When I was 17 years old I was banned from seeing the boyfriend I was entirely deeply in love and infatuated with. Two years later, at 19, I was banned from seeing what my mom considered “thuggish” rapper I was dating. Even at fifteen, I was banned from just writing to the first boyfriend I’d met at a convention in Baltimore.  I knew not, she said, what it meant to love, and carrying on some sort of long distance relationship with this boy I’d only spent a day with was unacceptable. She made me write him a letter explaining to him that we don’t know what love is, and telling each other we love each other was inappropriate.

Several years of pain I went through, all up until college. Considering I’m only 20 now, going on 21. This pain has been going on since I was 13 years old, when I decided that I liked David Cains too, and he gave me a necklace his dead father had passed on to him, and Mama found out, and insisted we don’t spend time together “like that”. I was never allowed to like anybody, and then when I felt I’d experienced love for the first time, she told me I didn’t know what it was. Perhaps she was right, but when did I ever get to decide that for myself?

It never ended. At the age of 20 I found myself a boyfriend at the airport, Rosendo, who I admired dearly! This was unacceptable to mother because he wasn’t fully black, he was Puerto Rican, and 26, she thought he was married and lying to me. I was forced to end it with him, only to find a wonderful new love, Brandon, who I had to hide from mother before she found out something wrong about him too. I’ve been hiding, for so long. And now I’m terrified, of hiding, and lying to her. All my relationships have crumbled.

I’ve never reconciled this pain. I shut myself out from my mother, pretend that I’m not interested in boys, threaten lesbianism even. Now, at practically 21, after 8 years of being banned from boys and love, I look back at all the destructive relationships I’ve been thrown in.  Was I rebelling against my mother, or myself? Convincing myself that I AM capable of love! Demanding recognition and attention from plenty of boys, and men validating my existence, my right NOT to be banned. I never reconciled my anger. I had to see a counselor for a year and I became more depressed.

But now I don’t cry anymore. I don’t know what happened. I died a little bit after being numbed on my insistence of having a good long lasting happy relationship. Do I not care anymore? Or is reconciliation necessary. I look back over all the pain I’d been through. Over how I have to lie to my mother, who is also my best friend, and I can’t share with her when I find true love because she doesn’t think I’m capable. Because she thinks I hate myself, and that I’m self destructive. She may have been right though. But I never saw myself that way, she did, and perhaps as a result, I became one who loathed myself and found love in all the wrong places.

But now, ‘I rise’.    **edit** why am i so damn thin in that pic? That's it, i'm hittin the pilates OTONIGHT! **end edit**  **edit** oh wait maybe i was sucking in!

As I walk around with my new course pack named “Black Feminism” in big bold letters, my black male friends greet me with a smirk. “I’d love to sit in on that class and hear you guys man hate” As if that’s what it’s all about. I didn’t get angry because I totally understood. Just yesterday I had lunch with a friend of mine who is studying to be a psychologist. He needed to add another class to his schedule. I suggested psychology and gender and he insisted on never taking a gender relating class ever. “I’m tired of hearing about how women are marginalized, that’s all they talk about.” Yes, he said this to me, a frikkin Gender Studies major for crying out loud.

Not too long ago a play came to our campus about strong/victimized/weak black women which led the men at Northwestern to believe that there was a vendetta against all black men here; that they’re leeches, presented with a smorgasbord of women to feast on then throw away. I wouldn’t be lying if I felt there was truth to that. The simple ratio of black men to women here is astonishing. But this is beside the point. Why can’t we go beyond? Every feminist isn’t a man hater! Keep closing off your mind to the idea of black feminism and you’re doing just what ‘they’ want you to do: Be ignorant, period.

“…Rape is a national pastime, a form of torture visited upon all girls and women, from babies to the aged.  One out of three women in the United States will be raped during her lifetime.  Murder, of course, is men’s violent “solution.” If you think that I exaggerate, please get today’s paper and verify the facts.  If anything is going down here it’s woman-hatred, not man hatred, a veritable war against women.  But wanting to end this war still doesn’t equal man-hating.” (Barbara Smith)

                   This is what i do on my free time.

leave sum.

TO get this out the way: TheNubianButy is purposly ambiguous on the pronounciation.