What Do I Bring to the Table in a Relationship? The Stages of My Life have Predefined My Offerings Based on Age

I saw a post recently on FACEBOOK which brought me to the realization a woman's life goes through stages. These life stages happen because we age. I have watched many women in my family age from the youngest to the oldest over my 51 years of life. The stages most profoundly impacting their lives moreover than anything else seems to be age.

This post is my reflection of how as I have aged on this journey called life how it is pretty much categorically defined its own stages with what I have brought to the table in relationships.  Now we all know a woman's first relationship is her interaction with her father, grandfather, and other important male role models during her earlier years.

For me, from infancy through my college years all I had to bring to the table was a cute curtsy and a smile. My daddy provided all my needs, wants, and desires. He took to the amusement park which my absolute favorite thing to do. We went out to restaurants and he always paid and left the tip and just sat on the other side of the table with a proud look on his face as it was an honor to have someone like me in his life. 

My grandfather was all so important too. I have had people call me to just let me know how special they thought it was when I was a little girl and my grandfather would always hold us on his lap when he was sitting out on the front porch. He was my shield when I was trying to escape my grandmother's lashings and he shielded us from her by hiding us under the covers so she wouldn't lash out at us as severely. He took us to all his friends house. He showed me he was proud to be a grandfather. When we were born we became his purpose. He often told us stories to reiterate how much he cared for me, my family, his friends. He was a very caring and sincere man.

What I bring to the table is a person who knows how to appreciate and is grateful to a man who know the meaning of being a king. I bring to the table the willingness to love, embrace, and enjoy time with my significant other. I know the role of a team player. Now in my earlier years I was spoiled by men who knew how to be men and learned from women who allowed the men to be men. I bring a knowledge of how i should be accepted, love, appreciated, adored, and treated.

Greed has become the New American Dream!

I've been in this world for fifty one years.  I have seen a lot of changes in my lifetime.  I remember when we had televisions so bulky I couldn't even budge them.  Now we have televisions so light weight I can carry them with one arm.

Owning a television when they first hit the scene was an accomplishment.  People worked hard to have the assets they enjoyed during that era in our history.  A man most often went out and earned the paycheck and brought the bacon home to mama.  A greater accomplishment was when a couple was able to buy a home.  Owning a home was considered the American Dream.

Fast forward forty years and the American Dream has been overshadowed by American Greed.  It seems to be the norm for men to have a main piece and side pieces.  They are not satisfied with just one good piece.  Just today I was reading an article where a former NFL Player mistress killed his wife.  Personally, I think the husband should be charged with accessory to murder.  He was just being greedy.  He had a wife with a reputable profession but he let his hormonal greed get the best of him.  I do realize he is probably extremely stricken with grief.  But think about all the other lives impacted by this senseless act of violence.  Who knows what was going through the mistress thoughts?  Apparently her greed consumed her.  She  just had to have someone else's man.  How many times have we seen "If I can't have him no one is going to have them type scenario?".  Just sad.

We see greed in the workplace more and more all the time.  People are so greedy to get to the top they don't care who they sleep with, who they trample on, who they have to be cutthroat with or anything else.  The only line in the workplace is the line to get to the top by any means necessary by too many people.  The challenge to make more and more money, to look bigger and bigger and make everyone else look and seem smaller and smaller.  There is no "I" in team and there is no "I" in dismantling everyone else's dreams either.  With current estimates showing CEO's of large corporations making 300 times more than the production level employees to me that is one of the biggest American Greed trends that just needs to stop.  Sprinkle some gold dust to bottom tiers.

The utility companies are providing services with the same lines that have been in place for decades. The stock portfolios of their employees and chief executives are just going up, up, up, as their customers bills are experiencing the same rate of incline with the customers having no way to meet the financial obligations.

Genocide is hitting my neighborhood hard and fast.  I am truly worried about it happening to me.   The people I used to walk through and see 10 or 15 years ago homes have been replaced by bigger and newer housing.  I won't say better because a lot of the older homes had good bones.  A community plagued by people who are the last hired being the first fired.

It seems like the current state of my local economy is going to cause me to lose out as well unless I continually fight harder.  There are no services to care for our elderly parents at the level there tax dollars went to taking care of women on welfare having babies.  It just seems ridiculously unfair.  Their tax dollars for years have gone to support programs that did not write in a future for them.  Their tax dollars went to secure someone else's present while cheating them out of a future.  All the money they paid into a system that they thought would take care of them during their golden age.  The elderly are the ones suffering the most because it is them whose hard work, tax payments, and so much more went towards building a better tomorrow in yesteryear.  Now they can't get housing unless they give up the housing they worked all their life for.  The people at the middle of the road like myself cannot get any kind of assistance.  We cannot get any kind of jobs that will let us continue to enjoy the type of lifestyle we had grown accustomed to enjoy.  Even if we did the savings thing.  Those savings are gone a few years after you can't get a job.

I have had my home on the market for months priced way below assessed value.  I have filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy and found out recently I have to pay 100% if the plan is approved because of the equity in my home.  The paralegal I went over the plan jinxed me when she said something along the line everything should go fine as long as I don't lose my job.  The next day I went to work I was coded because my survey scores were dropping.  I can now either resign or wait out what may end up being the inevitable.

Here I grow again trying to hunt for another job to supplement the current one because things are too crucial right now.   If I don't have a job I cannot make the plan payments.  It was going to be hard enough trying to make the plan payment and my mortgage payment both right at the beginning of the month.  I am at a stage where I cannot just give up.  I was already going to have to work harder and doing more.

But it is hard.  It is truly hard.  People my age are seen as being in the way.  I feel like I am viewed at as being in the "F" You age range.  We are to old to hire and too young to retire.  Unfortunately, it is people right in my own age range who lend the most grief to the dismal situation.  It seems the ones in my age range who cause the most drama.

The whole concept of Greed as being the American Dream now shows up on so many arenas of every day life.  I see greed being at the forefront of friendships, relationships, and situation-ships.  Guys don't want to wine and dine as in years past.  They want to keep every dime of the money they earn for themselves.  It even seems they most often view women now as competitors versus lovers.  They want to bank their money.  They don't help women out like men of yesteryear.  They expect women of today to hold their own on their own and do just as well or better than the women who are already in marriages or committed relationships.  It is no secret these brothers who are single and unmarried for many years prefer women in committed relationships that they don't have to take care of because they are another man's responsibility.  It is not an overnight trend it has been something which has been happening for years.

When I read the story about the NFL Player whose wife was murdered by the mistress I was thinking they should lock him up for accessory to murder.  If he wasn't so greedy as to have to have a wife and a mistress at the same time two women could still be viable players in this rat race.

Monday is my day off and I will be hitting the grind to find a job.  I have got to keep it together to one of the greatest storms of my existence.  I need all prayer warriors to pray diligently for me that I make it through this period successfully with things turning out in my favor by the grace and goodness of our God Almighty.

They say if you can't beat them join them.  It is hard to change decades of trying to do the right thing, work hard and hoping your hard work pays off.  It is just not that type of party anymore.  It seems yo either have to swallow or be swallowed.  I am just not ready to roll over and be swallowed up right now.  I am going to keep fighting the good fight.  Pray for me.