Allow people to like you, to enjoy your company, to want to be your friend. Allow them to compliment you, allow others to think you’re cool and funny even if you think you’re not. It is not up to you to tell others how to feel, and remember that people might see the positive things in you and qualities that you have been failing to see while being too self-critical. Allow yourself to be liked by other people, even when you don’t see why they should. Don’t self-isolate because you think you are not good enough for other people.
Mena Massoud at El Gouna Film Festival.
If i see him in person it’s a wrap
Harlem Ball photographed by Catherine McGann (1988).
Nikki Giovanni, “Nikki-Rosa“
Childhood remembrances are always a drag
If you’re Black
You always remember things like living in Woodlawn
With no inside toilet
And if you become famous or something
They never talk about how happy you were to have
Your mother
All to yourself and
How good the water felt when you got your bath
From one of those
Big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
And somehow when you talk about home
It never gets across how much you
Understood their feelings
As the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
And even though you remember
Your biographers never understand
Your father’s pain as he sells his stock
And another dream goes
And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
Concerns you
And though they fought a lot
It isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
But only that everybody is together and you
And your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
And I really hope no white person ever has cause
To write about me
Because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
Probably talk about my hard childhood
And never understand that
All the while I was quite happy
Zoë Kravitz as Bonnie Carlson in Big Little Lies S02E02 “Tell Tale Hearts”
Who did her hair in Monterrey? qtna