The Fallout

Actually fallout isn’t a good word for it, but it’s what comes to mind. You know the dust that settles after an explosion or accident, fallout. Not all fallout is bad, sometimes the fallout that settles is a good residue that reminds you what life is all about. Sometimes the fallout is the rainbow after a torrential down pour. Sometimes the fall out is the lady bug lighting on a freshly rained on leaf. Sometimes the fall out is realizing someone really does have your back and is for real. That’s the fallout. Sometimes we go through horrible and horrendous and hideous things and find out in the fall out precious rainbows of friendship and understanding. A stronger bond than before, a bond that is almost indestructible.

I would be lying if I didn’t say my friendship with my BFF became its strongest after we lost a very close friend, no not death we lost her to trife. We spent months recovering from that together and being there for one another, it was in those moments we became sisters. She cried and I cried and we cried and we got through the metaphorical death of someone who had fooled us both. We rebuilt together. I think we had always been good friends but in those months we became best friends.

In my life I have had several events that I would call catastrophic. I have lost family, loves, friends, and husbands over things that could have been worked out if people had listened and taken time to be who they really were. In all honesty, on the husband front that was more my bad than HR’s. Anyway through the storms of these events I was left with a rainbow of friendship and understanding that I wasn’t prepared for. I knew with out a doubt who truly loved me and respected my friendship and who had no respect for my friendship. I said all that to say, this weekend I think I became TOM A’s rainbow of friendship and understanding. Actually I have been for a minute, he is going through some REAL THANGS right now, but he keeps telling me he is so surprised and thankful that I am here and that I am the friend I have claimed to be. As you guys know MANY people are not who they claim to be when the chips are down.

That feels good because I take pride in friendship, which is why when I tell you I AM YOUR FRIEND you better believe it. There have been people that I have befriended and given the world simply because they were friends of a friend. There have also been people that have taken that very same friendship and thrown it in my face, but I had to make a choice not to let one person’s mistreatment of my special gift (not to be confused with my special purpose – you need to have seen the Jerk to get that one) stop me from giving it to others. When you allow the sins of the father to affect YOUR treatment of the son that is when you start packing shyt around with you. And let’s face it baggage is baggage whether it’s a brown paper bag or a Louis Vuitton trunk. Once it’s open its full of the same shyt! It even works in race relations can’t treat all X colored people this way because of your interaction with OTHER X colored people.

I’m a doubter by nature and I am often waiting for the other shoe to drop, especially in relationships. It seemed for a while they were dropping all over the place, I was having nuclear explosions and some of the fallout wasn’t rain but slow burning acid that took a while to fester into an explosion of its own. Anyway, my choice to love TOM A despite my grave fear of being hurt beyond measure has been one that I don’t regret and also the reason I think I’m his rainbow as his explosion in life settles down. I think he realized for the first time in a long time, I love him. Not who he is or is to become. I also think I got thumbs up from the family, but who knows on that one.

When I saw him Monday he asked me how I liked the reunion and we talked and I could feel like this NEW openness with him. He is cryptic in his communication, at best, and most of what I know I know because I know him and we have known each other for 3years this month. I know when he is in a bad mood not because he tells me, but because I know what his bad moods look like from exposure to his good and bad moods. I know when something is on his mind or when he feels like talking because we have been friends for so long. I also know that yesterday was a new TOM A, a different one. The questions he asked me, the openness about his family, and the goodbye. Those were the things that have shown me that he feels at ease in his vulnerability with me. It was the same openness I felt after my trip home in May when we spent time together.

Yep, this is a case where fallout is really good nothing nuclear about it!!

Be EZ,
OG

PS- new terms are being added to the Glamosary

1) PG- short for Personal Gay. A term I use because one of my brothers is gay. So as a gay man he answers many questions for me, kinda like Paul Mooney in ask a black guy. Anyway one day I was sharing some gay tidbit and Mandy was like wow you have like your own personal gay. Crys has a gay best friend and another good friend who is gay; they both are her personal gays. I like that term way better than the derogatory F*g Hag.

2) Trife- short for trifling. Trife is anything that you consider in poor taste or out and out trifling, generally for me most of my trife happened when I was in college, but I have some adult trife too.

3) Dammie- Dammie comes from Pootie Tang and it is actually Main Dammie, I never just use dammie. Biggie Shortie ( played by Wanda Sykes) was Pottie’s main dammie. Since Biggie Shortie kinda looked like a ho I guess a main dammie could be considered the bottom bytch, but since she slapped that guy and told him just cause she was out on the street corner dressed like a ho didn’t mean she was ho, I guess it isn’t a bottom bytch. Main Dammie is another word for BFF or very good friend.