{"id":861,"date":"2013-11-30T17:52:14","date_gmt":"2013-11-30T22:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/?p=861"},"modified":"2013-11-30T18:08:55","modified_gmt":"2013-11-30T23:08:55","slug":"avenue-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/avenue-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Avenue I…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I wonder how my life would have been, had I grown up in some fancy neighborhood. My college roommate grew up in the Hamptons. She\u2019s now studying to be a lawyer. But me- well I grew up on the corner of Avenue I and Flatbush, and I still don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with my life. (See the correlation?)<\/em> Don\u2019t get wrong, it\u2019s not the worst neighborhood in the world. It\u2019s actually quite residential, and reasonably<\/i> safe. Even so, the Hamptons sounds much better\u2026<\/p>\n

I used to visit Renaa\u2019s house on weekends, weekdays\u2026 you name it. You could always find me there. Renaa \u2013 or Nay as I called her, lived down the block from me. I guess you could say she\u2019s my ex best friend. I don\u2019t exactly know what went wrong with her. I mean \u2013 she has a mother and a father, and although they\u2019re currently separated, they lived under one rooftop. They always spoiled her (to the best of their abilities). She could always hit up her mom for cash, and then turn to her dad for some more. To me, it seemed like the best of both worlds. I say this because I grew up with my grandmother. My mom passed away when I was twelve from cancer. (Well not really \u2013 one night she was complaining of pain, and an at home hospice nurse actually overdosed her with morphine. This explanation is rather graphic and much more difficult to explain, and therefore I usually choose the first one). Since then my grandmother took care of me, and my father chose to live his own life, at his mother\u2019s house\u2026 where he currently resides.<\/p>\n

When Nay was about sixteen she became addicted to pot. I don\u2019t know if one can actually become addicted to pot, because it\u2019s a common defense for weed smokers to say that \u201cit\u2019s not an addictive drug.\u201d So I guess I\u2019ll rephrase that: Nay became dependent on weed at about the age of sixteen. Luckily, I dogged that bullet until I got older. Then again \u2013 I don\u2019t know how lucky that makes me.<\/p>\n

Nay was always cooking up some kind of scheme to get money.\u00a0 When we were in about the twelfth grade, she told me that she was going to deposit a fraudulent check into her account to get the money. I was always the more logical type. Although I absolutely despise<\/b> philosophy, I can always devise up some long logical reason for or against something. I\u2019ve always been good in manipulating the English language \u2013 however I\u2019m slightly better at it on paper than in person. When Nay came to me with her plans, I told her that it was absolutely absurd and that she would surely get caught. Sure enough, she did. She was actually arrested, taken to bookings\u2026 you know the whole process. She was eventually charged with some kind of money misdemeanor in exchange for community service.<\/p>\n

I never quite understood the weird dynamic of our friendship. Besides participating in increasingly mischievous behavior \u2013 she always found a way to betray me. There was this one time when she came to my house with my other best friend Nikeya (whom I call Ki) filled up my purse with shirts, jeans, and jewelry and then left. I was distracted because I had other friends over, so I didn\u2019t notice her until I saw her leaving the house with my belongings. There was also the time that she took my brand new pair of orange-stripped air max 95\u2019s to borrow (still in the box I may add), and then claimed that she lost them.<\/p>\n

When I first met her, I admired her because I was so shy and quiet while she was so loud and daring. She knew what to wear to get attention, and she hung out with some of the popular girls. She even had a boyfriend in the sixth grade. She was<\/i> cool<\/i>, and even knew how to talk to boys. But somewhere along the way, my definition of cool changed. I don\u2019t think hers ever did.<\/p>\n

It must have been two or three years ago, when Nay, Ki and I were driving to McDonalds. I had noticed a riff in our friendship that had slowly begun to get bigger. Ki had recently obtained her mom\u2019s old car, and we decided to spend the weekend together. Ki was blasting the newest Drake song, and as the wind whipped through our hair we began to enjoy a night on the town.<\/p>\n

\u201cOmg, we\u2019re finally getting older\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know, and you\u2019re driving now. You finally got your own whip\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Nay already had the privilege of driving her dad\u2019s car. He would have given it to her, but she was always in the middle of something<\/i>, so he was hesitant.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember, when we were younger how we used to be jealous of Krystal\u2019s hair?\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement kind of came from left field. It was like a group of people playing a football game, when suddenly a random ball was tossed into rotation. When we were younger, Ki and I had long hair, and Nay did not.<\/p>\n

\u201cUm\u2026 no<\/i> that was just you\u201d<\/p>\n

Nay wasn\u2019t the prettiest or brightest of the bunch. She never really cared about school \u2013 she was more interested her social life and physical appearance. At a young age, she would often wear makeup such as colorful eye shadows, extravagant costume jewelry and hair extensions. Ki was always more interested in school than Nay, and although she didn\u2019t get high grades like me \u2013 she always did well. I was always placed in the advanced class, so for me that meant that I was usually one of the very few Black girls in my class. \u00a0This continued from junior high to high school. I always understood this intellectual division between us, but disregarded it. Throughout our friendship, she would often make comments about me being tall and awkward or my feet being too big, because she was shorter than I, with smaller feet. I remember trying to squeeze into shoes a size smaller, because of her. (And yet, as I got older, I realized that my feet were actually small for my height.) She would often make jokes that got on my nerves \u2013 but I ignored them. I remember in the sixth grade, when she curled my hair and pressed the curling iron directly on my forehead, leaving a large box mark on my face for months. (Now<\/i>, I wonder if this was intentional.) When Nay made her jealousy comment to me that night, it kind of marked the start of the decline of our friendship. She simplemindedly laughed it off, and if I was younger I might have done the same. But now that I was older, I thought it explained too much and I couldn\u2019t understand why my friend of so many years still<\/i> felt this way.<\/p>\n

Our friendship finally came to a \u2018sad\u2019 conclusion during my third year of college. She had begun to make up stories about me, and tell a mutual acquaintance. I just couldn\u2019t take it anymore. I never explained to her how I felt – I just kept it inside. I never answered her calls or texts again.<\/p>\n

Of recent, Renaa has become a stripper. It\u2019s news that affected me at the time she told me \u2013 but now I could actually care less. Sometimes I wonder how two people who grew up in the same neighborhood, with the same values could turn out so different. I mean, the first time I went back to church in my teenage years was with her! <\/i>Her mother was an active member of the Christian church that was about two blocks from her house. It was actually her<\/i> that encouraged me to go to the prayer group with her. Until today, everything that transpired between us seems to be a mystery that\u2019s not worth solving.<\/p>\n

I resent a lot of my childhood days, and she played a huge part in that. When I look back on everything that happened when we were younger, I often find myself angered about how heavy of an influence she was to me, and how my grandmother was not able to be emotionally available for me. I know it\u2019s not healthy for one to blame anything or anyone for their past actions, but damn it\u2026 someone\u2019s got to take part of the blame. Sometimes I wish I grew up anywhere else, with different friends, in an entirely different demographic\u2026 like in the Hamptons. Yea \u2013 sometimes I wish I grew up in the Hamptons instead of Avenue I\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I wonder how my life would have been, had I grown up in some fancy neighborhood. My college roommate grew up in the Hamptons. She\u2019s now studying to be a lawyer. But me- well I grew up on the corner of Avenue I and Flatbush, and I still don’t know what the hell I’m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":866,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions\/866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}