after the storm
for those of you that tried to access my site this past weekend, y’all know that i had been having some technical difficulties. ok, that’s really an understatement. my blog, which began deleting the graphics from my lilo&stich-the update post, escalated to deleting my latest post and then my ENTIRE blog…my archives were gone!! every word that i had recorded since december…vanished right before my eyes!!! YIKES!!! and i panicked…i mean completely nutted up…
yes, i did completely delete my “woman thou art loosed!!!” and “selah!” blogs because i felt like i had moved beyond the woman that wrote those words. you see, the old me is used to “purging”.
my first experience with purging happened with my “keeno brown” (© the hostess, 2005/6). for those of you that remember, he was my high school sweetheart. we had a mate date relationship from the time i was twelve until i was nineteen.
well, one time when i was in the tenth grade we went through a particularly tumultuous break-up. i was hurt beyond belief and comprehension by his actions at that time. my reaction - in its base “strike out and clean up the results later” scorpio form was to purge…by fire (yes, i was the original angela bassett from “waiting to exhale character). one night i burned every thing that he’d ever given me - the letters, the clothes, the stuffed animals and even the jewlery (which is surprisingly resilient) . i put the ashes in a big plastic bag and took them to school with me the next morning - where i proceeded to dump them all over his desk in his homeroom.
in fact, i remember my best male friend “e” who happened to sit across from him giving me the advice that i carry with me to this day, “no matter what a n*gga does to you…never let them see you sweat”…and so, although i still kept my habit of purging over the years, i’ve always done it privately. if a mate that i had hurt me in some way, shape or form i would purge any reminder of them…completely. over the years i’ve made it a point to not keep anything that will remind me of someone that has hurt me. in grad school, i tried to burn some artifacts from my “meet me in st. augustine” relationship because that relationship, although eye-opening and the first time that i ever experienced “love-the verb”, was also heart-breakingly painful, i found out that what i thought was a porcelain bathroom sink was in fact made from plastic…because it melted…down to the pipes. lol!
anyway, about a month ago “keeno” was killed. over the years (after the fire) he and i became really good friends. he went on to marry, have children and become someone that i truly admired and cared about. as we grew older, because we both watched each other develop over the years, the friendship that we developed was a special one. i used to say that i knew him before he grew chest hair…and so whenever he had a problem, i had an insight dating back to his childhood that i could provide and vice versa. during our last conversation, while i was telling him about how i’d grown out of my “purging” habit, he laughingly recalled how he had to go around smelling like soot and stale smoke all day and that he was glad that he’d paved the way so that amani did not have to experience “trial by fire” 
.
sadly, because i’d done so much purging back in the day, i don’t have anything left to remind me of him. now, i wish i had the pictures, letters, and other types of memorabilia - to remind me of the wonderful person that he was…and how much he’d grown and changed over the years. and maybe more importantly, i don’t have anything to remind me of the person that i was then - and how much i’ve grown over the years. the only thing that i have left is an old voice mail that he’d left a couple of weeks before he died and even that’s about to expire. at the time, i’d been really busy and thought to myself that i’d call him back when i got a break in my schedule…and i never did.
after that - and the episode this past weekend - i realized that it really is ok to keep reminders of yourself and the person that you used to be, even if it is in the form of memorbilia from a past and “purged” relationship. i used to believe that you couldn’t move on unless you completely disassociated yourself with the person that you were. but that’s not necessarily true. true growth is the ability to look back at your former self and love him/her for they used to be and still appreciate the person that you’ve become.
Sorry about your friend but although you don’t have pictures or letters you have your memories and that is a good thing.
Great post!
btw you can always save your entries on word and then transfer them to the blog so you’ll always have them.
Yeah, I’m trying to save everything now that this has happened. I believe that everything happens for a reason so maybe this is one of those things that has happened to teach me the value of reflection. I’ve got a 100+ things to save now for the blog, but I’m trying.
Comment by Honest — July 25, 2006 @ 10:07 pm
My blog also went away, I’m glad they returned. I went to my bloglines and copied as far back as I could. I noticed that yours had also disappeared.
Your Woman Thou Are Loosed is still on my bloglines. I was reading it just the other day.
Jade and I were checking blogs that night but yours was still working when we stopped by. Whew!!! Your blog especially w/ your posts about your guy is something that I hope you definitely hold on to.
Comment by c2a — July 26, 2006 @ 12:06 am
I just looked again, your Woman Thou bloglines only has snippets.
Durnnit. I really miss that old blog.
Comment by c2a — July 26, 2006 @ 12:24 am
Reading this made me really reflect on what “used” to be, how life seemed hard back then but in actuality was so simple. The memories that you have of him will always be with you. What you should not forget is that he is with you always in spirit.
Jade
Thanks, sweetie.
Comment by Jade — July 26, 2006 @ 12:50 am
You always know how to make me rememeber the past (the good past). I hope that everything works out for this blogg thing. I have noticed that a couple of things I wrote are missing. But I just thought that was an “operator error”. Thanks again!
Your blog was the first one that I checked because we have the same template but yours was doing fine on Saturday. I was wondering if it was because I had updated and done something wrong. Don’t worry. It’ll pop back up in a day or two like nothing happened.
Comment by Choas — July 26, 2006 @ 9:26 am
Lots of reflection going on. I read some things from my very first blog just last night.
Doesn’t it make you proud to see how far you’ve come? Or interesting to see how some of the “major players” from your old life end up years later?
Comment by The Hostess — July 26, 2006 @ 9:40 am
You’re so right…sometimes I read the things I have blogged about and I wonder what my problem is…but then again, I realize it’s actually a good thing to keep these things to be able to evaluate how far you’ve come. Inspiring post…
Exactly. That’s why I wished I wouldn’t have been so happy w/ the “delete” key.
Comment by heartdrops — July 26, 2006 @ 11:26 am
at one point, i sent pictures back to my high school dude from college when it was time to break up. i cut him out of others, and sent back letters and everything. i thought i’d gotten rid of every tangible reminder.
then years later i noticed there was a picture i’d overlooked somehow. the one he gave me of himself first, that sat on my nightstand so i’d see him before i went to school in the morning. i was glad i missed it in the purge. i still have it.
Yeah, I was looking through an old shoebox and I actually still have one picture from high school of my old sweetheart that I managed to keep and he’s got a big old smile in it. I’m glad that one escaped the purge, too.
Comment by glory — July 26, 2006 @ 12:18 pm
I’m sorry about your friend. I was wondering if you were going to regret deleting your old blogs. It funny, although I don’t post on my old one, there are information that I’ve gathered that I still use. I looked this past weekend and saw that your blog entries had been deleted and immediately thought that it was temporary. I used to have problems all the time and they do work out eventually.
For months, I was cool w/ not having the old blogs. But now, especially after the experience of not having tangible things to remember my friend by, I’m beginning to regret not having a record to remember the last year and a half of my life.
As for Blogsome, I’ve been working on moving to another site simply because of the firewall issue. I had been slacking on it though, so this experience has given me the motivation to get going on it.
Comment by cynthia — July 27, 2006 @ 9:12 am