2011 NYE

Ahhh, yes, here we are, at the end of another year. I tried so hard to think of a unique, impressive metaphor for this time of year, but having come up with nothing, I decided to use one I’ve used before – the end of the record.

We are at the blank, empty space between the A and B side of the album, that scratchy limbo between 2011 and 2012.

In past years, I have been able to move smoothly between one year and another – gently removing the record, replacing it in its sleeve, putting it back on the shelf amidst the other years (lovingly), and standing back for a while to reminisce and reflect.

But all I want to do now is take of the record, break it in two, back over it with the car, set it on fire…

Think Stewie and Brian in the “Bird is the Word” episode of Family Guy.




2011 was, in short, a BASTARD of a year for me.

I lost some friends, my self-respect, and I turned 40.

Let’s just sit here for a second.

In my mind, my 40th year was supposed to be a significant, ground-breaking year. 40 was the new frontier, the uncharted territory that promised self-discovery, celebration, adventure…

I got NONE of that.

Instead, I got a year full of unfulfilled expectations, colossal disappointments, soul-crushing humiliation and repressed anger.

And I really can’t blame anyone but myself.

Because you see, in the final analysis, I realize that I merely lived in a castle that I built.

I also realize that I had this shittacular year because I broke some of my own cardinal rules, early in the game. I made decisions that, going in, I knew were wrong and would lead to situations that would end badly, but for some reason, I didn’t listen to that small voice inside that is always right. I accepted things I normally never would, agreed with situations I normally would find unsuitable.

In typical fashion, I spent almost the entire 2011 trapping myself in undesirable situations, then hoping for a change.

Worse than that, I completely abandoned my World Domination Plot.

This is unacceptable. Never abandon the Plot. Ever.

Here’s the good news: it only took eleven months to realize that only I had the power to change my circumstances. (blank stare)

Don’t laugh too hard. Some of you took years to realize this. Some of you have yet to realize it, and are still stumbling around in that shit storm you call a life.

Go ‘head and let that marinate in your spirits for a second… I’ll wait.

Anyway, the question now remains: what now? Now that I’ve learned this lesson, what is my plan? Because what’s the point of learning something if it’s never applied?

It’s simple, really – I need to go back to who I was at the beginning of 2011, before all the denial, and settling, and… fuckery.

Who was that person? She was intelligent, and funny, and humble, and sarcastic, and fierce, and about seven other types of awesome. Not this weak, quiet, “whatever music you like” lookin-ass chick that 2011 created.

Yeah. “Back to awesome” is the theme for 2012.

Corny? Probably. But I don’t really care what you think.

See? I’m moving back there already.

Ultimately, I’m not mad at 2011 and all it taught me about myself. Sure, I hate what I learned, and would rather not experience that shit again, but the lesson itself was invaluable.

And truthfully, I am better for it.


Happy New Year, Party People. Stick with me – it’s gonna be amazing.

Lupus Diary #2

About a year ago, I ran into an old, family friend – by “old” I don’t mean “long time”, but rather, he’s just this OLD dude I know. It had been several years since he’d last seen me, and he had heard that I had a “health scare” a while ago, so he asked how I was doing.

Doing well, I said. I gave him the short list of all the awesome shit I had been doing since we’d last talked. I placed special emphasis on the accomplishments (Master’s Degree, good job, recordings, performances) and deftly skipped over the unsavory parts (falling down an entire flight of stairs at work, car accidents, failed relationships, failed projects). While I talked, he looked me up and down.

This made me uncomfortable, because frankly, I’d always gotten a slimy vibe from him, and felt that if given the opportunity, he would brush his hand against my ass “by accident”. So, I began to look around nervously for a reason to end the conversation and get away from him (please, God, let a car full of midget circus clowns pull up). Soon, after my voice trailed off, he said:

Well, you LOOK great.

Over the years, I’ve heard several versions of this statement, from the harmless you look great, to the passive-aggressive, backhand slap: if that’s how you look when you’re sick, you should get sick more often (someone actually said that to me, about a week after being released from the hospital). But this statement, among others, merely indicate a deeper issue, which I shall discuss here. In short,

People will never understand what I’m going through.

The minute I realized that and accepted it, my condition became infinitely easier to handle. Before that miraculous moment, however, I was always angry – and it probably didn’t help that I was taking sledge hammer amounts of Prednisone at the time, and I was a raving lunatic. Anyway, for about five years after my diagnosis, I was consistently frustrated and depressed, wondering why everybody was being so callus towards me. To me, it seemed as though my family and friends were ignoring my potentially life-threatening illness, making the same demands they made before the diagnosis. It was years before I realized why.

I really didn’t look sick.

But God help me, I was. I was SO sick. So much so, I was unable to comb my own hair. But try explaining that to someone else. It will usually go like this:

Me: I don’t feel good today.
Them: Really? What’s wrong?
Me: I don’t know – I’m just really tired.
Them: Shit. I’m tired too. I just worked a ten-hour…
Me: No. No. I mean… I can’t lift my arms above my head.
Them: Well, why don’t you take a nap? You’ll feel better afterwards.

This pretty much sums up all of the conversations I had during the first few years. Hell, I still have them every now and then. Basically, no matter what words I use, what flowery, vivid metaphors, people just don’t get it. Not unless, God forbid, they have Lupus themselves. Or they live with someone who has it.

Lupus is really a tricky disease, because it manages to come without some of the telltale signs of other illnesses, while at the same time impersonating other illnesses. A cruel conundrum. A painful mathematical equation.

As for me, I had few indications that I was really sick. Sure, I was tired, my weight was dropping without me even trying, and my joints were on fire – but all of these things could be explained. Tired? I was working 40 hours a week, singing in a band on weekends, and keeping up an active social life. So, yeah. I was tired. My weight was dropping because I had recently changed my diet – drastically. And as for the flaming joints – my job consisted of about 75% data entry. So, just chalk it up to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. How was I to know that my body was destroying itself from the inside out?

And that’s just it – it happened on the inside first. Lupus was a bad tenant – moving in, cutting up the furniture, pulling pictures off the walls, breaking the linoleum in the kitchen floor… all without attracting the landlord’s attention. So, there I was, The Landlord, going about my daily routine the way I’d always gone about it, except then I was taking extra naps, buying smaller clothes and wearing wrist guards to work.

And I was still looking (relatively) healthy. In fact, the weight loss had done wonders for my social life. I was getting attention that I couldn’t buy less than six months prior. I was loving it. Sure, I had to take an extra nap before going out on a date (and no, I didn’t think that was especially odd), and perhaps take a few more Advil beforehand so that my hands wouldn’t turn into claws halfway through the date (which I also didn’t think was abnormal), but hey.

Friends continued to compliment me on the weight loss, saying how ‘healthy’ I was looking. So you see, I wasn’t the only one ignoring the signs. They noticed the wrist guards, the rapid weight loss, my inability to stand or walk for long periods of time, just like I did. Yet they congratulated me, asked me for advice (how did you do it? You look GREAT!), and everything was beautiful, I thought.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Immediately after my diagnosis, that awkward period of denial during which I tried to hold on to the lifestyle I used to have, while simultaneously expecting everyone else to treat me differently, I wallowed in self-pity. I’d never felt as alone as I did then – I was convinced that no one, in the entire world, knew what I was experiencing. What didn’t help my situation was that periodically, usually when I was at my most vulnerable, some asshole would say: Wow. If this is how you look when you’re sick, you should get sick more often.

Unbelievable, right? I thought so. Of course, now that I look back on that time, and on those people, I realize a couple of things. One, they’re assholes, like I said earlier. Two, they’ll always be assholes, and there’s nothing I can do about that. Finally, they don’t matter.

What matters, in the final analysis, is that I am living (and quite well, thank you very much) with this condition, and I am my most pressing concern and priority. It has taken me several years to come to grips with this, and finally make the necessary changes in my life to accommodate this new reality. Now, I am an expert in the use of “no”, and have learned to stop and rest when the telltale signs of a Lupus flare-up begin to appear (fatigue, headaches, aching joints, severe muscle spasms, loss of appetite).

I have also acquired the unfortunate ability to prune any individuals from my life, whether family or friends, who do not support my goal to maintain a peaceful and (relatively) stress-free life. Along with this, I am learning to forgive myself for making these adjustments.

And finally, I am able to concede that yes, I do actually look good. For someone with Lupus.

An Open Letter to Chris Brown

How you doin? I see you've been having some trouble lately. Folks on the street are talking about it. I didn't get to see the latest outburst, but I heard about it. Even saw the pictures of the aftermath on CNN, and all I could do was shake my head.

This is not a finger-pointing letter, Chris. In fact, quite the opposite. I just wanted you to know that in spite of everything, I understand your outburst yesterday.

Some of my people will be pissed that I said that, but I really couldn't give a damn. This is between me and you right now.

Now let's get something straight, right away. You never should've put your hands on that woman. Frankly, if that was me in that hospital photo the next day, you never would've made it to the precinct. I mean, I don't know who her people are, but my people would've made sure that if you ever did sing again, it would be through a brand new asshole.

Now that that's been established, I realize that it must be very difficult for someone like you, someone who is clearly dealing with some anger management issues, who has struggled for so long to hide his true nature in order to be liked by everyone.

That must be really tough for you. Because for people like me, the unwashed masses, who tumble through our lives, tangling and untangling in our messes every day, our mistakes are largely our own property. We have this one, clear advantage over luminous minority: we have the freedom to bury our shit.

You, on the other hand, do not have that luxury. Instead, you live under constant scrutiny. The unwashed masses aren't satisfied with just paying a ticket and seeing you on stage. They clutch at your history, your fears, your intimate moments. While clinging with manic intensity to their own privacy.

I realized all of this as I watched your now famous interview on Good Morning America. I watched you struggle with guilt, pain, regret, anger and the rising tide of violence that has probably always bubbled somewhere beneath the surface. I knew, by the way you clenched your teeth during the interview, and the wild, slightly awkward performance afterwards, that you hadn't put it behind you. Needless to say, I wasn't surprised when I heard about your rampage in the dressing room.

What did surprise me, however, was my own reaction. I was pissed. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why.

Until this morning, when something caught my attention as I was channel surfing. It was a snippet of a Charlie Sheen interview. I was about to dismiss it as just another replay of that manic, babble-fuck that's been getting a lot of air time lately.

(I mean, even that reporter from L.A. who had that stroke on camera had the good sense to cut it short after she started speaking jibberish).

Too soon?

Anyway, this clip was different. It was an advertisement for Charlie Sheen's new one man, traveling show. Now, everyone around the country can get an intimate look into Sheen's deteriorating, drug-addled mind.

For a small fee, of course. I mean come on, he has kids.

See, here's where I'm going with this. The world will hold this shit over your head for years to come, and give you very little opportunity to redeem or re-invent yourself. You can button up your collar, enunciate your words and take out your facial piercings, but that won't help. You have been branded a menace.

Your image will haunt the dreams of suburban fathers all over this land; they will wake in the middle of the night, their Cosby pajamas wrapped tightly around their sweaty legs, calling out their daughters' names. When they awake, they will remember little, but the sight of you on television will make them uneasy.

True, you've earned your new image honestly. But what if you don't want it? What if you want to shake it off, and maybe try to help fill that enormous hole left in the industry after MJ's death?

No dice, kid.

Meanwhile, in Bizarro World, Charlie Sheen will continue to invite reporters to his mansion, to give a glimpse into his peaceful life with his live-in prostitutes (plural) and his children.

And Mel Gibson will continue to make movies.

And so will Roman Polanski, while keeping a pair of little girl panties in his back pocket.

D'ahhh, well... I kinda understand your outburst after the interview. Personally, I don't do the whole violence-thing. I really can't afford to break anybody's shit right now. So, there are no broken windows in my immediate future.

At least, I don't think so.

As for you, I do think you can get past this, if you learn to accept the following:

You are Black - the Glitterati's rules don't apply to you.

And no amount of broken windows, or new hair styles, or body art will change this.

Once you accept this, you can learn to change your situation in small, yet meaningful ways. You will accept that you are, essentially, a violent man who can't experience frustration without causing pain or hurt to someone else.

And maybe then you will finally, truthfully, ask for help.

Living with Lupus

Lupus is a humbling disease. The medical field has all these highly technical terms for all of the physical symptoms, but at its stripped down funky center, Lupus is Murphy's Law personified. For all of us who actually live with the disease, it's a BASTARD, robbing us of everything fun and sexy and cool.

For me, Lupus was a cruel joke, played on me by the tiny little evil Board of Directors living in my head, whose sole purpose was to hold meetings and plot ways to completely humiliate me and ruin my life.

I was in my mid-twenties when I was diagnosed with Lupus. Before then I led a typical, mid-twenties life, complete with 40-hour work week and full social calendar. I had a nice apartment, a well-paying job and an active sex life (sorry Dad). The possibility that something was waiting around the corner for me, something that would change everything, had never occurred to me. Instead, I was comfortable in my own ignorance, and while nothing special was happening, nothing tragic was either. I was settling into my own mediocre state of bliss. All of my friends loved me, I was beautiful, healthy, and financially stable.

Then, the roof was blown off and I was exposed, squatting over the commode, with my skirt hiked up and my pantyhose around my ankles.

At least, that's how I felt.

To be honest, when I was first diagnosed, I didn't know what I was in for. At that time, Lupus was that hardly-known disease that killed your distant aunt (whose name no one could ever remember) back in the '70s - you know, the one that was married to Uncle Leon, who used to make that lemon cake? The one from Arkansas? With that gold tooth?

Yeah, her.

Needless to say, I was underwhelmed by the diagnosis, which frankly pissed off my rheumatologist. I knew next to nothing about the disease, even though a friend of the family had lived with it for years. I was just so relieved it wasn't AIDS (which was my initial fear), that I practically jumped in the doctor's arms and kissed him.

I had no fucking idea.

Let me just say that my naivete' about the situation was not entirely my fault. My doctor gave me the impression that after conducting a series of blood test to confirm the diagnosis, he would prescribe a few medications and my life would eventually return to normal. This was fine by me, as I was eager to return to my mundane life.

(The Board of Directors collectively shakes their heads. Poor, stupid girl. She hasn't even met Prednisone).

Well, it turns out my diagnosis was by far the most significant even in my life - something that changed everything from my relationships to my diet. That comfortable, albeit unremarkable existence I was settling into would soon become a distant memory.

Sounds dire, doesn't it? Well, it was - at first. Then, a few things happened in rapid succession. First, I was forced to pare away the people in my life who were no good for me. Second, I learned how to say 'no' to people. Lastly, I paid attention to my body. All of these things I either did not do, or didn't do enough before my diagnosis.

Lastly, my priorities came into sharp, clear focus and as a result, I finally accomplished some things I'd been putting off.

Like, finally getting around to building that zombie-proof shelter I've always wanted. And collecting Idris Elba hair clippings (don't ask).

The irony of it all, is that in the midst of gaining a laundry list of restrictions, I was able to free myself from some of my former hang-ups and fashion my life into something more comfortable for myself.

Most importantly, I realized that I am charged with the task of writing about my experience, in the hopes of reaching out to people like me who live with this mysterious, vindictive disease every day.

And hopefully, while reaching out to others, I can somehow help myself deal with the cards I've been dealt.

a love letter to 2010

As years go, you weren't all that bad. I mean, I've had worse (1996 - 1998, and 2007 come immediately to mind). You at least had the decency to miss me with some of the stinging curve balls you threw at some of my friends and family members (and what the hell was THAT about). And the ones that did connect were (in hindsight) valuable lessons. Anyway, what I have now, is a clearer understanding of who I am after our 365 - day affair. Because you've given me the greatest gift that any year could give a flaky, semi-intellectual person like me: the gift of clarity.

Anyhoo, I feel calm and stable enough to see you, 2010, for what you were, and love you for that. Since we met, my purpose has come into sharp focus, and while I may still not be clear about what it is that I want, you've taught me exactly what I don't want.

For example:

1) You remember that string of guys I dated, the ones that kinda leaked over from '09? That group of spineless, self-centered, passive-aggressive dudes who did and said anything to avoid being the bad guys? Yeah. Won't be bringing those guys with me into 2011.

2) That habit I have of spending money on shit I don't need before taking care of important things like, um, the car note? Nope. Not taking that...

3) And that beating-myself-up-over-shit-I-can't-control thing? That's gonna stay behind.

4) Oh, and the way I keep calling myself a "fat ass", and all that? Done.

I know, I know, this is coming dangerously close to a list of New Year's Resolutions, which as a rule, I don't do. However, I'd like to think of it as a list of ongoing projects. These are all things that will take some time to complete, but will be worth the effort going in.

During our brief courtship, I had several revelations about myself; some were uncomfortable, but all in all, I learned things about myself that I didn't know before, or just refused to acknowledge.

Number one, I am a hypocrite. I have caught myself, more times than I'm comfortable admitting, criticizing someone else for doing somethig I was also doing at that very moment.

I am socially awkward. This, I masterfully conceal with jokes and sarcasm. And by "masterfully", I mean not so much.

Lastly, you taught me that I tend to agree with others just to fit in, even when I'm viscerally conflicted. This was probably the hardest revelation that I've ever had about myself, and it took me weeks to get over it. But it was necessary.

So in the final analysis, you weren't that bad. We had our disagreements, but ultimately, I learned some valuable lessons while we were together.

As for the new year, I don't know much about him. Word on the street is that he's different from any other year I've met. Got some good shit for me too, I've heard.

We'll see.