A peek into my journal...

10/1/09- “The motivation for me is them telling me what I could not be… Oh well…” – Pharell (So Ambitious)


So, where should I begin? I guess I’ll start at the point that the trajectory of this day went left and that would be the minute I sat down to work and received the call from Terry, the recruiter for J&J. “Hi, Eb” (greeting as if we’re friends) “It’s Terry. I wanted to let you know that the team considered you for the position, HOWEVER (the conversation was officially over) they chose candidates who have been with the company for a bit longer than you. But the feedback from your interview was nothing but positive”. I have to say that at this point, I was over it. I was over it because it took so long for them to conclude that I wasn’t qualified. I actually wanted the job. In some ways I felt like I needed this job. I needed it to fulfill my incessant need to prove the point that I’m good enough or smart enough. Sure I needed it for financial reasons, but in addition to or maybe even more than that, I wanted it to prove that I was in some way better than the other dimly lit candidates whose lack of common sense, I decry. Not that I, myself, actually believe that I’m better, no. But because proving a point has become part of me.

I think it started after I was compared to my sister and cousins (who are beautiful caramel skinned women) one too many times… “Why can’t you dress more like a girl like Tasha? Do your hair like Tiara’s… Don’t you wanna dance and sing too?” See, the thing is, to my family, I never felt beautiful, only funny… never the one with a beautiful voice, just smart… never the one with the cute pink shirt, only bigger than the other girls… I felt like the bootblack darky whose ambition in life should be driven by being the funny chunky girl. And maybe, not to this extreme, my mother agreed. She started auditioning me for commercials and plays whose lines were comical at best. One day she took me on an audition for a play in black theatre and I had to recite some lines as well as sing. So, I go in with my big gravelly voice and belted out a gospel song and relished in the applause and standing ovay. I remember being so proud of myself and feeling like this time, I was good enough. That was until they told my mother that I was perfect for the part (with the nerve to pull her aside as to pretend they didn’t want me to hear) EXCEPT (again, conversation over) I was too big, but there was a McDonald’s commercial that I’d be perfect for. 10 years would pass before I auditioned for anything else. I said all of that to say, I’ve always had to a point to prove. Proving that I was smart, beautiful, capable of, just as good, if not better than, talented, witty...perfect… Otherwise, my family and the rest of the world would only see me as the funny fat girl.

I needed reasons to be noticed other than my ability to tell jokes. I needed my father to be proud of me, even when he couldn’t be proud of what he was or where we lived and even now, I still do. It crushed him that I never finished college. I needed my mother to have a reason to call my aunts and brag. So here I am, full grown and I’m still proving points… Some to myself, some based loosely on what others told me I couldn’t be or what I wasn’t or what I wasn’t qualified to do, some based on wanting approval…