Briahna's Journey

I make mistakes. I am human. I am twenty. Today, I sat and had a conversation with Mr. Dennis (an older man who is a regular at my job) and I stated that I am not in a state of complete maturity when handling my short temper. His response to me was that, the fact that I can admit that my anger is immature makes me mature in a sense because, there are not a lot of people that can acknowledge and admit to their faults and shortcomings. I am an angel to the people that deserve the sweetness and peace and love from me, but I can be the devil to the people that cross me. What I like about my blog is the fact that I can get real about what life is and is not for me. It's not just about the amount of views, it's not about making this for financial gain, this is about helping me cope through telling my stories to others. I sit up and reread through some of my blogs sometimes and get a chance to see where I might have grown and reverted back in some parts in my life and that is wha...

I walked into my sister's apartment the other day and saw my mother's "sperm donor" and I couldn't really gather the words to say anything. I couldn't really determine at that initial glance if I was mad, sad, or even felt some type of way to begin with. I seen him sitting on that couch with a smile on his face and I felt disgusted because I couldn't even fathom why he was there in the first place having the opportunity to look at my face. I hadn't seen him in years and here he is trying to talk about things and justify the reason why he couldn't be a father after all of these years. While my sister talked to him, I sat in silence for a good fifteen minutes and tried to get my words together. And, when I finally got my words together, it was basically, "too little too late". Because my father is not him. My father was present at my graduation, proms, school accomplishments, gave me useful lectures, held my hand through my fainting spe...

You know how you just know you're a good woman, but …. at the same time, you're a good woman that questions if you're a good woman sometimes because you've been treated like you're less than the woman that you know you are? Reread those last few sentences, break it down, and really try to understand what I just said. You are a woman that knows that you have all this potential, and so much to offer, yet you get treated like shit all the time and start believing that you aren't anything more than a piece of shit. You are so good at how you treat your man... how you spoil him, take care of him, spend money on him, turn submissive for him, YET, he still manages to give you none of that in return. You know how you can love somebody so much, and fight for them so much when they are the ones in the wrong, that you take the love that you have for yourself and kind of use it to love that person even more in hopes of that additional love giving them inspiration to chan...

Whether you want to sleep with one dude one day, and sleep with another the next week is your business as long as your protect yourself, move responsibly, and keep it discrete. Whether you want to drop out of a four-year university and enroll in culinary school the following semester is your business, because as long as your decision makes you happy, what else really matters? If you want to work for years and retire early just to up and leave Saint Louis and go live in China, do it if that makes you happy. Live your best life. I think that... a lot of people are prevented from living their best life for three reasons. The first one being, personal fears. The second one being, pressures and opinions from bystanders/outsiders. With the last reason being, excuses. Let me explain...  The first reason that I believe that people are being prevented from living their best lives are because of the battles that they face within themselves. Sometimes, we fear putting ourselves in situ...

My dad was the very first man to have my heart. I literally have no other considerations, options, or questioning of any other man that could have possibly held my heart before him. I don't quite remember the age, I just know that I was young... and me and my family were staying in the city in the apartments across from the dome. This was back when the Barbie chargeable/electronic cars were popular and my dad would let me and my sister ride it around the neighborhood with him trailing behind us. But, anyways, I gave my heart to my father on one particular day. I remember my mother was in the kitchen and I said something along the lines of going to ask him if he could be my father, too. Because, who some may refer to as my stepdad because he is biologically tied to my sister, but not me, I have never seen my dad as that. Back to the story, my mother told me to go ahead and I remember my dad was standing by the dresser and I asked him if he would be my father and he said yes. I do...

It's not that I miss him in particular, but I miss the convenience of being in a long term relationship. It's not that I miss who he is, because he is not the person that I was in love with as of now, but I miss who he was and what we were and having someone that understood me. My Pandora playlist was on the Avant station all day today, and it was weird for me when all our old songs kept coming on reminding me of how things were. Reminding me that we used to be that couple that everyone was inspired by, or the couple that everyone expected to make it, and there is slightly some difficulty when looking back and accepting the fact that I failed at something that was viewed as a major accomplishment in my life. I never wanted to walk away from something that had years of my time, nor did I want to look him in the eye and feel the pain that I felt from the things that he had done. As I date, I can do nothing but have some type of disappointment because I just have not found anythi...

I'm off the market. Not, "I'm talking to somebody, but I'm still technically single". Not, any, "I'm single, but not single-single." I am in a relationship. A lot of you have been following my journey throughout my last breakup, along with the experiences that I have had being single, so this change in my life is slightly important to me. Since September, I have had the opportunity to experience a lot of men coming my way, and I have had about two that I considered a relationship with. The last situation did not work because he had too much baggage, but this one I decided to finally jump on the ledge a little bit with. He's older, has some tweaking needed here and there, but who doesn't? The thing that made him stand out to me the most was that... we can have fun and share laughs together in a sense where we are best friends. We can play around without it being a relationship type of thing, which means that I can have a friend in him out...

I keep a good poker face because that was what I was raised to do. Your business is your business and everything that goes on with you does not need to be told. And, when you do choose to confide in people with your business... confide in them with things that you wouldn't necessarily care about to be thrown back in your face. So, if you choose to talk to your girl friend about your relationship problems... don't tell them enough to the point to where it would be embarrassing or destructive of your own character if you two were to fall out. You know? Because women are great for taking your business and getting diarrhea in the mouth with it once you two fall out. Not saying go into the relationship guarded, but just think before you vent. And, it isn't just specific to your friends. My mother used to tell me and my sister all the time, "What goes on in this house, stays in this house.." because family can have diarrhea even worse than your friends. Family tends ...

If you have kids or siblings that go off to college, and they come back after their first year and tell you that they have not had an ounce of alcohol or hot boxed in a car on campus, it is a 99% chance that they are lying, lbs. I say this especially if this child was raised in a strict environment, because coming from a strict household, MOST of us are damn near experts at sneaking because we are so curious about what is out there and were never allowed to do anything. Therefore, when we finally get exposed to freedom, we just might go overboard with it and make a few mistakes. My freshman year of college is when I first smoked weed. I had drank alcohol well before college, but I first got drunk in college. You see, when you get off on your own and you finally grasp that you are on your own and those parents that hoard over you about curfews and not doing this or that are GONE, that is when life happens. Let me start with the mixers and parties at the beginning of the year for th...

Never let another person convince you that your standards are too high. Never let them con you out of altering the way you want things and what type of person you want in your life, especially if you’ve worked hard to figure out exactly what it is that you deserve. I find myself meeting people throughout my journey that judge me for having standards and I know that I’m not the only one that has experienced it. I was raised with good values and raised to treat myself as a Queen, but throughout the twenty years of that practice that I had with how to properly treat myself, it has been so easy on multiple occasions to accept lesser treatment. As of now, I had a conversation with my boo yesterday about this exact topic. My standards were high in a sense where, I chose to only date educated men for the longest time. Not only that, but if you did not have a car or a certain amount of income and stability within your income, I did not pay you any mind either. My standards are high in a sens...

If you google anger, Wikipedia will show you that: "Anger or wrath is an intense emotional response usually involving agitation, malice, or retribution. It is an emotion that involves a strong uncomfortable and hostile response to a perceived provocation, hurt or threat. Anger can occur when a person feels their personal boundaries are being or are going to be violated. Some have a learned tendency to react to anger through retaliation as a way of coping."  I like to think that I deal with my anger appropriately, and I have for a short time span, but there have been many times when I have not. The tendency to be a firecracker is something that the women in my family just naturally carry and I don't recognize that I am falling victim to it until AFTER my anger gets the best of me. My grandmother, she has shot at my grandfather before. My mother, she has threw glass at my father before. Me, I've cut up my ex's clothes before and slapped him silly. I hate when I...

As I walk in the house at 2 am... and take off my clothes and get into something comfortable, I think back on how much fun I had. I think back on how much fun I have BEEN having and I lay down with this smile on my face because the way that I am living my life right now is pretty damn satisfying to me. I was deprived as a child of having the opportunity to do the things that the other kids did. For example, the frequent sleepovers with friends, the co-ed outings to places, entertaining boys, and some other things that my parents were in the right for not wanting me to do. Me and my sister really couldn't have or attend sleepovers because my parents questioned the parenting of the other kid's parents, the co-ed outings were out of question because what business did I have hanging out with boys, and the entertaining of the opposite sex was way out of question because I could not date until I was out of the house. Not having the opportunity to take part in these things without ...

So, if you know me... you know how hard it has always been for me to talk to my parents. Whether the conversation is simple or complex, I just have a hard time talking to them because I always had the perception that they just do not understand. This past Saturday, I stood in the kitchen for hours and tried talking to them, and somewhere within that conversation, I put my pride aside and let my parents know that they had been right about things that I fought them so hard on. It took a heartbreak to admit they were right, but it is important that I got it now. So, my parents told me at fifteen when I met Allen that it was not going to work. They told me to leave him alone and that boys will be boys and they will entertain other women and I fought them so hard on it and said, "Not him!". I let him copy my homework, babied him through high school, prepped him for college, left behind private university offers just to follow him and end up at a school that I cant stand jus...

I did not understand the importance of friendship seriously until I found myself suicidal and alone. It was standing outside my campus library, crying as I walked, searching for my ex, that I looked around and realized that I had no one. It was in that moment as I was in pain that I realized that .... I had no one that I could call and talk to with all these devilish thoughts in my head. In that moment, I thought back on my life and the decisions that I made and I sat on that bench in front of Murphy Hall and asked what decisions did I make to contribute to being here and feeling alone in this moment? I had the answer, I just didn't want to state it, comprehend it, and make it my reality. I had started off back in elementary school being social because I got pulled under the wing of vibrant and experienced young girls. I then moved to middle school and experienced it with this group of different young ladies with so many beautiful personalities. In high school, I had friendshi...