if i can’t come to you as a blessing, i won’t come as a burden.

They keep telling me that Black men are in short supply. That Black women aren’t getting married. That Black man aren’t marrying Black women.

And that’s not been true in my experience. I see Black people getting married all the time.

But I also don’t see relationships that I want for myself.

Why is why sometimes, I feel like I should write a book about dating.

But I wonder if people won't think a single woman has no business writing a book about dating, and that might be true, but then Kevin Samuels made a whole career off of coaching women, and he was a single as a dollar bill, so IDK. The rules are weird.

And I'm single because I've chosen to be, so there's that, too.

I'm not single because I didn't have choices or options or possibilities. I'm not single because men haven't proposed or promised or speculated. I'm single because I want a different life as a wife than the ones I could imagine with the men I was dating.

So I left.

And I continue to leave.

And some people say a woman my age must be leftovers, or I must have some fatal flaw, or I must be crazy, or I must be fill-in-the-blank, but I don't believe that's it.

As picky as I am about my produce, I am about my partner.

But here's where it gets dicey: I'll date a man because he wants to date me, but I'll also leave him.

I give them a chance, but I think I should stop.

The question shouldn't be: does he want to date me?
It should be: do I want to date him?

And then stand firm in the answer. Cause I be knowing. We be knowing. We know after the first interaction or conversation.

And once I know, I can't pretend I don't.

(Which is how I ended up breaking up with a man at 8 am on a Tuesday morning because I'd realized it was over the night before, so I called him first thing in the morning.)

I try not to stay in places I don’t want to be in. Or with people I don’t want to be with. I don’t think it’s kind to waste someone’s time, and I don’t intend to be the kindest person or anything, I do believe in freeing somebody to allow him to find what he needs… when I know what he needs isn’t me.

But I did find myself contorting myself before.

I spent time trying to love someone who didn’t love himself. Trying to build him back up. I offered my time, my body, my money, my mind to help me be what I thought he needed. And you know what? He resented me for it. He thought I was looking down on him. He thought I pitied him. He believed he was a charity case and that I didn’t respect him.

What I thought was love was interpreted as an insult.

And that interaction taught me something: people can’t accept what they can’t imagine.

(And now, in this moment, I’m realizing this is why the homophobes and transphobes are so adamant. They can’t imagine a different/better/more inclusive world. They’ve never been able to be themselves, so they can’t envision a world where someone else can. They don’t know what freedom even looks like, so they fight it.)

So the one I wanted was too broken to rebuild.

Have you ever seen a broken glass? It will never be the same again. It might be repurposed as something else. It might even become some sort of glass again. It might even have potential beyond its immediate possibilities. But it will never be that glass again.

And unless one specializes in glass, it’s easier to sweep up the shards and find a new glass.

Here’s to glasses that are strong enough to hold.