#i always think about how my poor grandma got married and moved from downtown Houston

[hamletthedane]

Was helping with the hay bale last week, and stopped by the well outside my grandfather’s childhood home to cool off.

Wish I had gotten some pictures of the two-room home through the old window, but I knew there was a rattlesnake colony under the porch 😬

[movementsaremadeupofindividuals]

Transcription of Britt Williams Interview

I grew up in Seattle Washington. I grew up in, I was was born in the 70s, so I kinda grew up late 70s, early 80s, hit my teen years in the early 90s, and had my first kid at 20. Uhm, and that was in boston cuz i moved to boston when I went away for college.  

I grew up when I was a baby, super poor, uhm, my dad had a really good job and later on he raised me. He was half black, well he was black, native american, creole, and my mom was white and native american. My dad had a good job, but my dad was really good at throwing lavish parties, so we were pretty rich at the beginning of the month, and pretty poor halfway til the end. Uhm, I have a brother and a sister. When my mother died, when I was five, my brother was taken away to live with his father, and my sister ran away uhm because she didn’t want to live with her father, she wanted to live with my dad. So I sort of grew up, pseudo without a brother and a sister, because my brother lived so far away and was mentally handicapped so i barely saw him, and uhm, my sister was in and out. She would come visit and stuff like that, and she always lived somewhat near me, but she wasn’t raised in my household, so I was kind of an only child. I had a stepmom, not that long after my mom died, and I had a stepbrother and a stepsister but that only lasted like a year, uhm, and then I had another stepmom for a few years, when I was in my early teens, that lasted about maybe only four or five years, and then I just had a dad, and a lot of girlfriends. Not me girlfriends, him girlfriends.

Uhh late teens, went to college, found out that college was fun (woohoo!), uhm didn’t realize that college was also study, so as smart as I am, I did not do so well because college is not for everybody right away. It is about maturity level more often than not, and less about whether you can do the work, cuz you’re on your own, by yourself, and you don’t always do that work. But you do go clubbing downtown a lot when you can.

My dad was born, he.. my dad was born in texas, grew up in Houston his dad raised him cuz his mom died when he was 12 and he had two sisters and two brothers. My mom was one of three brothers, my uncle Bobby died in a car accident when she was younger. I spent every summer with my grandparents, my white grandparents, on their farm, in the apple orchard with nothing to play with but jumping over irrigation ditches for hours upon end because back in those days, children left the house and played by themselves all alone with nobody to play with. And I was one of the only brown children in the neighborhood. Ever.

I didn’t realize that I was one of the only brown children, but i did notice that there was no one around me for days. I played with other kids sometimes, if my grandma brought me over to their houses, but there wasn’t a lot of brown kids in my life in the summer. And then as I got older, my dad sent me away to go sit with my sister and her husband. There were no kids around there either, because I would just sit in the house all day. So I spent a lot of summers with nobody. A lot of reading.

The first kid who ever called me the n word, was black. And I had noooo idea what he meant cuz I’d never been called that. I remember one time in the tricities which is like eastern washington which is like super thick, I was with a friend of mine and her family proceeded to tell me about all the black people that they knew while we were at dinner and I was like 14, and how they weren’t all like you see them on TV, this is a super white neighborhood. Either black girls hated my guts, and black guys liked me cuz I’m super light, or black girls were just my friends there was no inbetween. There was hating me on sight without knowing me because of all the beautiful cultural things that we say about each other light skin vs. dark skin. Uhm, so that was fun. And I actually, in high school, hung out with the Vietnamese kids and I had a couple black friends but not many. The white kids didn’t want to hang out with me, cuz I wasn’t white. The Filipinos didn’t want to hang out with me cuz they were the cool kids and I wasn’t cool. So the Vietnamese kids hung out with me, so I went to Vietnamese dances, but it was kinda hard cuz I was shaped differently than a lot of the other girls, so no boy would talk to me, and I was made fun of. So yeah, high school was super fun, yayyy, high school.

When I moved to Boston I looked like I was Puerto Rican so for the first time in a long time a whole group of people accepted me and didn’t even ask what I was they just assumed what I was it was kind of nice, kind of cool to be accepted by a whole group of people who if you look at their genetic makeup it’s white from Spain, Taino Indian and Black from the slave trade so it was me. And they had hair like me and they had eyed like me and so that was pretty cool it was the first time I’d fit in with anybody ever.

So from what I know since my mom died when I was five, I read some of her, because she was a writer I read a lot of her stuff I guess I went to a lot of rallies a lot of pro feminist, burning your bra rallies a lot of pro-choice rallies. I was basically raised with a fight the power, fight the man Down With Whitey so that kind of filtered into who I was as a child. As a teenager, I will say that didn’t surface because all I wanted to do was fit in and you definitely can’t fit in when no one wants to talk to you and all you want to do is burn down the establishment.

It wasn’t so much in Boston, Boston was super segregated so without realizing it you segregate yourself you don’t go into certain neighborhoods you don’t go into certain areas you stay away from certain groups of people, you become very accustomed to staying out of white neighborhoods you become incredibly accustomed to staying out of the Irish and Italian neighborhoods. When I moved back here though in my thirties it kind of lit a fire in me because of how San Francisco is and how diverse it is and how it’s easier to embrace the black power movement, it’s easier to be Black here in San Francisco and be as light as I am and I’d never felt that before.

Well, regardless of how I talk about Black Pride and as much as I don’t just limit my historical views, to what I love education does, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King maybe Frederick Douglas I’ve tried to let them know that there are other figures, other people who have made contributions and that there are other viewpoints. It doesn’t mean that it’s registered with all of my children in the exact same way. It’s pretty much, predominantly registered with one, my middle one, my oldest gloms onto when it’s necessary for her but more often than not she’s more concerned with Michael Kors bags than she is about political movement and the chances of her running out there and putting herself in harm's way to stand up for a group of people is slim to none unless she was guaranteed she could get there on time and leave when she wanted  and there was little interaction as possible. My son not so much, I do believe my views have shaped him into this utopian view of how the world really should be which is true but my whole black power burn the establishment fight whitey, save the whales hug a tree down for people, the indigent really registered on the middle one.

It hasn’t, it influences them based on how the outside world deals with them it does not change how I parent them. I still in my mind, regardless of how white my son looks, in my head he’s still a black child so I parent him with those thoughts in my mind. I still haven’t been able to discern that this white boy sitting in front of me is white to the rest of the world because to me based upon my racial makeup and my family and our family I still kind of treat him the same way. But the outside world has influenced how they see themselves.

If I was a white woman with blond hair blue eyes, and this is how I feel doesn’t make it true, whether I was poor or upper class or upper middle class or filthy rich I doubt I would notice that I benefit from white privilege but because I am biracial and am very lightskinned I know that I benefit from it I know I do and that frustrates me in a lot of ways and it forces me, which is something that happens to a lot of black and white mixed children, is they feel the need to be super militant super black the first ones on the front lines of the protest the first ones to fit in to show which side they’re really on not so much probably younger generations but definitely my generation. I was born only a few years after it became legal for my parents to marry. It wasn’t like I was born thirty years later I was born in ‘73 and I think it was ‘69 that Loving allowed my parents to marry so that influenced me a lot because that was literally a part of why I exist.  

[quietbutloudandlively-blog]

Not sure where to start, not sure where to end

This post, since being my first one will be one containing a lot of jumbled up thoughts that I have been wanting to release from myself.

As the title says, I am not even sure where to start with all of this. It seems that my life lately has been a spinning circle of negativity or something. The spinning circle doesn’t end, or it seems that it doesn’t end. I just cannot understand.

The only place I can think of to start is probably just the start of this semester. 

The first thing I had to do coming back to school was “break up” with a guy I had been speaking to for months. I didn’t 100% consider him my boyfriend, I didn’t really know. Being a confused college freshman, I didn’t necessarily want to put up that I was in a relationship. I really truly believe that he was the only one who considered us to be in a relationship- even though he didn’t even really treat me all that great beforehand. This is a small list of things that occurred:

1. He got mad and got upset when he saw me at a basketball game with my sorority sisters, reading my history textbook. He wasn’t mad at me for sitting with my sisters, because that was part of the rules. He was mad I was reading a textbook. I was required to go to this basketball game and I wanted to make sure my homework was done at a reasonable time so I could go to bed after the game since it was late.

2. He got mad at me for not dropping everything I was doing in my dorm after getting back from a sorority meeting to go watch the walking dead with him. I literally got a 2 page text rant about how terrible it was that I didn’t watch that show with him, because it was that “important” to him. I don’t like the walking dead. I just got home. Did I really want to get up, and watch something I don’t enjoy? I barely enjoy watching TV/movies in the first place, because I don’t have the attention span for them unfortunately. I do love certain TV shows and movies, don’t get me wrong. It is just difficult for me to stay still and pay attention to them- I have always had this issue. 

3. On snapchat, he would find me places such as the basketball game I talked about in #1. He would zoom into me and take pictures and send them to me. This made me so uncomfortable. I was not okay with it, and even after telling him it made me uncomfortable he didn’t really seem to care, and continued it.

4. I said no. Yep, I said no to sex. I didn’t want it. Wanna know what this did for him? It made him angry. He had asked me on his birthday, and I just didn’t want to. He made me feel pretty bad for not doing it, but I stuck to my own word and respected myself and did not have sex with him. Selfish for him to really get angry at me for this, it’s my body. 

The second thing, I started talking to someone else after this “break up occurred. He didn’t really treat me terribly, but he didn’t really understand how to have a real relationship. He was annoying, and still gets on all of my friend’s and I’s nerves at times. During this time period:

1. He told me where to park in his apartment complex, and I had listened to what he said. Apparently though, I was in a wrong space and my car got towed. I had to pay $200 of my own money to receive my car again. 

2. 2 of his friends tried having me cheat on him. I ended up having a crush on one of them which really pushed me to break up with him eventually.

3. One of those two guys (not the one I developed a crush on), after we broke up pulled his dick out to me in the bathroom, and tried to have me “kiss it”. I got really disturbed, because I didn’t want any part of it. I was mortified. I went out, told my best friend in the room (John) and he tried saying something to their friend. The guy denied everything that happened, made me look like a liar, and my entire night was ruined. He still to this day denies what he did, and it has done nothing to me but hurt me. He expected me to apologize to him for it.

4. The guy I had developed feelings for didn’t really care about me. He really didn’t look at me as anything special, but I really wanted him to. I had gained way too many feelings- because I was lonely and so hurt from the two previous “relationships” I had just had. I seeked comfort from him, which I should not have.

The third thing, at school I was hidden from a lot of family issues involving my Nanny (mom’s mom), and mamaw dot (my dad’s grandma).

Mamaw Dot:

My mamaw dot was in a nursing home for 5-6 years. She was 93 years old, and one day the nursing home claimed she “fell out of bed”. Her injuries did not show that she fell out of bed, plus she was way to weak to have been able to just fall out of bed. She was transported to a hospital in downtown houston, and eventually had surgery and got a lot better. She couldn’t speak at this point, she was on a feeding tube for several years and spent years of her life barely being able to eat and not really getting out of her bed. It was so sad to see her the small times I did. I don’t remember exactly the date of the last time I saw her, but I know it was not too long ago. A few days before she died, I was told from my sister that she was not in good condition and my family had been hiding it from me so I wouldn’t get distracted from my school work. This made me really sad, I really hate it when important things like this get hidden from me but I do understand their reasoning for not telling me. A few days before easter, my mamaw dot passed away. I did not get to go to her funeral, because it was in Kentucky and I had college tests to take and worry about. This caused a sad spot in my family, and some drama. Unfortunately, this was just part of the beginning of my life going more in a downhill direction. 

Nanny: 

My nanny has been married 6 times in the past. When she gets a new man in her life, her family becomes kind of irrelevant. There have been past things done- that have made this story more easy to understand. I am just going to fill in on the things that have been actually affecting my life negatively now. A year or two ago, my nanny met her now soon to be 7th husband. She wanted to bring him over to my house to meet my family for dinner one night, and they ended up showing early in the afternoon for lunch without us really being much informed. When they got to my house, Johnny (soon to be 7th husband of my nanny) hugged my sister and told her how she had heard a lot about her. He shook my hand and said hello. Weird difference right? An hour before he left, he had asked my parents if I was a family friend. He didn’t know I was a part of them family. Why would my grandma not even tell him about me? I did not understand. I tried talking to my nanny about it, but I did not see much come out of it. I let it go and just forgave her. Over time, things got worse. She never sent me a letter in college. She never visited me. She moved to another part of texas with her soon to be 7th husband and has only called me to ask me to go to the wedding. My mom does not speak to her mother now for several reasons. My family is breaking a part, and as much as I want to keep a relationship with my grandma, I don’t want to be hurt or forgotten anymore. I know that forever, a man will always be more valuable to her than me. My sister will always be the number 1 grand-daughter, I will never be able to compete if I tried. I have decided not to waste my time or energy on that. I have just decided to be sad about it and hope that over time my heart heals over it and I don’t mind anymore. I am good at distancing myself so I don’t get hurt- basically good at running away from my feelings. As much as I hurt, it has been my choice not to communicate with her myself (there are more reasonings for this that are just too long and complicated to explain). 

The fourth thing is, my poor car. The one that got towed months ago, I totaled it.

My accident:

I didn’t have enough time in my day to study for finals anymore, so I made up a plan with my best friends Ashley and John to hang out in the student center and pull an all nighter to study. We studied all night, had plenty of caffeine and all. I took John to his apartment in my car, and then ashley to the Early Childhood Research Center at 7am for her final. On the way back to my dorm at 7:30am I was at a green left turn yield light next to my dorm. I thought that I could make the turn, but I was very wrong. I was hit in the back of my car and was completely swerved into another direction. No one was hurt, but the cars were not drivable. I got out of my car in complete shock of what just happened, and saw a 7 year old girl carried out of the car. She was crying, but out of so much fear. Looking at her broke me down completely. My love for children already is very strong, and to know that I could have just possibly hurt her by accident had hurt me so bad. I didn’t know what to do but cry. The mom I got in the accident with, and the nice nurse who had stopped her car to help/witness the wreck after work had hugged me. I had a final, which I was late for. I came into that final a complete mess, I couldn’t even stop crying during the test. One of my sorority sisters met me in the bathroom before i took the test and promised to stay and wait for me while I was taking the test. After the test she talked to me for a bit and then I went to my room and cried more. Recently I found out my car was completely totaled. I have to take defensive driving as well along with it. It’s all my fault though. I shouldn’t have driven sleep deprived. I shouldn’t have driven. But I had to help my friends get to where they needed to be. I had to get back to my dorm. 

The fifth thing is, being home. It’s not fun.

My parents have constantly been acting strange toward each other, and to me. There is always tension, and someone is always upset with someone. Whether it has to do with marijuana, alcohol, family, whatever it is. My mom got mad at me last night because I had a friend come over late and we weren’t sure if we needed to get something from her younger sister so I had warned her about that. She got upset with me for that. I asked my mom if my friend could try something, and she got upset with me for that too. I don’t expect anything. I ask questions of curiosity. I don’t expect my parents to give me anything. I don’t want anything anymore. I honestly want to die. I am so sick of my life being a constant cycle of sadness. My family is ripping apart right before my eyes. I AM RIPPING APART.