The Table pt. 1

Bring to the table - offer, contribute, supply, give

 

Hi kids,

 

This is going to be a two-parter because it turned out longer than I planned on. But it’s good when the cup runneth over lol. Or so they tell me.

 

 

Anyways—

 

 

So I decided to talk about this since lately I’ve been seeing more and more MEN on my social media accounts proclaiming that they are tired of womens’ shit and don’t appreciate her taking advantage of his kindness and being ignorant to his worth. BLAH BLAH BLAH. Not that it’s a bad thing, I feel all people should be proud of who they are and voice their pride and worth to others. As well as demand the respect on how they wanted to be treated (or appreciated) as a person. I’m all for that. But what’s baffling is the fact that men are like whining about it now, yet women have been putting up with this bullshit for probably centuries now. Like what the hell is going on?

 

What I found interesting out of all this, is men and women  posting their standards or the needed qualifications to be in a relationship (if you want to call it that) with them. Like when you date me my kids are part of the package, or you have to be there for me when I’m struggling and broke so we can build an empire together, or there’s more to life than sex and how we need to be able to chill and enjoy each other company or how we should be able to save up and travel or buy a house. I’m over here like wait a damn minute, now when I talked all this shit before I got major attitude and told I’m being too bourgeois. Well shit. Like why you get to have all these standards, scattergories, qualifications, a sacrificial virgin….. SHUT THE HELL UP.  You cannot sit there and demand all these things from someone and you yourself don’t even have or lack entirely. That’s rude. NO ONE goes to the McDonald’s demanding their big mac first and picking at it before paying. You’ve got to give to get.

 

Hold up, though. People misunderstand this whole give-to-get scenario. They make it one sided like if he/she isn’t giving me what I need I’m leaving them, or I’m taking their ass to court, I’m taking the kids—so on and so forth. Yeah OK, so what did you give to them?? Nothing. Well hell you can’t expect to get something and give it back. Like my ex for example, he thought it was ok for me to give him money when he needed, head when he wanted, took him to work when his car broke down—the whole nine. But did he do any of that for me? No. Told me specifically that he didn’t have to. But there’s tons of people like him. There’s also those that have outrageously high expectations of what someone else is supposed to be. Even those who lack the qualifications, but still demand that those are overlooked for whatever greater good they’re fighting. That’s not how the table works. Metaphorically the table is similar to the dining table. We both are going to “eat” from this table and it’ll be ours. To a point that’s correct. But this isn’t like a restaurant where everything you need/want is brought to you by a server and the things you don’t like or don’t want can be ignored or picked up. No, no, honey. The table is more like a detachable tray so to speak. You bring your little tray and snap it into other trays and make the “table.” Each tray is different, and each come with something or many things different from what you got. So that’s the table portion. Now the whole matching part is like a weed session. There I said it. Those of you that don’t know: you have a friend and say hey let’s have a weed session (smoke and toke), do you wanna match? Which basically means they bring a nugget of weed or a rolled blunt and you have your nugget of weed or rolled blunt. If there’s two nuggets/blunts then you match them two. If there’s three friends or four, doesn’t matter—we’re all bringing the same goods and we share and eat cookies and have a good old fashion time all high and shit. That’s the same formula of matching we should be using with the table. 

 

Honestly I’ll say I didn’t get it, until what yesterday night and it dawned on me. I guess epiphanies can happen in the shower too lol. I can say I didn’t start thinking about it until I was about 26ish, met this guy who was nice. He had an apartment, a job, no kids, really dope personality. We talked and talked and at one point I felt bad because I felt like I didn’t have anything to offer him. Which made me wonder if that’s why it was so important for girls to play house, learn to cook, sew and clean. It was like an alternative option for the “table” I always thought. That whole thing fell through when he told me he couldn’t date me because I lived in a horrible neighborhood (yet where he lived at was worse than where I lived—go figure).  So I began thinking that this “matching” was like having my own stuff, my own money and that’ll be enough. As you get older you realize oh hey there’s something else I need to add on this list (which is “your standards”). But you realize your list isn’t physically possible and you have to sit there and fine tune or sometimes compromise with an individual to make this thing work. I feel we compromise too much and that leads to settling. And the settling leads to being miserable or the feeling of being stuck in something you don’t want but feel like there’s nothing out there for you. 

 

Since I’ve reached my 30s I get asked more often about my relationship or why I’m single. Well because I wanna be what the fuck. But they don’t like that answer and want to hit me with those “what about that lonely night” or “you’re gonna miss having someone love on you” cockamamie bullshit. Um, first of all I can’t miss something I never had. Secondly you got me on several tiers of fucked up right now. Now when I was a fresh 20ish yeah I’d be all over that. But 10 years later on my own and adulting like a mafia boss, my wants and needs changed as well as what I would and would not settle for. Even then I wasn’t doing it right. Not that there’s a right or wrong way, but more of a understanding of what exactly you’re doing. I remember being 20ish wanted to be with a man 2 years plus my senior, whom I’d married at 22, we’d have 6 kids (3 boys, 3 girls), our own house, at least 3 cars, pets galore, we’d both work and be happy and live happily ever after. However my little fantasy fairy tale wasn’t realistic with what was available. And unfortunately I ended up compromising and then on to fine tuning my standards to fit those around me. But think about it. If a puzzle piece doesn’t fit, you don’t make adjustments to the puzzle to FORCE it to fit, you find another piece right? Or sometimes leave an empty space there. Too many time we adjust ourselves to fit this person into our lives that really wasn’t meant to fit or be fully apart of it in the first place. It’s meant to be a brief encounter. Nothing more, nothing less. 

 

 

But here is where the “matching” gets complicated. We get older, blindsided and confused about what we want anymore. We’ve tried all angles to get in a relationship and hope that at least this person just ACKNOWLEDGES that I exist and learn to love and appreciate me.  Then we become all discombobulated and assume that some of the worst actions of a person is their own way of showing love. Which is wrong. And we’ll talk about that another day. Within all this, we just start rattling off what that person doesn’t possess or don’t have or not what we need. We feel that we need to mold them into something that is more tolerable and efficient to say the least. Instead of accepting that person for who they are and seeing how they fit into our lives. Now think about all the things you want in a person—EVERYTHING that makes them the IDEAL MATE for you…..

 

 

Think on it, answer it honestly and come back to me tomorrow for part 2.