In the Beginning...

I believe that the hardest part of any relationship, story, or endeavor is the beginning. When you have a friendship with someone, or you are in a romantic relationship with your significant other, it's easy to communicate with them, understand them, enjoy their company, and etc. The hardest part of these relationships comes at the beginning. This involves the awkward stages of trying to get to know a total stranger with the hopes of creating a positive bond with them. We always start out having the best intentions, not trying to come off too strong, but still wanting to leave a lasting impression that will lead them to wanting to have that same bond with you as well. Everyone wants to be liked, valued, and appreciated, whether they say they do or not. No one likes rejection. No one.

That being said, it has been somewhat hard for me to sit down, and actually initiate this blog. I've been wanting to do a blog for a long, long time. I love writing and am full of opinions. Having the opportunity to do both is great. I must admit, I am a true-to-form procrastinator. (It's one of my best qualities) So as you can imagine, I have been procrastinating on starting this blog. So many bloggers have specific topics that they discuss with their readers on topics like fashion, celebrities, politics, and etc. I have so many things to say that it's hard for me to categorize and lump all of my thoughts into one tiny box. So I finally said, screw it, I'm just going to have a blog to put all of those thoughts, opinions, feelings, fears, joys, triumphs, and failures all under the same umbrella. My umbrella is aptly titled, Uniquely Special.

The title of this blog, Uniquely Special, comes from a difficult conversation that I recently had with my father several weeks ago. The conversation involved my dad passing his judgement on me, as he usually does, in relation to a situation I had with a co-worker at my job. Office instant communicator can be a good thing and it can also be a bad thing. The fun little emoticons can help to convey how someone is feeling when they write a certain phrase or comment, but without actually hearing the person's tone of voice or seeing their facial expressions, those comments can easily become misconstrued. Such an occurrence happened between myself and a co-worker. Unintentionally, I had caused my somewhat overly-sensitive colleague to feel as though I was belittling her in a chat. She felt compelled to go off on me. I was blown away and shocked by this. It has never been my intention to create such animosity among someone that I genuinely liked. I felt horrible that I made her feel that way. We both apologized to each other and moved on. Now, back to my dad... My father is very overbearing and likes to put his nose in everyone's business, especially the kind of business that doesn't involve him. While I told my mother about this incident over the phone, my dad ear-hustled in the background and took the pieces of the conversation to use as an opportunity to lecture and criticize me during our next meeting (Sunday after church). My dad felt the need to tell me about myself. "I've always felt like you believed that you were better than other people," he admonished to me. I was so offended and perplexed by this statement. As much as I wanted and tried to tell him that he was wrong, I couldn't. I kept saying "nooooo that's not exactly it...." but I still didn't know exactly how I really did feel about this accusation.

Two days after this conversation with my father, I woke up several hours before my alarm was set to wake me up for work. I immediately thought back to the conversation with my father and couldn't get back to sleep. Did I in fact believe that I was better than others? Of course not. I'm no better than anyone else. I believe that we are all equals and all trying to make our way in this crazy world as best as we can. So what did I feel about this? I knew that I wasn't better than anyone else, so why then was it so difficult for me to verbalize what I did feel about this statement. Then it hit me. I called my father and with tears in my eyes, I told him.

"Dad, our conversation the other day has not sat well with me. I don't believe that I am better than anyone else and have never felt like I was better than anyone else. When you told me this, I didn't know how to verbalize what I felt in regards to why you feel that I believed that I'm better than other people. Now, I know what I feel. I don't believe that I am better than anyone else on this earth, Dad, but I do feel like I am uniquely special!" My Dad immediately, thanked me for calling him to discuss this and said that he agreed with me and that this statement made sense to him. 

Yes, indeed I do feel and have always felt that I was uniquely special. Is it because of the fact that I have a unique, uncommon name that draws attention and reaction from everyone who I'm introduced to? Or is it the fact that my looks and my accent draw so much speculation as to where I am from? I'm a tall African-American woman with light brown skin, squinty eyes, and long black hair, born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and speak properly (aka by some people's standards, "white"). I have been here my entire life and I'm always asked "where are you from, cause you shol' ain't from St. Louis?" Yes sir, I am, born and raised. I've never felt like I belonged here, or anywhere else actually. Maybe that's the pisces in me, the ethereal, naive, outer-worldly side to me. Who knows? No matter what it is, everything about me draws some sort of attention and I have always felt like I was destined for greatness. 

"Uniquely special" in no way means being better than others. It means exactly what it says. To be uniquely special is to be different than most. And I am most definitely different than most! So this is my introduction. This is my blog. I hope that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. So now that the hardest part of our relationship is over, and introductions are out of the way,  let's get acquainted.