Always prepare for world domination…

I feel like I have spent my life mentally preparing for things, and when they come up I fly by the seat of my pants. The only problem is that I don’t really like wearing pants.

Take this blog for example. I always wanted a blog and I have read other blogs and thought “Hmm…. I could do that.”  I’ve written blogs if those free live journal from my angst ridden teenaged years count.

**Disclaimer I like to make up words that I feel like should be words, we’ve already bastardized the English language and I feel I can make some meaningful contributions to that cause**

So here we are; you, me and a computer screen…

Why write? We live in a society where the opinions of the masses drive our social constructs, and I feel like I have unique point of view coming from my background, so I might as well add to it.

So, what’s so unique about me? I am a 30 something black woman currently serving in the armed forces, married to a white man and about to give birth to my first child. It’s a boy J.

I spend most of my life feeling like I’m in some sort of limbo where I don’t fall into what is to be expected of me by society. Which most often time I don’t realize until I step out in society.

I don’t like public speaking, or being in crowds, yet I am an instructor that requires me to do so for about 8 hours out of my day.

I don’t realize how different my lifestyle is from my friends and family till I actually leave my house. What I mean is that I am the one of the first black people to marry into my husband’s family. His cousin married a black woman, who happened have the same name as I do, and moved to Canada. We stuck around.  To put it into perspective, my husband grew up ( a term I use loosely ) in a town that had about two black people. Also upon meeting me he had to tell a few of his relatives that they couldn’t use the “n-word,” which they add the hard “er” to, around me. Not because they aren’t racists per-say, as in they don’t refer to black people as such, but they refer each other as such.

Growing up I bounced between the Southside of Chicago (where most of my family resided) to the Western Suburbs that bordered on the Westside of Chicago (where my parents moved us). My husband grew up on the Pacific Northwest, mainly Oregon, and bounced between the middle class and trailer park. So visiting family is interesting and will only get more interesting when Connor comes along.

On a daily basis I deal with society’s assumptions about me, in and out of uniform, with and without my husband. I’m a member or many Facebook groups, I follow many blogs, and scoured the web looking for that one voice where I read and I’m like “She gets it.” Some have come close but none exactly.

So that’s why I write because maybe out there in vast unknown, I’ll reach that one girl or woman that stumbles on my blog reads a post and be like she gets it.

So here’s to getting it, and enjoy!

-Netty