Issue #2: "ok, but what do YOU want?"

This question is loaded.

Hey girl!

Thank you for rocking with girl, a word another week. If you opened issue #1 from last week, I touched on a “something crazy” that took me away from writing and my consistency.

To provide you with context, here’s a short timeline of what happened and how a simple question changed my life.

Thursday, March 13, 2020 - 45 declared a National Emergency due to COVID-19.

Friday, March 14, 2020 - I had a long conversation with my homegirl about the state of my current relationship. Instead of giving me advice, she asked me the question of, “what do you want?”. Now, in all fairness to who she is, I answered a few times with generic responses of…”to be happy”…and other cliché things. The more cliché I got with my responses, the more firm she got in asking me, “but what do youuu want?”

I had the rest of Friday to think, as I watched our lives change for the unforeseeable future due to the looming pandemic. Between watching the news and reflecting on the past year of my relationship, I began to answer the simple, yet loaded questioned my homegirl girl had asked me.

“what do you want?”

My answers ranged from a family, to kids, to qualities like - wanting someone with more sustainable than superficial attributes, to even material things like the type of home I saw myself living in, or family I saw myself marrying into. I got real specific with my answers.

After I answered that question for myself, I had the answer to my relationship problem.

No part of my relationship made sense for what I wanted for myself and my future.

March 15, 2020 - The next morning, I woke up and told him that I wouldn’t be there when he returned later that day…he said, “I will see you when I get back…” I packed everything I could fit in the car and headed south to Durham, North Carolina where both my mother and brother were living.

There had been no heads up for my family and I didn’t have a plan of where I was going to live. But what I did know was that this was the official ending of one chapter and beginning of another. A new chapter where if it didn’t align with what I wanted for myself, I wasn’t doing or engaging with it.

I share this with you for a number of reasons.

1. When your friends come to you for advice. Instead of telling them what you would do or offering some advice on what you think may be best, turn the questions to them and ask them “what it is that they want.” This may prompt them, like it did me - to a realization of that exact thing they were needing advice on, all on their own.

2. We should all be asking ourselves “What do you want?” (as if we are standing in the mirror). Asking ourselves this question, and then taking the time to answer it makes it so we’re clear and intentional with every action we take thereafter. How can we expect any situation or person, friend, or job to fulfill us if we can’t accurately articulate what it is that we want ourselves.

One last thing…

Often times, things don’t make sense in our lives because they don’t align with what we know deep down we want for ourselves, or what we already agreed we wanted.

Without completely trashing my situation, I wanted to give you insight into how for me, veering away from what I want for myself, truly put me in the craziest relationship of my life.

The clarity I’ve gained through asking and prioritizing that one simple question has enhanced my romantic life, my friendships and professional life.

Hope you enjoyed this word.

i’m grateful.

-Syd ⚡️