You Better Put Some Respek on My Name Bih...

Are you familiar with Facebook memories? Basically Facebook reminds you of what you posted, on this day, in previous years. Today Facebook reminded me of the time my boyfriend told me he wanted to marry me.

It wasn't a proposal. We were in Minneapolis for his college friend's wedding. During dinner he looked at me with a huge grin on his face and said, "I can't wait until all of our friends and family are celebrating with us when we get married."

Wedding Selfie

I smiled back at him but didn't say anything. Even though that's what I ultimately wanted it was hard to imagine my wedding day with him.

Because his mother hated me

Parents typically love me. I bring great gifts whenever I visit and tell interesting stories during dinner. But I remember the moment my boyfriend's mom began to dislike me.

I had accompanied him on his annual summer family trip to NYC to visit his grandmother. His Mom, Aunt, Uncle, Brother and I had all went to the huge Macy's on 7th Avenue¹. Approximately 32 minutes after sampling some street meat from one of the plentiful food carts the city has to offer, I had to use the bathroom baaaaaaad. I told his family I'd meet them on the 4th floor and dashed to the basement bathroom in Macy's.

This part gets a little graphic

Did you know that a healthy poo is supposed to be long and S-shaped, like the shape of your intestines²? In an effort to have a banging summer body, I had been pretty vigilant about eating veggies, probiotics and my fiber game had been on point for months. Needless to say my poo's had been long and S shaped for some time now. 

Unfortunately on this particular day in Macy's, my healthy poo was so long that it got stuck in the toilet and WOULD NOT FLUSH!

Man I must have flushed that toilet 50-11 times trying to get that poo to join the rest of the dead bodies in the Hudson River, but to no avail. I was afraid of the toilet overflowing so I made the executive decision to leave my past behind me and book it out of there. I waited until there was no one left in the bathroom and hurried to wash my hands. As I was reaching for a paper towel to dry my hands off a cleaning lady came into the bathroom and went into my stall. 

The stall where I had just deposited all my recent life regrets

I was so embarrassed that I nearly tripped over myself running out of the bathroom. I had just made it to the elevator when I turned around and saw the cleaning lady speed walking in my direction. As the elevator doors closed she was waving a mop in the air while yelling something indistinguishable at me in Spanish³ .
 

I had escaped poo-gate in the basement and safely made it to home appliances on the 4th floor. While looking for his family I discovered a bridal salon and had gotten distracted by the most stunning wedding dress I had ever seen.

That's where his family found me; fawning over a $3000 Vera Wang tea length wedding dress with an asymmetrical hem line. It was elegant yet quirky, just like me (tooting my own horn here obviously). My boyfriend and the rest of his family joined me while I slowly ran my fingers over the delicate satin bodice. I noticed his mom a few feet away from us, arms crossed, looking furious.

Is you mad, or is you upset?

And then I saw the cleaning lady from the basement bathroom. She had a determined look on her face and she was scanning the sales floor, presumably for me."We gotta get out of here!," I said in a panic, grabbing my boyfriend's hand and ushering his family towards the elevator.

From that moment on, his mother was never nice to me again. I don't know if she had a talk with the cleaning lady or not, but the atmosphere was dark and cloudy between us from there on out.

Over the years there were multiple instances where my boyfriend's mother would say something rude or just plain bitchy to me. And what made it worse, was that my boyfriend never told her to stop.

One time I had joked around that I had been teaching my boyfriend to cook because his food was a little bland. Not realizing I was joking, his Dad spoke up and said, "We love his food. We think he's a great cook." His mother narrowed her eyes at me and said, "Just because he doesn't use a lot of salt, doesn't mean his food isn't good⁴"

In an effort to smooth things over I said, "How about I make you all dinner tomorrow night? I'll buy everything and bring it over and you can take the night off from cooking. 

His mom looked me dead in the eye, put her hand up and said "I DON'T EAT ON TUESDAYS"

Ya'll... I ain't a killer but don't push me 

I was raised to respect my elders and so I felt as though Jesus was testing me. There were times when I wanted nothing more than to kick his mom in the teeth, but despite her unsavory behavior I couldn't place all the blame on her. Eventually I began to place the blame on my boyfriend because he let her treat me that way. He once even told me, "You know how my mom is. Couldn't you just say less whenever we come visit?"

Even though he claimed he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, I felt like I could never say yes. How can you let the first woman you ever love openly disrespect the last woman you'll ever love? 

In the 8th grade I stood up to this really mean girl named Meesha, who was always making fun of me. I remember her looking really surprised after I put her in a place. After popping a piece of fruit stripe gum into her mouth she said, "You know I still don't like you, but at least you stood up for yourself. I can at least respect that." 

Today's Facebook memory was a bit hard for me to see. You see, I decided to type this post while taking a break from packing. My now EX boyfriend is in New York on his annual summer family trip and I'm moving out of the apartment that we shared together for the past 5 years.

For the majority of those years I felt like I had something to prove to his family. Partially because of one fateful poo on a family vacation, but mostly because his mother could not stand to see her son love someone other than herself and also because her son was too chicken shit to be unapologetic about his love.

But with age comes wisdom. Unless you're Stacey Dash

Be with someone that loves and appreciates you no matter what

Be with someone that is not afraid to defend your honor (Jousting matches are a nice way to do that)

Be with someone that accepts you AS-IS, damaged goods, no returns once you bought it, as long as they help you to become a better person (This is not directly related to this blog post, but a helpful piece of advice nonetheless)

Remember that you are always enough

And If they can't do those things then you're better off without them. Even if you're Stacey Dash

*"Respek on my name" is a quote made popular by Rapper/Producer Birdman of Cash Money. Birdman didn't appreciate the way on air personality "Charlamagne The God" was talking about him and was telling him to show him some respect.

1. Macy's is great, but personally I don't see the purpose in shopping at a store that you already have in your hometown. Especially when you're in the fashion capital of the world. 

2. Your poo regimen is a great indicator of your health. Here's a website to see how your Poo stacks up ;) The SCOOP on POOP

3. Actually I speak some Spanish but you don't have to be fluent to know that whatever she was saying was not pleasant. I believe I heard her say, Muy sucia...amongst other things

4. I think that was her low key way telling me she thought I looked bloated?