Dear Woman

by Michael Reid

  You have an obligation to be the best damn mother you can be, in spite of circumstances. Obligation supersedes any negativity. Just when you think it’s too much to handle, just when you think you’re alone, creep in their bedroom, sit on the floor and watch them sleep. Look at how peaceful they look. You did that. Let that peace give you peace.

  If you need any evidence of how a woman can raise a boy to be a man, look to me. I am proof. Proof that it’s possible. Proof that the only boy a woman can’t raise to be a man, is the boy that thinks he’s a man already. Raise royalty, and if you have to do it alone, fear not because at least you get to take all the credit. I love you and I’m praying for you.

  DEAR WOMAN,

  “To all the women who do it alone I respect you.

  Never let your baby’s father or his failures affect you.”

  To all the women who CHOOSE to do it alone,

  only because it never worked out the way you wanted to, trying to turn “playing house” into a home.

  So now you won’t even let him talk to his children on the phone.

  Shame on you.

  There are over 4 million women under 40 with a “baby daddy” that is either dead or in prison.

  Another 16 million more that just don’t care.

  So for you to use his son as a bargaining chip,

  or to deprive your daughter of the first man she’s supposed to fall in love with, just ain’t fair.

  You like calling yourself a single mom, like it’s an accomplishment.

  Only thing you’re accomplishing is making your child’s life more difficult. You can’t force something that’s just not there.

  You’re dead wrong if you have a man who wants to be a father to his kids, yet the kid in you can’t be mature about the situation.

  You situate yourself in child support court, letting someone who wasn’t in the bedroom when you were making that child tell you how much your son is worth and the schedule of visitation.

  When parents play tug of war, the child always loses.

  When he stopped, she stopped.

  He stopped giving her flowers.

  He stopped calling just to hear her voice.

  He stopped telling her she looked beautiful.

  He stopped doing what it took to get her after he got her.

  That will be how he loses her.

  Don’t get the girl that everybody wants, then forget that she’s still the girl that everybody wants.

  DEAR WOMAN,

  The scariest part about love

  is the fact that, more than likely, you will always fall into it together.

  Quickly and without a care.

  The whole world will be your audience.

  The two of you will be the stars of the show.

  Every morning will feel like your favorite Saturday cartoon, and every night, your favorite love movie.

  Every Friday will feel like prom all over again:

  When the only feeling better than your best friend helping you put on your dress was your boyfriend taking it off.

  Sundays will be the day you put a huge “Do Not Disturb” on your entire existence.

  However, falling out is something you will always do alone.

  Those are the pictures that don’t make it to Instagram.

  That one person,

  The person who knocked down your wall of insecurities, trust issues and broken promises,

  The one who promised to never leave you,

  Won’t even stick around to help you clean up the pieces.

  “THE GREAT WALL”

  “A woman will only be as safe as the barriers she sets up to protect herself from her enemies.”

  What is the most valuable thing you own? Where do you keep it? You keep your money in a bank, you keep your jewelry in a box, and you keep your documents in a safe—all to protect them, right? Nobody ever complains about them being there, right? You’re almost considered crazy for not having these things to protect you.

  Now let’s talk about “famous” people. Your favorite actor or actress probably has a bodyguard. Your favorite rapper or singer probably has a few. The President of the United Sates has the Secret Service, made up of about 3,200 people. All of these people have these measures in place to protect them from the world. What do you have?

  Sometimes being a woman is about access. If they can’t get to you, they can’t hurt you. Throughout the course of your life, you’ll develop this wall—this wall may be of wisdom, it may be of fear, or it may be of pain. The way you live your life will determine what your bricks are made of. For those who haven’t built their wall yet, make it of faith. Faith that one day you’re going to meet a man who is willing to climb over. To those women with the other types of walls, what’s done is done. I’m not about to sit here and tell you that because you have a wall 55 feet high, that you need to tear it down to make yourself more accessible. That’s not fair, not to you or your wall. Your wall is your testament. Your wall is your story.

  What messes people up after they get hurt is that they want to act like it never happened. They put all their bricks in a pile somewhere and try to hide them, like when you used to clean your room and put a blanket over the clothes. That’s wrong. You got those brick for a reason, maybe God wanted to give them to you because he knew you needed protection, but instead, you think they’re scaring some people away. They might. Those are the same people that without the wall, would be able to run right up on your doorstep and break into your home and into your heart, before you even knew what hit you. Then, you’re going to wish you had that wall.

  A lot of times men come across so many women who don’t have any walls, women who don’t have any barriers to protect the good from the bad. If you’re one of those women, I need you to do yourself a favor and find one. If you have one, find out what it’s made of, that way when you meet somebody who you think might be willing to climb over, at least they know what it’s made of. Under no circumstances though, are you going to give excuses for your wall or try to convince people that your wall isn’t as big as it may seem. When you see this happening, I need you to close your door and go back in the house. It’s not your job to throw anybody a rope over the top. Your only obligation is to be waiting on the other side.

  No woman wants to have a wall up around her heart, her mind or her body. It’s her defense mechanism. It’s her way of figuring out who actually wants to put the effort in and climb over. Never be mad at your wall. Never allow a man to make you wish you didn’t have your wall. A real man won’t mind it. He’ll understand that same wall will be what protects the both of you when he gets on the other side.

  The more she had to offer, the more he took.

  He always knew how to ask.

  He didn’t always know how to say, “thank you.”

  He always expected her to “ride,”

  Even when he wasn’t sure of the destination.

  When she questioned his appreciation,

  He questioned her loyalty.

  Not once did he question his own.

  She always knew she would have his back.

  The real question was, who had hers?

  Relationships are give and take.

  If one person is doing all the giving,

  While the other is doing all the taking,

  The only thing that’s really being taken

  Is “advantage.”

  There’s a difference between holding it down and being held hostage.

  DEAR WOMAN,

  It’s 1am.

  You’re about three seconds away from sending a text that you’re going to regret 5 seconds after you sent it.

  Because you don’t know whether it’s the weather, your hormones, or the fact that you’re just not ready to walk away yet.

  So you’ve decided to slide your pride to the side.

  And all those nights that you stayed up crying to the side.

  All to lay side by side with a man who could be so close that you can feel h
is heartbeat, but still so far away that you can’t tell if it still beats for you

  Just Remember.

  Remember the first time you looked in his phone and realized you weren’t special.

  Remember how you used to finish each other’s sentences, now it takes a damn near a miracle for him to text you.

  Remember how it felt when the second after you fell, he fell back, and didn’t get catch you.

  What good is giving your goods to somebody that doesn’t respect you?

  Don’t let sex be an apology that your heart didn’t give your body permission to give.

  “AFTER KATRINA”

  “Anything that was once built can be built again, but depending on why it fell, determines whether or not you should rebuild.”

  Everybody wants a house on the beach, until the storm comes—the wind, rain and tide swallow your property, spit it out, and you move up the coast like nothing ever happened. All you’re left with is a pile of memories, soaked in despair. What do you do when your dream house becomes a nightmare? Do you rebuild or run?

  You just broke up with your boyfriend. We won’t talk about why, just understand that the beach house was your relationship. The storm was the reason. The rebuild is the day he texts your phones asking if you two can “just talk.” I want you to think about this beach house. Take a few things into consideration before you reply. You have insurance called self-love. So, it’s not like you’ll be homeless because self-love is the ability for you to be at home wherever you go. This insurance company just wrote you a check for the damages, plus 20%. What do you do?

  If you decide to go, go as far away as you can, as quick as you can. If not, every chance you get you’re going to ride down memory lane until your car stops at the vacant lot where your house used to be. You won’t know whether to spit on it or, a fall to your knees and cry your eyes out. That’s too much pressure. But if you rebuild you have to make some changes.

  A lot of times people go back to the ones they loved and try to pick up where they left off. They try to pretend like the storm never happened, or they try to live in whatever is left of the house that the storm just ran through. That’s not going to work forever.

  I get it. You love him. It happens to the best of us. Combine that with the fact that everybody makes mistakes and “people change,” and that you might have had a storm of your own that missed the house, barely. You put all that in a blender, mix it up, and you might find a couple dozen reasons to rebuild that house. All I’m saying is when you do, rebuild up. You start over—all the way over; I don’t care if you two were together for 3 years or 33. If a storm blew your house down, it wasn’t strong enough. So somewhere in the process things got shaky. It’s time to get it together. If that means not replying to every text message, not answering every phone call and not ending every conversation with, “I love you,” so be it. If not, all you’re doing is trying to make a castle out of debris, which is going to be weaker than the first one. So do what you have to do if that’s what you have to do. Just do it the smart way. If not, depending on the reason for the storm, you just might be asking for lightning to strike twice.

  DEAR WOMAN,

  Someone will love you just the way you are.

  Never apologize for being you.

  Apologize when you have to stop being you to be with somebody else.

  Your job makes you wear a uniform.

  Your church makes you wear a uniform.

  The club makes you wear a uniform.

  Your relationship is the one place on Earth where you can get naked—

  Where you’re just as beautiful with pin-curls and a scarf,

  as you are 45 minutes after you leave the salon.

  When the Mac doesn’t keep your face together,

  When the wraps don’t keep your waist together,

  When you just don’t feel like wearing a bra,

  If the person you’re with wants you to look another way, act another way, talk another way, then maybe you should walk the other way.

  Life is too damn hard already for you to be with someone who wants you to change before they even figure out who you really are.

  Be you, unapologetically.

  DEAR WOMAN,

  It’s time to make a decision:

  You’ve got to either tell him to love you

  or leave you alone.

  It can’t be both.

  The fact that you two still argue about how much you used to hurt each other still gives you hope.

  So, today, I’m asking you to pick a struggle:

  Either pick today to pack up the memories,

  Or pick today to pick them over everything and back up all the

  “I love you.”

  All these cameos they make in your text messages aren’t doing anything but confusing you.

  What good is getting lost in you all over again if you won’t come find me? While in the process, I’m losing me.

  If you’re going to wait for somebody else to give you permission to smile, you better sell your teeth because you’re not going to ever use them.

  “REFLECTIONS”

  “Sometimes, people don’t know who they are until you show them.”

  There comes a point in your life and in your relationships, when you are going to have to stop talking and start showing people why they don’t deserve you. There are some people who don’t get the picture until you become the mirror they so desperately need to show them who they are. A lot of people are good at pointing the finger at you for where you fall short and for where you need to grow, but when you ask them what they need to work on, their only response is going to be “you.” So it’s your duty, if not to save your relationship with them then to save the relationship they have with themselves or with whomever they might be with in the future. This duty is to be their reflection. A lot of people don’t know their stuff stinks until you pick it up and put it in their face.

  This is not about being “petty” or diminishing yourself by lowering to their level. It’s about doing things in a way that the people you are talking to will understand. It’s about giving people a taste of their own medicine. This can be done in a conversation or a lack thereof. It can be done in a day, a week, maybe even a month—it all depends on how much time you are willing to invest in making people become better people. It has to be done though, and who better to do it than someone who knows exactly who they are dealing with?

  Too many times us good people swallow our pride, swallow our voice and swallow our expectations in order to please people who don’t please us back. For you, that should end today. You’ll be surprised how quickly some people change once you show them who they are and how who they are makes you feel.

  “You can’t expect people to fix what they don’t know is broken.”

  The choice is yours whether or not you want to stick around and figure out whether or not they change. That’s a conversation between you and your breaking point. My only concern is that you get in the habit of making people better people.

  DEAR WOMAN,

  Nobody’s Perfect,

  So be the best you possible.

  Every pretty woman gets “Carried” away, eventually.

  I know sometimes it feels like you’ve had enough.

  You start thinking like a man,

  Wanting to play that game, too.

  Baby girl, I can see your halo.

  It shines brighter than good sex and the city.

  Every man shouldn’t have the pleasure of tasting your brown sugar.

  Keep scribbling in that notebook and waiting for your prince charming.

  There’s a thin line between being drunk in love and obsessed.

  Every diamond doesn’t make it out of the rough or the players club.

  Some get in too deep.

  I know you’re waiting to exhale. It’s coming.

  Remember, the real scandal is when you start asking yourself,

  what’s love got to do with it?

 
So make sure your Mr. Big is Just Wright, not just Something New,

  before you allow him to claim your baggage at the airport after you two have jumped the broom.

  DEAR WOMAN,

  Don’t let love destroy your soul.

  This love thing isn’t as easy as some people make it seem.

  Sometimes,

  The happy endings are only in the movies.

  Sometimes,

  The only one who puts in the effort is you.

  Sometimes,

  As much as you want it to work, it just won’t.

  So, I need you to do me a favor.

  Don’t let it break you.

  Try loving yourself more.

  Create a happiness on your own that doesn’t require another person to make you feel like you need their permission.

  Be so busy falling in love with yourself that you don’t need anybody else.

  Love will come and go.

  The key is,

  don’t let it take a piece of you with it when it leaves.

  “SAVE SOME FOR THE GOOD GUY”

  “The last thing you’ll want to happen is for love to show up with its hand out, and you have nothing to give.”