This Ain't a Rap Song; This Is MY Life

I live in a beautiful neighborhood. Especially during the fall. Our extremely green grass is covered in leaves that are all the beautiful colors the season brings. Shades of orange, brown, and yellow. From the outside looking in, it couldn't be more of a scene from a movie or something. Nice quiet neighborhood where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are all cloudy all day. But inside my home is an infestation of these terrible red bugs with a bazillion legs and unbelievable speed. You would never know this from the outside looking in. This description matches how I feel about myself. There's so much you would ever know  at first glance.

This post is coming to you right after I took my extensions out and was left with the two strands on my head. How does this happen to ones hair? One chemically straightens it to be pretty, then realizes that's not pretty enough and keeps extensions in for too long causing all of it to fall out or break off. Not that there was much of it in the first place, because one was born black. This ain't a rap song: this is my life. I also took a glance at facebook and saw that the awkward girl from high school. The one that was super smart and everyone thought would end up along is in a relationship. I'm still here alone. The notebook is playing to heal my broken heart, and I realize that this is a love story for people just like Allie and Noah. Not people like me.

Don't get me wrong, I try. I have a weave, pretty nails, and shop at all the right stores that I can afford. I wear make up and never leave the house in my sweat pants. I have an impeccable GPA and work my butt off in school.  On paper, I should be someone's perfect person. I recently did get someone interested. He of course wasn't in school and was likely participating in illegal activity of some sort. You're probably thinking, why? Why is it this way? It's a question I've asked myself multiple times. The answer is simple.

I was born with the blessing and the curse of being a black woman. I call it a blessing in the sense of a popular christian song that says "Halleluiah, we are free to struggle". I feel like as a woman of color, I am especially free to struggle. As in God enjoys my struggle and laughs at my pain. I know this sounds awful. I know God loves all his children. His ways are not our ways, so you can see why it's difficult for me to understand why some people get it so easy and some of us struggle struggle struggle. I live in a society where having hair that blows in the wind and lays straight down or whatever is beautiful. My hair does not do that and never will. So let the struggle begin. As a black woman, I'm dumped on for not being academic enough and am mocked for being educated and speaking well. The majority that accepts me for sounding like them and dressing like them are the same people who can never like me. In a romantic sense. Boys in the majority are not interested in girls in the minority. Not at all. It doesn't help when you have other flaws on top of being born "wrong".

Women of other races love black boys. By love, I mean they idolize them. They get all of this attention that goes to their heads and makes them feel above black women. If their to pick one of us, we have to be perfect in the traditional dream black women sense. We should be thin with curves (how is that possible? God only knows), have fake hair, nice nails, and everything did. They ask the other girls to dance without expecting much, but it it's you it needs to be an entire strip show or something. They want you to bend over, twerk, and do all this stuff to make up for the fact that you're black. Is it a choice to go along with it? yes. Was it a choice to be stuck in these situations? No. But this is what it's really like. My friends always tell me to "get out there more" or go to "frat parties". To meet boys the way they do. They don't realize that what's stopping me is something I can never overcome. Myself. The way I am just isn't good enough for the society I live in. It never will be.

This is a heavy realization, but honestly it doesn't make me sad. In the back of my mind i've always known that this is the way things are. That life is always going to be a little bit harder for me in the social and romantic sense. At the end of the day, I realize I could be sick, living in a third world country, or in some other terrible situation much worse than the one I'm in. I praise God every day for that. But some nights like tonight, I just can't get over my shortcomings and struggle that comes with being who I am.