Tragic Crush Tales #1

        Crush D was kind of a complicated situation. He was my manager. It wasn’t as awkward as you would think. We were the same age, he was covered in tattoos, a sneaker head, etc. So he wasn’t this stuck up bent out of shape slave driver that comes to mind when you think “boss”. He was hella cool and flirtatious and he helped me out a lot when it came to giving me more hours. So I was more drawn to his personality, as well as most other girls that worked with us. Everyone was in love with this dude.
        Around Christmastime one year most of us decided to head to a popular club to celebrate the holidays and he kept asking me that whole week if I was going. For me it wasn’t really worth it because I lived pretty far and the bus that would take me home stopped running at 12:30am and I didn’t want to be that party pooper who had to leave after about an hour. That didn’t keep him from asking me so I started to reply with “I’ll go if you drop me off at home so I don’t have to catch the bus.” He’d never reply back he’d just laugh and go back to work. Well I ended up going anyways and decided I’d either see if he could take me home or try to crash with someone else. We partied the whole night and I got drunk enough by the end of it to tell him how I felt. I just went up to him and said “You know I like you, right?” and  all he said was “Ok.” and smiled. The next morning I got to work hungover as hell. I hadn’t even been there that long until people who, weren’t even at the club or left early, started coming up to me and asking me “Did you ask D to go home with you?” I was entirely too hungover for the rumor mill that morning. “No. I just asked him to take me home since he kept bugging me to go. I didn’t want to be stranded with nowhere to go unless I couldn’t crash at anyone’s place.” I was so confused because I’d made it clear to him that I just needed a ride, not a ride and *wink wink*. “Well, he’s telling people that you asked him to come to your apartment.” I was so pissed off. Here’s someone that, yeah I had a crush on, but I also respected now he’s going around and spreading rumors that I asked him to come to my place. Drunk or not I know I wouldn’t have said it because my apartment looked like a frat lived there; clothes, pizza boxes, and beer bottles everywhere, not to mention I had an air mattress that was half deflated. Not exactly a place you ask someone to come back to for a fuck session. At that moment not only did my crush on him end but so did my respect for him. I was not that kind of girl and to have someone I, and everyone else, respected start a rumor like that hurt. I was also hurt because when it comes to crushes I’m terrified (more than what’s considered normal) to tell the person. In my life there’s been only about 3 or 4 people I got up the nerve to say something and this time backfired big time. The rumor went away by the end of the following week, but it’s something I’ll always remember and I haven’t told anyone I’ve liked them since. I’ll just keep that to myself or let my body language do all the talking.

-Asia Aneka Anderson, 2014(c)

Love Is Simple

From first glance I knew it was love.
Nothing existed in this world but us.
My past heartbreaks you erased.
To love you is simple.
Nothing can break the bond we share.
This love is eternal.
A “til death do us part” kind of love.
I can’t think of anything simpler than loving you.
My days are better with your love.
I had lost hope until I felt the kind of love only you can give.
A love that can never be replaced.
Finding that type of love is rare.
I can get used to the smile you put on my face.
My heart is aflutter from this simple love.
Floating on a cloud of utter happiness.
What we have is as real as it gets.
I love you.
It’s that simple.


-Asia Aneka Anderson
Tumblr: AsiaWrites

Tragic Boyfriend Tales #3

Boyfriend J was a train wreck that I kept reliving. We were absolute best friends in high school. To say that I was in love with this dude from day one would be an understatement, but we never dated while in school. We did date after we graduated but he soon dived into drugs and I was busy living college life so we eventually drifted apart. We would sometimes go years without talking then suddenly he’d call or message me out of the blue and it would be like we were 15 again and I’d fall hard all over again. I was truly convinced he was my soulmate and that one day he’s see it too. We again lost contact when I moved out of state. On his birthday, August of 2011, I wished him a happy birthday on FB like most people do. Out of nowhere he called me that night and we talked for hours. I turned into a teenager like I  always do and in a instant was ready to turn my life upside down and move back home just for him. That’s how much of a grip he had on me. I settled on just coming home to hang with him on my birthday October of that year. We met up, it was great, and we decided to give a relationship a go… again. We talked all the time to make the long distance thing work and I thought we were going strong. Well come February of 2012 low and behold I log into FB and in my newsfeed were some pics he was tagged in with another girl who referred to him as her boyfriend. Needless to say I was hurt. I still held out hope that this was my soulmate, I was more than prepared to leave my life in Chicago to move back to Ohio for him, AND I had recently paid his phone bill (It’s almost 2015 and I have yet to see that money btw). I of course called him out on it. J gave me the dumbest, rudest, yet cleverest (because it was so out of left field) excuse known to man. He told me that he cheated on me because, and I quote, “I think I have multiple personality disorder.” I. Shit. You. Not. I told him that I had known him for 14 years and if he had any other personalities then all of those fuckers should know me by now. I was heartbroken. I knew at that moment I had to block him from everything because even to this day if he were to start talking to me I’d probably stupidly fall into his grasp again. I guess everybody has that ONE person that they know is bad for them but can’t help it. That’s what J is for me. I don’t have to worry about karma hitting him because it hit him often before the last time he dated. His gf that he left me for the first time tricked him into thinking the 3 kids she had while they were together are his (the first one definitely isn’t his), but two of them are iffy cause she cheated a lot. I’m guessing she has multiple personality disorder too.
-Asia Aneka Anderson

My Old Friend

When everyone leaves there’s always one friend who will always be there. Too bad it’s the one friend I’d love to shake. Depression has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. As I get older my cloud gets bigger and bigger. It’s almost as if my depression is aging with me, growing bitter and old. My depression gives zero fucks as to when it hits me. It’s only mission is to make me feel worthless, hopeless, trapped, angry, overwhelmed, unloved, and like trash. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve gotten older that it has gotten worse or because I have no distraction. I have no friends, no job, and no relationship. With the absence of all these things it’s a vicious cycle. I’m already depressed, I have none of the wants and needs in life which makes me more depressed which leads me to not pursing said wants and needs in life which makes me sink into a deeper depression. Once I can get the slight motivation to go after something some fear creeps into my mind and I remind myself that I’m not worthy of these things. It never stops. When I have too much time to sit and think I get trapped in my mind and that’s when the suicidal thoughts seep in. I recently found the perfect way to describe how it hits me. It’s like a tsunami. One of the first warning signs of a tsunami is that the ocean recedes rapidly from the shore then moments later is when you see the huge waves coming. That’s how it feels. I feel like I’m on the beach where everything is still and quiet then all of a sudden my mind gets too quiet. Out of nowhere you see this huge wave of emotion, but I can’t move. I just brace myself. When the wave hits I’m struggling for dear life to get to the surface, but I’m submerged. I eventually make it to the surface, but not before I feel completely beaten and bruised. I’m used to these feelings even though on some occasions the thoughts scare me. I really wish there was a reason for these emotional tsunamis. Most of the time nothing triggers them. It just happens out of the blue. I tell myself that I would understand it better if there was a trigger. I’m always hoping that one day I’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think that’s the one and only thing that keeps me alive, is hoping that brighter day is somewhere near.


-Asia Aneka Anderson

Where You Begin And I End

I want to know all about you
Let’s have deep conversation at midnight under the stars
What makes you tick?
What makes you happy?
What turns you on?
What do you dream?
What are your failures?
I want to know everything
To be close to you
To be the one who understands you
To know how you think
That’s all I want
I want you to know me
My darkest secrets
My passion
My quirks
Us as best friends and lovers
Completing each others sentences
Knowing what the other is thinking with just one glance
No judgment towards each other
Just love
Just understanding
Just happiness
That’s all I’ve ever wanted.

-Asia Aneka Anderson
Tumblr: AsiaWrites 

Pretty For a Black Girl

The topic I’m about to go into has affected me my entire life, but I have never fully opened my eyes to it until the impact it’s had on me recently. Now every time I post something like this I try to make a little disclaimer that I’m in no way an expert I just come from my heart and how I see things. I know with this particular topic affects each person differently. For some it’s a harder subject and are more passionate about it and for others they may be blind to it like I probably was.
Colorism.
I’m going to give a little background on myself  before I dive into how colorism pretty much slapped me in the face this year (and probably has  several times along the way) especially when it comes to the opposite sex.
Anyone who knows me knows that I identify with anything nerdy, fangirl, rock, and pretty much anything stereotypically labeled as “white girl behavior” (not my words) so naturally when it came to dating I gravitated to white men. I just had more in common with them because of my interests and black men didn’t really want me unless it was on a physical level. I won’t go into my whole dating history because I’ve touched on that in past posts and will probably refer to it in the future. When I moved to Chicago in 2008 my mind exploded. I was 25 at the time and in all my life I had never come across more than two or three black people who were like me. Through these artsy kids at Columbia College in Chicago I became introduced to artists like Kid Cudi, Childish Gambino, etc and my eyes opened even further that more people like me existed and I felt at home. Even though I was surrounded by all these hipster black kids (blipsters) I felt inadequate. I didn’t feel like I could compare. I went from feeling inadequate to just plain embarrassed. Here I am at 25 and in my adult life I’d never had a relationship with a black man. So when I should I have been opening up to these people who were just like me I sort of pulled back even further for fear of making a fool of myself in a relationship. Hell there’s one guy that I’m 90% sure could’ve been the one, but my fears made me friendzone him almost immediately (still kicking myself on that one). Don’t ask me why I had/have these fears, but they’re there and are very real.
By December 2012 I was back in Dayton and things had changed a bit here as far as culture goes or perhaps I see things differently, but it will never be on Chicago’s level. Now let’s fast forward to 2014. I flipped like a light switch is how I would explain it. I can only see myself with a black man. It’s not saying that I would never date outside my race again, because the color of someone’s skin is not a requirement for me when it comes to a soulmate. I’m not sure if it’s because there’s been so much death when it comes to black men, for instance this summer started off with Eric Garner, then my 16 year old cousin was murdered, then Michael Brown, and then John Crawford among a long list of others. I felt like I had been putting black men off  to the side and it was for some stupid fear that was all in my head. I’m mad at myself that I hadn’t been showing my black men love because of that, but I do know that when I look at my future I see a black man.
I’ve taken to social media (mainly Twitter) and various dating sites to find a potential mate or at least just to put myself out there. As a member of Match for several years I hardly get any messages at all and when I do it’s always a creepy dude in their 50s (ugh), but when I joined Black People Meet I probably got 20 messages the first day. I found one that really caught my eye (and of course he’s in Chicago) and we started (still are) talking. Through him I heard the term “redbones” for the first time. I was offended at first because it sounds like a derogatory term for a Native American. From a friend I learned it pretty much meant “light skinned woman” and depends on who you talk to, most people refer to biracial women as “redbones”. The definition didn’t make me any less offended because I see all black people as black and we all come in various beautiful shades. To top it off I never saw myself as “light skinned” and had never been looked at as such. I was mostly put off since there’s a stereotype that lighter women are extremely stuck up. Now we move to Twitter. I  started by following a few very attractive men with a lot of followers and suddenly within a month or so I go from 680 followers to over 1,100 and most of them men. I’ll admit it boosted my ego, then it quickly deflated when I would look at some of these profiles and notice these men doing one of if not all three of these things: 1. All of their #wcw’s, retweets, headers, or overall profiles were full of girls who were light skinned, white, or Latina women with hair down to their butts, 2. Saying they only like “snow bunnies” (white girls) and that black women “ain’t shit”, or 3. Completely ragging on dark skin girls and saying how ugly they are and other awful things. I realized they weren’t interested in anything I had to say (because if I mostly tweet about Doctor Who, Libra stuff, and live tweet shows we obviously had nothing in common), it was mainly my skin tone that appealed to them. When I had several guys mention to me that pretty much what was beautiful about me was my skin color I made a post on FB about how much this shallowness irritated me. I was surprised at the girls who commented and felt like I wasn’t appreciating who I was. The point of my post was if a man tells me he  thinks I’m pretty and the #1 or only thing he says that contributes to said beauty is my complexion then what that tells me is that if I was darker I wouldn’t be considered attractive.
It saddens me because these men most likely don’t get where this mindset comes from. In the days of slavery it’s common knowledge that the darker slaves stayed in the field and the lighter ones were allowed inside. To see other black people apply this logic to their own in this day and age boggles my mind. It breaks my heart when you see absolutely gorgeous dark skinned women who are put down solely on the color of their skin. Netflix recently added the documentary Dark Girls which covers this very topic. After watching this it’s upsetting to know that women are bleaching their skin, straightening their hair, and other extremes to fit this European idea of beauty. We have almost totally abandoned everything that makes us unique and closer to our heritage. I have no idea what has happened to the last few generations, but it’s puzzling to see that in the 70s we were so unified and now we’re back to this horrible divide. I know this beauty standard is shoved down our throats by the media and sometimes from family. Why we haven’t realized that negativity like this is put out there to make us feel bad about ourselves and further divide us is beyond me. Another group of people at fault for colorism is rappers. Lil Wayne made a controversial statement about not liking dark skinned girls and how they’re not pretty, but he’s not the first nor will he be the last to make such a statement. In most rap videos the love interest or random video girls are almost always of a lighter complexion or even Latina. They put out the message that beauty is a lighter skinned woman with long flowing curly hair, a small waist, and a big ass and if you don’t have that then you’re not beautiful. Another rapper notorious for this is Kanye West. A lot of people were upset with the original cover of his “Yeezus” album because of the supposed satanic imagery, but some black women were upset for another reason. He has two white women draped over him and there’s a black woman on the ground with glaring red eyes and a serpent tongue (the white women have red eyes too, but you have to really zoom in to see it). There’s also the rumors, almost from day one, of his obsession with white women and believing that in order to be successful you have to date white or at least close to it (e.g. Kim). It’s said in jest but there’s the saying “Behind every successful black man is a white woman.” We laugh about it, but it’s truly sad for some to believe that in order to make it to the big time this is what it takes.
Because of colorism this is why black women were so overjoyed when Lupita Nyong’o came onto the scene. Here was this absolutely gorgeous, humble, talented, strong dark skinned woman and we cheered and hoped that black people with this light skin vs. dark skin mentality would put it to rest, but it didn’t pan out like we hoped it would. Most were happy to finally see Hollywood fawning over a dark skinned woman, but then black men came in with their ignorant memes and cruel words. Even with her undeniable beauty and grace some black men drug her through dirt.
When it comes down to being confronted by the police, being followed in stores, stop and frisk, and other outrageous prejudice acts we’re all labeled as black no matter what shade we are. If you feel like a cop pulls you over unjustly they’re not going to check what shade you are and use the paper bag test on you. You’re black. Plain and simple. Why is it only us that put ourselves into categories? We’re all in this struggle together. We’ve come a long way, yes, but we have so much further to go and I feel the reason it’s taking longer and isn’t taken as seriously as it should be is because of the friction we cause amongst each other. When the black is beautiful movement came around it wasn’t “Black is beautiful… except you. You’re way too dark.” It meant all shades of black. It was meant for ALL black people to embrace themselves from the lightest of the light to the darkest of the dark. We’re all beautiful.
-Asia Aneka Anderson

Tragic Boyfriend Tales #2

        Boyfriend M and I started dating my junior year of high school. He was a senior. We actually started out as best friends and I figured since I knew he liked me then we could take it to the next step. Fast forward to the summer of that year. Summers were special to me because my little cousin, who was like a sister to me, came up to Ohio from Tennessee every summer. She was about 11 at the time and I was probably 17, but she was my absolute best friend. I told M this and that most of my summer would most likely be spent with her seeing as we only see each other three months out of the year. He was okay at first because I think he thought I was understating what I said.
        I brought her to a few events with friends, but we didn’t do too much with M because I could tell my cousin didn’t like him. Being the jealous type that he was he started calling me nonstop. One night when my cousin was sleeping over he called and started saying stupid things like “Is she there again?!” and “You care about her more than me.”… But of course. She was the only person in my family that understood me. He’d also say things like “Don’t you have other people who can watch her?!” Yes. But she’d rather hang with me. M took every chance he could to call me every name in the book from “stupid” to “bitch” to let it be known that he was my boyfriend and no one, not even family, should come before him. He was very aggressive about it and made it very clear that he hated my 11 year old cousin because we hung out a lot. Tiny back story: My cousin and I are very close because 1. we’re both Libras (birthdays are exactly 14 days apart) so almost everything about us from style to humor was the same and 2. when she was 3 her mom passed away from cancer. From the moment she was a baby I felt the need to look out for her. Now back to M. I explained all this to him and he proceeded to compare my motherless cousin to his father who had walked out on him at a young age BUT had recently reentered his life. By the time this phone conversation happened I was on my way out of the relationship which is why I stayed pretty calm despite the nasty things he said, but when he started talking about her mom it took me from 0 to 100. He said “So what if her mom’s dead? It’s probably better she didn’t know her.” The he continued to go on about his sob story about his father. I explained to him that it sucked his dad left, but he was trying to fix a wrong and he has access to tell his father how he feels and that he could pick up a phone to call his dad at any time. My cousin didn’t have that luxury. His response “She can talk to her. She can go to her grave.” I was beyond done with the relationship, friendship, and any other ship by that point. My cousin is yelling at him in the background and I’m yelling at him to never talk to me again and that it was over. In true abusive bf fashion M apologized profusely. Nope. Sorry. Not gonna fall for it. Saying hurtful things about me is one thing, but about my cousin, who was my world, was not going to happen. He tried to call a few times after that, but surprisingly it didn’t take him long to catch on.
        Fast forward about 4 or 5 years later. I get a call on my home phone from a girl. She said “I’m sorry to call you, but do you know M?” “Yes,” I told her. “You dated, right?” I was skeptical because I didn’t know who she was and how in the hell she had my parents number. She then told me who she was. She was M’s current gf and baby mama. She asked me if M had ever hit me. “Oh hell no. He knew better than that. He wouldn’t make it out alive if he even raised his hand.” She went on to tell me that he had hit her and that he would often call her names. I assume that day she stood up for herself and told him to stop yelling at her and he responded that she wasn’t the only one he talked to that way and if she wanted proof she could call me. “It was weird cause he gave me your number off the top of his head. He didn’t have to look it up.” Half a decade later and this dude still had my number memorized. Creepy. I admitted to her that he mouthed off a lot, but it never got physical. I tried to give her advice that even though I didn’t know her she didn’t deserve that. “No one deserves that. I know how he gets, how territorial and jealous he is. You’re the mother of his kid. Don’t put yourself through that and expose your daughter to that. He’s not worth it and it looks like he’s probably not going to change since he hasn’t since high school.” I’m not sure if she really listened to me. I hope she did. As for M somehow we’re FB friends, but I don’t talk to him and he doesn’t talk to me. I do hate that for several years after him I refused to date overweight men. I had it in my mind that heavy set men equals insecurity which leads to jealousy and controlling. It took me years to get over that because of this chump. More than that I can’t believe I lost my virginity to that loser. Ugh.

-Asia Aneka Anderson, 2014(c)