinned women in the world, so what will it take to change this mindset? When will the definition of beautiful incorporate all colours of the spectrum? In this lifetime maybe? Yes?! No?!

Tears dry on their own.

We meet so many people along the way, some we think we are going to know forever and some you realise from the on-set that you're not gonna know them for very long.  With others you can misjudge the depth of your relationship and you could end being closer to them than you thought.  But generally I think with romantic relationships most of us don't generally assume the worst. You hope for the best, wonder if they are the one you're gonna be with forever, if you believe in that sorta thing.  So when things don't turn out as planned or hoped you can feel so cheated of the time you feel you wasted on that person and you count all the sacrifices you made and you resent them.
Breakups are generally always bad, someone always walks away from a breakup feeling disgruntled.  Some breakups can be exceptionally bad and it can take a while to put the proverbial pieces back together. Some people can obviously bounce right back and move on while for others it can be a more lengthy process that involves a lot of resentment and unhappiness. They still feel wronged by that person and have a hard time letting it go.

There is no formula to "get over it". We all have our own way of dealing with things but I think more than anything you need to forgive.

A few years ago I ended a relationship on not so very good terms. I was angry, I was hurt and I really thought I hated this guy. I continued to feel like this for a very long time. He tried on numerous occasions to make peace with me but I rejected him over and over again because even the thought of breathing the same air as him vexed me beyond words. The thought of him made my insides boil...well you get the picture. And I really thought I would feel like this forever. But the truth is, I didn't.  I don't know if it happened overnight or if it was a gradual buildup somewhere in my heart or psyche that just told me to forgive him.

I can honestly say that it took me like three years to get to this point, and, there was something so liberating about this forgiveness that made me smile. That made my heart smile. That I no longer wished he would get hit by a bus, multiple times Lol
He reminded me a few times how we were once friends & he didn't believe that we couldn't at least get back to that.  Although this idea seemed laughable at the time, after I forgave him I was able to see him as a human being again that makes mistakes like I do.  And more than anything, there is something so liberating about not living in the past. You give your heart more room to give other people more love once the shackles of that hate and resentment are lifted.

Forgiveness is a truly beautiful thing. You should consider it.

This is why you can't get your ex to fall in love with you again

So someone commented on a blog post I wrote a while ago and suggested I watch their videoblog on how to get my ex back. They wrote this in response to the blog post titled "When I got dumped". I thought it was peculiar that they would suggest that & I read that blog post again to see if somewhere it sounded like I wanted to get back together with my ex. But I guess generally if someone you love you stops loving you, you would resolve to try and get them back?!

When the person you love stops loving you, your first instinct is to think that something is wrong with you, that you must have done something for this to happen. Because you want to rationalize it in your brain, have physical evidence of what it was that flipped their switch, to go from loving you one minute & thinking they want to spend the rest of their life with you to you being a stranger to them, and possibly even being repelled by you. You wonder if maybe you are not pretty enough, smart enough for them, aren't funny enough, or maybe you're just a boring person. And your mind keeps  going over all the possible reasons of why this person has stopped loving you. You just don't understand. And I guess some of us will even actively try to get them back, try to win them over again, try to get them to remember maybe that they love you.

But the honest truth is, there's probably little you can do to convince someone to love you again after they just don't anymore. Because love is there, until it's not. And you will understand this once you stop loving someone who still loved you, once YOU BREAK SOMEONE ELSE'S heart. It will all suddenly make sense because you will understand how little the process had to do with you. That you could have rocked up the next day looking like Halle Berry and they still wouldn't love you because the switch went off, just like it went off with you. Like you know that if that ex boyfriend of yours came back a billionaire that looked like Terrence J, you would still tell them that you just don't love them anymore because you just don't. People really do just outgrow each other at times. Or there will just be this one thing that you can't put your finger on of why this person just isn't the one. In any case, love isn't always rational or reasonable now is it?!

And as much as it will suck having to break someone else's heart, you will feel so liberated when you finally understand what it was that your ex went through when they left you. When you get that physical evidence that your mind needed to rationalize everything. It can have everything to do with you or absolutely nothing to do with you.

That's not to say that people don't get back together, of course they do. Some people are even stuck in a pattern of break-ups and make-ups but those people generally both still loved each other, I would think. 

If someone has stopped loving you, just let them go. Someone else WILL love you again. If you've broken someone else's heart you will know that guilt you feel when you speak to this person and they want to get back together & you have nothing new to tell them except that you don't want to be with them. You will try to be nice about it, and say it in the kindest of words of why you don't want them. You might even lie because you are so wrecked with guilt at how you ruined someone else's life. Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself if you would want someone to put you through that?! 

Envy: The art of counting another person's blessings instead of your own

It's a rather difficult thing to do at times, not to envy someone else for what they've got. Because you look at them and they seem to really have it together you know, probably have the next to perfect life that you dream about and you wonder why it's not happening for you. You think to yourself how they have this perfect boyfriend or husband who buys them a Mercedes for their birthday and buys them flowers every other day and tells them they look cute all the time and...they generally just look like they have their shit together. But the operative word here is "LOOK"...because you're on the outside looking in, you don't get to see the behind-the-scenes of Instagram and Facebook pictures, nobody twitpics those. Nobody posts about the real deal that goes into making relationships work or marriages work. And I'm not talking about the generic answers here of how to snag a man, I mean the real things like forgiveness, compromise and how sometimes the person you love can hurt you in ways you couldn't imagine. 

Me and my mom have gotten to that age in our relationship where we talk about pretty much everything and every now and again she will remind me that "Ungabo yihhalela into yomuntu" which roughly translates to "Don't yearn for what another person has..." We are usually discussing relationships though when this crops up. It's happened more times than I can mention when a couple who seemed near perfect suddenly loses it all and we're shocked because from the outside everything looked like heaven. So I have always understood it as her reminding me to be present in my own life and appreciate the good things about it, always. You will always fall short if you compare yourself or situation to another person. I'm not saying it's not good to aspire to the goodness you see in others but you must always remember that just as much as you are envying someone else, someone else is envying you and wishing they had what you had. So why count the blessings of another person instead of your own? It's an insult to yourself actually....

Another important thing I have learned is that we are all on different journeys in this life. I would hate to think there is some template we should follow for our lives. How boring would that be?! 

A simple illustration of this always came up with my own mother. I got an opportunity to study abroad for six months and I would be complaining to my mom on the phone at times how I desperately wanted to come home and she would laugh at me because she would remind me how so many people wished they were me, in Switzerland, doing what I do. And that would always put things in perspective for me. Perspective is everything. 

I mean, it's not a competition. If you make it one, you will see yourself as losing when good things happen to other people and that will lead to envy and hate etc. You will be incapable of being happy for that person. Don't get me wrong, it's good to want good things for yourself and see qualities in other people that you aspire to, but be careful not to compare and contrast and sink yourself into a deep depression in the process. 

And also, don't be this guy LOL 

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned.

So this blog post was inspired by something that recently happened to a friend of mine. An ex girlfriend of her current boyfriend sent her an email saying she must be careful of her man coz he was going to unleash a world of hurt onto her. It really got me thinking about what would possess someone to do such a thing. How would what they did not be interpreted as just someone who is bitter,trying to cause trouble?! What I'm struggling with, more than anything, is that well, why would they feel the need to take it upon themselves to caution someone, a stranger, to not date somebody? I mean, from every angle I look at it, I don't get it. We've all had our fair share of exes that we think were completely crazy coz of the messed up things they did or because they turned out to be horrible human beings but I have never felt the need to caution who ever dates them next that hey, that man is crazy, he is a liar and he is an all-round bad person. Does this make me a bad person? That I don't care about a stranger?

Firstly, my reasoning is that it's possible that I brought out the crazy in that person, lawd knows there are people out there that have brought out not such good things out of me, just like some people are capable of bringing out the best in me. Another thing is that, maybe, just maybe that person has changed, maybe they found Jesus after realizing it's not right to mess up other kids lives. So who am I to deny that person another chance at being happy? Especially if nobody asked me. Even if that persons girlfriend did ask me, I doubt I would be like they suck, stay away from them, just because I want nothing to do with them. 
So why do some people feel the need to perform this public service? What are they hoping to achieve? That that person wises up and takes their advice and writes them a thank you letter? What exactly?!

Every relationship between two people is unique, unique in its badness and unique in its goodness. No one can presume to understand a couples brand of insanity, as hard as you might try looking from the outside. You can judge, point fingers, give unsolicited or solicited advice but you can never predict the outcome unless you are in it. How many times have you given a friend advice on their relationship and watched them do the exact opposite?! Or say things like how you would never stand for what is happening in their relationship yet your friend is still there, in it, because frankly you don't know what their heart and mind signed up for when they started dating that person. So who on earth would listen to a strangers UNSOLICITED advice?!

I don't know, maybe I'm the crazy person, but I don't imagine anything good can come out of it without you looking like a crazy, bitter ex who can't get over stuff. Even if you are right about all the things you say, my honest advice is save it, coz nobody cares. 

I don't love you anymore. Goodbye...

So the other day I was talking to someone one I know, and  he was telling me how he had dated someone for 9 years and they had broken up. I made the face I always make when someone tells me they've been dating someone for like 5 years or something and they broke up. The thing I just never understand is how you can walk away from someone you've been with THAT long. How do you love someone for that long and then you just don't? Where does all that love go is my problem?! Can you just wake up one morning and not be in love with someone anymore? 

Personally, I've never been in a relationship that's lasted longer than 3 years but I remember at some point desperately wanting to be that person who had dated someone for years and years because somehow I thought that mean't that they were my someone, because why would I date someone that long for it to mean nothing in the end. Anyway, because of this, at some point I ended up dating someone longer than I should have because I wanted to know what that was like. That was obviously a bad idea. More than anything though I wanted to find out what relationships like that entail because I had always been someone who didn't really stick around for the 'hard' times in relationships. By hard times I mean staying with someone who had cheated on me to try and "work it out" or anything else really that I found to be completely annoying. I always figured that if this annoys me now, how much more will it annoy me 5, 10 years down the line? So rather just cut my losses now right and find someone who doesn't do things that annoy me. I'm simplifying it too much here though, I don't mean random things like leaving the toilet seat up or chewing with their mouth open, they were serious things I won't go into here! One of the reasons I'm like this is because of what my mom told me years ago about getting married. She told me once that whatever things the person you're dating does that you don't like and you think they will stop doing once you get married, you can forget about it, once you're married they'll probably do it 10 to the power of 5. For those of you who didn't do maths, that's 10x10x10x10x10! Just imagine!!

But as I learned from that relationship is that people really do just break up, like people who have been married for 25 years getting a divorce, people who have dated for 5 years or ten years do just break up! And I don't know if it's because they stopped loving each other or maybe the love just wasn't enough. 
And when is love not enough you ask? Well I guess when loving someone hurts. And being with them brings nothing but heartache. And you realize that you have to love yourself more than them and walk away. 

I'm sure some would argue that you don't leave someone you still love, I guess it's up to the individual anyhow, what you can deal with. Another person will stay with someone just because they can't bear to see them with someone else. Another might stay because they don't think they can get someone better or that that person is all they deserve in this life of sin. Or just the familiarity I guess, the routine that you've gotten used to, seems unimaginable to no longer be doing those things. Or the trouble of actually breaking up. On its own though it's just a pain let's admit. Especially if you are deeply involved in each others lives, have the same friends, your family knows them and vice versa...I won't even go into the part of having a kid together!

Alice (Natalie Portman's character in Closer) said the only way to leave is to tell the person you don't love them anymore, goodbye. And Dan asked her and if you still love them, what happens then, and she said then you don't leave. You don't leave someone you love. 
Yes? No? Maybe?!

**** I wrote this while watching Ghost Rider. Ghost Rider is a really bad movie!****

When I got dumped

Generally women are not the ones who are broken up with, they usually whip out the "We need to talk", "It's not you, it's me" ..."But, we can still be friends" lines and men, I would assume, are kinda used to being dumped so although it might hurt and it could be earth shattering, it's hardly ever unexpected. So I never thought I would actually get dumped, the thought of it seemed embarrassing somehow, like something I should be ashamed of, because things like that don't happen to nice girls but it happened to me. I can't really say it was humbling because while it was happening, I'm pretty sure I thought life as I knew it was over. My ego had nothing to do with the pain, my first instinct was probably to try and fix it. Which can be a little difficult when you didn't actually do anything wrong. Getting dumped simply because they like someone else more than they like you. There really is no quick fix for that. No apology or bunch of red roses would do the trick. 

In this particular instance when you are the dumper (the one who dumps) you mentally and emotionally prepare yourself for the eventual end of the relationship and so by the time it happens you're cool you know coz you've made peace with it and gotten all your necessary closure and possibly even have another gig lined up (another conquest or suitor). But, when you are the dumpee (the one being dumped), you generally don't see it coming, don't have the time to prepare for it and the shock to your system can be pretty mind numbing. For me it felt like, you know how supposedly you kill vampires by ripping their hearts out of their chests? Well that was me, like someone had literally grabbed my heart out of my chest and was holding it in their hand & squeezing really hard. Or perhaps, for those of you who have asthma, like when you have an asthma attack and it feels like someone is squeezing your lungs real tight and so you just start crying coz you don't know what else to do to show how much pain you're in. And that's what I did, I cried and cried and cried. I think I cried everyday for two weeks. I would cry myself to sleep at night and then wake up in the morning and remember I had been dumped and start crying again. Like clockwork, everyday! I would randomly start crying while walking to/from class and I didn't even care who was watching. The tears would just start dripping out of me, like there was a switch in my brain that would remember how much it all hurt hahahahahaha I laugh now but it wasn't funny then. I don't know what made me stop crying but one day I woke up and the tears weren't there. And I stopped.

That's the great thing about time though! It heals! I could never go back to that moment and feel that pain again as it was. Now it's just a memory of something that happened, of a story I like telling people to remind them that nothing is permanent. And as much as anything hurts right now, today...tomorrow it's gonna hurt less until it just doesn't anymore. 

 

Anyway, I was doing my 1st year in varsity when this happened and I would love to say I'm so much more wiser now and I would never cry over a dude for two weeks because I'm a grown-up but as the Wizard of Oz said to the Tin man: Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable. 

I think the worst thing about being the dumpee in this particular instance is that well you have nothing to fix really, you can't be a better you, or make the other person the dumper is leaving you for less interesting to the dumper. It's easy if perhaps you cheated or there has been a gradual deterioration of the relationship, coz then it's not a surprise, like an earthquake. I honestly think that person has made up their mind by then and nothing you say or do can make them stay. I really don't think people wake up one morning and randomly decide they are breaking up with someone, there's a build-up, a behind the scenes moment that you just don't know about. 

Anyway, writing this made me remember this one line from a song I love by Rachael Yamagata called 'Elephants'

"So for those of you falling in love, keep it kind, keep it good, keep it right. Throw yourself in the midst of danger but keep one eye open at night."

I think that's pretty sound advice from one dumpee to another ;-)