The Rat Race

Posted in Another Version of Success, BOYS, Class and Color Aren't Cause, I Feel Like Death, My Motherboard, My Self, Sex and the Single Girl, The Rat Race by Kel Daroe

For the last 3 years my mother has called me on the 14th of June and said “Happy Birthday. You are old.” Inevitably it leads to a discussion to my lack of wealth, the smog in New York City…

and the fact that my ovaries are dying.

She has a point. Women in my family tend to go stale relatively early. And The Bestie loves to remind me that overachieving women of color have reproductive system biologically 7 years, on average, older than whites. Stick a knife in my uterus; it’s done.

I like babies. They are kinda cute and squishy. I also know that they require lots o’ cash, a flexible schedule, and a little thing called patience.

I want about 700 of them.

But they require the thing I’m most scared to acquire.

A dad.

I know. I know. Technically, if I had to, I could do it myself. But I don’t want to. Every day I see brown young women carrying strollers covered in thin probably toxic plastic in 20 degree weather down 3 flights of steps.

I don’t want to be them. I don’t want to be the person who never makes $100,000 because she has to leave the office promptly at 4.

I don’t want to do it alone.

I would have to do it alone.

Because I don’t know if I am cut out for this, you know, relationship thing. I can be ok for a little while. I like the feeling at first, but when the rubber hits the road and I realize that it’s you I have to look at you for a while, I respond like a soaking rat in a sewer scratching its way to the surface, even if it drowns in the process.

And no one would leave a baby with a rat.

17Aug2012

The Depression Era

Posted in I Feel Like Death, My Body, My Self, The Depression Era by Kel Daroe

Only Duke Ellington and John Coltrane know how I feel. It’s Friday night, the city is jumping for one of the last weekends of summer.

And I am sitting at home, half-dressed, in a sentimental mood.

I have suffered from depression for about 15 years, but each time I feel like this, it comes as a complete shock and surprise. Like me, my depression has morphed over time. Gone are the crying jags, horrendous decisions, and incessant negative though patterns of my youth. They left with biking shorts, slap bracelets, platform tennis shoes, and the Spice Girls.

Now, again like me, it’s more mature. There is no crying, just a pervasive melancholia that you can smell if you get a little too close. I decline engagements in favor of late nights not sleeping, listening to blues and jazz. One too many glasses of wine are my only company. It is quiet and small and easy to disregard. So I disregard it.

And then suddenly I have 2 days in a week that I cannot get out of bed. I don’t feel emotional, just overwhelmingly fatigued. Like it’s too much energy to call my grandmother or brush my teeth.

I have no choice but to stop. I always feel like this for a reason. I spent the last 6 weeks hustling for a better job, apartment, body, and life. I didn’t take time to breathe because I was so busy making plans. Work. Negotiate. Write. Gym. Walk the Brooklyn Bridge. Walk Bernie. Write Some More. Make Plans. Pass Out. I didn’t take the time to breathe.

My body decided to take a time out for me.

Depression and exhaustion are not easy. I want to feel better, but I can’t. Not right now. Now my body needs love. Vegetables, rest, good books, and soft voices of support. I’m sorry. I can’t go to a movie. I can’t listen. I can’t force a smile. Not even for my friends.

Unless they are John or Miles or Ella or Sara or Billie or Duke.

They always help me out the sentimental mood.

9Nov2011

No’ Money, Mo’ Problems

Posted in I Feel Like Death, She Works Hard For The Money by Kel Daroe

When I wrote about my top 10 list for a young twentysomething woman to know, one of my friends from high school pointed out an important omission—learning about personal finance. I had spent some time wondering if I should include tips on saving , but I would probably need a top 100 list to tell all that I have learned. The sad fact is that I am plagued by thoughts of money, more often than I think about sex, food, or feminism (combined). Recently, my anxieties have kicked into overdrive when I realized that my job didn’t have the capabilities to raise my salary for quite some time, even though I am working below market level. I am by no means impoverished, but I really think there are two kinds of broke “I can’t pay my bills” and “I can pay JUST my bills.” I belong to the latter category. After credit cards, utilities, food, baby showers, etc., I am lucky if I have $50 left in the month. Friends ask me out to dinner or drinks or theater. I accept and don’t show up, or I accept and pretend I’m full as I watch them eat, or I show up and eat and drink and feel guilty about it later. All three are bad options.

My mother says New York and I are in an abusive relationship. My rent takes up 47% of my salary. In order to have the life I want in a reasonable amount of time (a house and a yard before 40), I would practically need to be a millionaire. Or marry a millionaire. I’m just hoping to be a thousandaire.

My youthful dreams about creating a life for myself in one of America’s most expensive cities is becoming a nightmare. I adhered to the American dream of working my way up and going to graduate school and excepting jobs for nothing to get experience. But it’s now The American Dream Deferred. Accepting shitty pay means that your next job will be 8% more than your shitty pay (which is still shitty) and that you will be struggling to pay your student loan long after you get gray hairs. You don’t complain or ask for more because employers (and your friends) let you know that you are lucky to have a job in the first place.

I am trying to change my thinking, but I am continuously demoralized. I panic when someone has a baby or goes into the hospital, or when I get a cold. One unexpected thing could be the death of me. I try to make more with the money I have. In November, I have instituted a buying diet. I try to pretend it’s cool, but in the end it’s awkward to explain and lonely when I come home. I know that building wealth for the future includes present rationing, but I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

18Aug2011

RIP Starbucks

Posted in I Feel Like Death, My Body, My Self by Kel Daroe

There are few things that give me pleasure. I am admittedly in a dating slump “because” I spend all my time trying to get ahead at work. A job that pays the bills and barely just that. The closest I get to high fashion is Nicolette Mason’s blog. My family is far away. And theater, my beloved art form, costs a million dollars.

The only thing I have left is food. I totally understand that eating or overeating is not an endorsed way to cope. However, that shit works. And when I am not getting between the sheets with a taco, I’m letting a cocktail or glass of wine take me to second base. The fact that I use food to reward or console isn’t completely pathetic. Did you ever see an episode in Sex and the City that didn’t feature the hottest new restaurant or bar? Neither have I. And considering the alternatives, I consider food to be a pretty good lover.

Until this morning my new (awesome) doctor explained that food and I were in an abusive relationship.

Not the usual, “fat people die early” bullshit that my psychiatrist pulled on me last week, but the real reason I feel like crap. For the past five years, I have had problems with swallowing. A persistent cough and everlasting hoarseness became ritual. I was told I developed asthma. The last 6 months have been unbearable: earaches, lost hearing, bronchitis, sore throats, and a general malaise did me in.

After a thorough exam and sticking a hose down my nose, she explained the culprit like she was picking out what to wear.

“You have significant symptoms of acid reflux.”

Say what now? I don’t resemble the fat white guy in those Pepcid commercials who is eating a ginormous chilli dog. Well, at least not on the outside. My diet had caused so much acid to build that it literally bubbled over from my esophagus into my wind pipe, burning my voice box and causing irritation and incessant coughing.

Holy Shit.

Since I have a serious problem, I have to take a purple pill that costs like $200 a month.

You think that’s the hard part? Ha. The knowledge of my new affliction means the following things are off limits:

Coffee (that I have a jumbo pack at my desk)
Citrus fruit (I routinely eat 6 oranges in one sitting)
Fatty foods
Night time eating
AND ALCOHOL

I tried to explain to my physician that she couldn’t ask me to cut out fatty foods or taking a nap after brunch because I was a Negro, but as a small Asian woman she was not convinced.

After talking with the Cowoes, I realized that I was being a big baby. This was going to help me feel better. I won’t have to vomit during first dates. People on the subway will no longer have to hear me wretch.

I poured the last little bit of liquor I had left next to a Starbucks grande cup. We had some good and passionate times.

But I’m older now. When a relationship becomes bad for me, I keep it movin’.

7Aug2011

Chicken Soup for the Single’s Soul

Posted in I Feel Like Death, Sex and the Single Girl by Kel Daroe

Even though most of the single city girls I know are content with their lives, there are moments that cause even the most secure of us to want to club the nearest man in sight and bring him back to our studio apartments. For some of us, it is the wedding reception. The engagement party. The housewarming. The tale of the free dinner at Le Bernardin followed by a gift of Jimmy Choos or a Tiffany charm bracelet.

I have to toot my own horn; I’m not jealous often. I have seen the insides of many “perfect” relationships (including my parents’) to know that things are never quite as they appear. I know the life I have right now is the right one for me. And as of late, I don’t feel the urgency to couple or feel bad that I’m alone.

But all that shit goes out the window when I get sick.

The last week I’ve had bronchitis, sinusitis, asthma, and endometriosis. I would have rather been in a coma. The soreness, fever, lethargy, anxiety, and lack of sleep really got to me around day 3. I tried every remedy I could think of to feel better. Antibiotics, hot toddys, bad romantic comedies, and internet shopping. Oh, the internet shopping. Nothing worked. And when you are sick and alone and restless at 11:30 and realizing you are out of tissue and NyQuil, you have a meltdown.

Why? BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE A MAN! If you did, he would go out in the rain and get you chicken soup, NyQuil, and a lottery ticket.

After about one hour of panicking and convincing myself that I would die alone and febrile in my apartment, I did what any self-respecting, intelligent woman would do.

I called or texted every man I have made out with in the last two years.

I called my ex 10 times in probably 10 minutes. When he didn’t pick up, I collapsed in a heap of fever, fear, pity, and exhaustion. I called The Bestie after she got off work to relay what had happened and receive the harsh lash of her judgement. She was surprisingly neutral. I haven’t done anything crazy in years. I had a fever. It was our would-be second anniversary. I was feeling vulnerable. And nothing really bad happened. If you send a crazy text in the middle of the night, does it make a sound? No, she deduced.

I was feeling better thanks to the pain pills I found in the back of the medicine cabinet and Shemar Moore’s abs on Criminal Minds. The Bestie was calling to tell me about the party she was at. I answered the phone without even looking at it.

But it wasn’t her. It was him. Shit. He wanted to come over. Shit. He was 15 minutes away. Shit. And shit is exactly what I looked like. I reasoned that things couldn’t get out of hand because I was sick and disgusting and not insane (despite earlier evidence to the contrary). I picked up all my snot rags, washed my face, and waited.

45 minutes passed by. I called to see what the hold up was. And then I heard that familiar tone of voice. He was drunk. Not It’s Saturday Night and I Just Got Paid drunk, but I Drank 15 Shots of Whiskey and I Don’t Know Where I Am and I Will Pass Out Outside Or Pee On Your Baseboards drunk. And that’s not a joke. My ex had a hard time paying bills due to spending copious amounts of liquor and had been fired from jobs due to drunkenness. He promised he would be there in 15 minutes again, but when I asked him where he was and he couldn’t tell me, I knew the deal. In fact, I have known the deal for the past 2 years.

The moment I hung up the phone, I passed through what Tony Kushner calls the threshold of revelation. If I took him, or any of my other exes back, sure I would get help when I was sick. But I would also get unpaid loans, verbal abuse, and STD tests in addition.

Being sick sucks, but not nearly as much as being with someone who is so obviously not for you.

I didn’t get that NyQuil, but the chicken soup for my soul was good enough to make me feel better.

Well, that and more internet shopping.

Kelly's Belly

Progress is precarious.

Category Archives: I Feel Like Death

The Rat Race

The Depression Era

No’ Money, Mo’ Problems

RIP Starbucks

Chicken Soup for the Single’s Soul

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