life update :,)

Hey y’all….how y’all doin’....? 👀 It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve written a blog post that I wasn’t on auto-pilot for. Before school started and I still had time on my hands, I was hit with a bit of writer’s block. I had a strong desire to write, but little that I wanted to say. Now that school has started, I have so much to say and no time at all to write it down. Crazy how life works. 

This is my well overdue life update to you, spanning all the way back to my birthday. This blog will be a sort of choose your own adventure. From the headings below, choose the lore you want to know most, go in any order you’d like, and read as much or as little as you desire. 

Table of contents:

me + the club

me + the socialist

me + these assignments

me + post-grad 

me + thoughts on the political and economic state of the world

me + pilates <3

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me + the club

Last fall, I turned 21! I began going to clubs back in November and since then have attempted to immerse myself in both the New York City and Philadelphia nightlife scene. Let me tell you one thing, I know why Kehlani hates the club. Please, give me the chance to complain for a second. There are 30 year old men everywhere and they are so gross. They either stand along the wall and stare at my friends and I while we dance or they make attempts to talk to us or even worse try to touch us. Ew! They don’t even care if we say we’re too young for them, they proceed to ask for Instagrams anyways. 

My initial gripe with the club is that everything feels like a performance. In a world where in my day to day life I have a good amount of power, control, and confidence, I feel like all that is negated in the club. Everything I do is perceived by men and attempts to go out and have a fun night dancing always end up in me looking up and seeing a man surveilling me. The club has made me realize how much I do not like men. To the point where I too am questioning if I am a lesbian because I don’t know if I’m supposed to dislike them this much. Ugh…

Anywho, I think the club and I will be parting ways for now. After graduation, I’ll miss college parties where at least people my age are guaranteed to be there and I can dance like crazy with my friends without a 35 year old whispering “throw it back” in my ear. 

I don’t want this to read like I hate parties or I hate fun. I loveee parties because I am the life of the party. I think I just prefer smaller crowds with people I’m familiar with. On Friday I went to a party at my school and it was so fun. I was just in la la land dancing and being silly with my friends. It was perfect. More of that, less 35 year olds. Yuck. 

me + the socialist

LMAGAOABAIOABBAOOOO. So my school does something called “screw your roommate” where your friends basically set you up on a blind date with someone. Screw is messy because it’s the chance to get set-up with someone you have a crush on in a somewhat lowkey way that has a good chance of success. I’d only done screw once before this back in sophmore year, but it was more so friend vibes. Shout out to the person who popped my screw virginity. It’s senior spring and I said, “fuck it, I’ll do it again”. Screw was on Valentine’s Day this year and my friends set out to find my screw date. My expectations were low because there are literally no options at my school. However, come day of, all my friends were so excited for the big reveal. I had truly no idea what to expect.

We were in the dining hall playing foosball when the text came that my screw date had arrived at the dining hall. As he walked down the stairs like a high school senior on their prom night, I saw that my screw date was no other than the man I had pointed to a few days prior on a poster for a band that was visiting that night. Let’s take a few steps back. 

A couple days before this I was putting my dishes away in the dining hall with one of my friends. When I turned away from the dish drop, there was a poster hanging of different artists coming to our school to perform. I saw a picture of a light skin man with freckles and a ginger fro, turned to my friend, pointed and smiled. That was the end of that.

Fast-forward back to the moment of the big reveal, I literally laughed out loud when I saw him coming down the stairs. It was like Amazon next day delivery (not to commodify him, shouldn’t even say that about my marxist brother).

Anyways, that gave me a good laugh. The screw date was platonic and chill. He carried a book in his pocket, a guitar on his back, and was obsessed with Assata Shakur and abolition. That’s someone’s dream man right there. All in all, get you some friends where all you gotta do is point at a nigga and they deliver him to you (by way of Instagram), amen! 

me + these assignments

When I tell you this thesis has been beating my ass…That, my friends, is why I have barely seen the light of day and get nauseous at the sight of Times New Roman. And I still have so much left to go. It’s sinking in that the entirety of the month of April will be spent writing this thesis. Every source of academic brainpower I have is going towards my thesis, leaving little time for me to even attempt to think about much else. It’s a fun process though, overall. 

I love to write, I like to revise, and I love to see all the connections I make in my brain laid out on a page. This thesis is really important to me, so I think I am mostly preoccupied with trying to get it right. 

me + post-grad 

Someone texted me “what’s next?” referring to post-grad and I almost blocked them. KIDDING IF YOU EVER HAPPEN TO READ THIS, KNOW I LOVE YOU SO MUCH. Thinking about post-grad has been…really hard.

From kindergarten to 12th grade, our entire lives are mapped out for us. We take these classes in order to advance to the next grade level, all to eventually graduate from primary and secondary education. After high school, our paths begin to diverge slightly. It’s become more popular to go to college, so most people follow that same path. Depending on our majors we do different things, but we’re all working within the same system for the same goal--an undergraduate degree. But after undergrad, we’re all on completely different paths. 

Post-undergrad is the first time that my life isn’t predetermined for me. While we may be working towards the same goal--success, we’re seeing that there are a multitude of ways and timeframes to get to the same spot. This breeds room for comparison. If I’m being honest, this period has been really trying on my self-esteem. One scroll on LinkedIn shows me peers off to get a PhD in Astrophysics, or off to med school to go find a cure for cancer, and whatever else these highly qualified Swatties go off to do. And this is not to be like “woe is me”, because woe is not me. I will be fine. But, I think it’s important to sit in the discomfort of feeling insecure about not knowing what the hell I’m doing with my life because that isn’t a dirty feeling. 

My insecurity comes from being on the other side of the disappointed look on someone’s face when I tell them my post-grad plans, which are to go back home and figure it out. For whatever reason, people have high expectations for me. What if I let them down? My entire life up until college was about doing what I was told to do, following rules, and not causing any trouble. I got good grades, I’d cry if I got a behavioral correction, and I didn’t speak much when adults were around. My four years at college has been me unlearning everything I was taught about obedience. About “good” and “bad”. About what’s “right” and what’s “wrong”. I’ve learned the cliche fact that things are not black and white. That what I decide is the “right thing to do” might only be right in my eyes. That I prefer to cause some trouble than to do things just because that’s the way they’re “supposed” to be done. And all of that has required an immense trust in myself. Trust that my way of doing things will work out and trust that I know what I’m doing.

On top of this, I just want to express that it is okay to rest after a long, tiring experience. College, with all its fruitful blessings, wonderful opportunities, and nostalgic memories, is a traumatic experience. I don’t think anyone from a marginalized identity leaves higher education without PTSD. That sounds like an exaggeration, but I’m deadass. These are violent (physically, sexually, mentally, verbally) spaces that have left me constantly on edge, paranoid, angry, annoyed, stressed out, and exhausted. From bobbing and weaving rapists while walking on campus, to leading mini-nonprofits (to the extent that our school requires us to adhere to their expectations of how clubs must interact with them), to pulling all nighters juggling graduate level coursework for 4-5 courses at a time, to white people not moving out of the way when I’m walking, to niggas hating you because they think you hate them for liking white women (no one cares), to the passive aggression of students who can’t hide that they think they know more than you, to the balancing of the moral superiority complex of the average liberal arts student, auntie is tired…

And I deserve rest after that.  So, what’s next, bitch? Rest. If I’m lucky, but I’m lucky in the way that I always have a job, so with my luck I might be employed. Fuck. Kidding. But no, I plan to rest as much as humanly possible before I cross into the territory of being a bum. 

me + thoughts on the political and economic state of the world

It is about to get real scary, real regressive, real sexist, real Handmaid's Tale out here. The way Pretty Little Thing has turned to modesty clothing, Brittany Renner is a Muslim and showing off Fashion Nova modesty fits, everyone is becoming skinny, and the propaganda for Mormon’s is at an all time high on ABC, I don’t know you can smell it in the air--people are getting weird. 

Ugh yeah it’s rough out here and I’m scared. But, still I rise type shit. I’ll leave it there because I do not need to write an essay on this right now, that’s what my thesis is for :)

me + pilates <3

When I stand in the mirror and look at myself my pupils dilate. That’s how tea I am. LMAOOOOO. No but, whew girl period depression is rough and it’ll really have me besides myself at times and convince me otherwise. One of the things that keeps me going in this world is knowing that at the end of the day, I belong to myself. Before I go to bed each night and before I leave for the day, I stand in the mirror, smile at myself, take a breath, and say thank you to God/the Universe that I am mine. No one else can ever stake claim over me because I am mine before I am anyone’s daughter, cousin, friend, leader, student, peer etc., and that just makes me smile knowing that. How cool is that? What a relief. 

The mood for 2025 is “you got me fucked up!”, and then immediately rectifying the ways people have me fucked up. Because not only am I tea, I am deserving of fierce and immediate protection. I used to think my mom was doing too much for always demanding that for herself at the expense of relationships, but now I realize that it is an extension of her high self-esteem. My fear to do so in the past indicated that the bar for what I thought I deserved was too low. ¡No más!

I’ve been taking a pilates/mindfulness class (y’all know I’m lowkey a meditation/mindfulness girly) and it has really helped me align my body and mind. Taking time to see my limbs as living, moving, entities attuned to my brain makes me realize that I am literally physically present in these spaces and for that very reason I am deserving of care, kindness, and respect.

I was a bit nervous to take a pilates class. Typically, I see fit white women doing pilates and I was scared I did not have the right body for it. My social media page is filled with gym content that is really just eating disorder content. Due to the messaging from its missionaries, the gym has never really felt like a space where I could practice body positivity or neutrality. So I came into this course with multiple failed attempts to find an exercise discipline that I liked and remained consistent with, or felt cared for with. For the first time ever, I am taking an exercise class where exercise does not feel like punishment, but rather a reward. Movement is a blessing, not an act of self-harm. I am in awe of the work my body can do and not critical of the ways I feel like it is lacking. I am so grateful to the course instructor and the other participants in the class for curating a space like that where I feel safe to try new things with my body, to sweat, and to smile while doing an ab series. 

This class helps me return to myself in moments where I feel like others or unforeseen events are taking claim of me. This class has made me realize how deserving my body is of movement, not just for physical benefits, but for my mental as well. This class has helped me release stress, anxiety, and exhaustion that takes hold of me from the workload here. This class shows me that what I want for myself, what I might view as attainable for others, but not for myself, is in fact out there, I just have to keep trying and keep being open to new experiences. And that applies across the board.

~

Graduation is right around the corner and there is still so much more I wish I had time to express, but I think this should cover it for now. Everyone pray that my thesis turns out better than I expect, that fine shyt shows up at my doorstep, that all my bitches prosper (a given), and that my ass gets fatter. Amen. 

Enjoy my freedom of speech while it’s still free! 

Later,

Kayla