{"id":106,"date":"2010-01-21T20:16:51","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T01:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dcdistrictdiva.com\/?p=106"},"modified":"2010-01-21T20:16:51","modified_gmt":"2010-01-22T01:16:51","slug":"my-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/my-person\/","title":{"rendered":"My Person"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve been meaning to pay homage to my person since I started this blog. Ironically, though, the Mer to my Cristina will likely not read this post about her. Not because she doesn’t support me or think I am a great writer. On the contrary, she loves my writing and encourages everyone to read my blog. Sadly, however, she hates to read. And this is just one of many of my favorite things that I cannot share with her (she has literally fallen asleep while I ranted about Palin, Fox News, and anything remotely related to politics). She is a Muslim by culture (spiritual by faith) and I am a Christian. She is a midget and I am the jolly green giant (we look RIDICULOUS in pictures together). She loves meeting people, and I question why this man in the supermarket is trying to make random conversation with me while I’m waiting in line. She is my complete opposite.<\/p>\n

And she also happens to be my sister and I happen to love her dearly.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We were instant friends in high school, bonding in a Leadership class and as co-clock-monitors at the varsity basketball games. When my senior prom plans fell through, she vowed to be my date, and kept <\/em>her vow, even after the literal boy of her dreams asked her to be his date.<\/p>\n

Even when I was miles away in college, we remained as close as ever. But the summer before law school, we suffered what appeared to be our “make or break” moment in our friendship. She said something horribly offensive to me that seemed to violate what I viewed as our mutual respect and admiration for our cultural and religious differences. Recognizing that I was too infuriated to engage in any kind of constructive discourse at that moment (it might have been the stiletto heel of my white boot directed at her eye that tipped her off) she said, “Okay, you’re mad now, but we are going to talk about this, right?” But we did not talk about it.<\/p>\n

In fact, we didn’t talk about it—or anything else—for nearly three years. It wasn’t until we randomly ran into each other at a mutual friend’s New Year’s Eve party at the tippy-top of 2009 that we spoke again. If memory serves correctly, there was hugging and a forceful command to not “hold grudges! Don’t hold grudges!” And, champagne haze aside, who could resist such a loud decree from such a tiny little soul?<\/p>\n

The next day we spent about 4 hours catching each other up on the past 3 years and have been inseparable ever since. In fact, there have been several moments this year that I just sat in awe, wondering, what in the world have I been doing without her?<\/em><\/p>\n

And, thankfully, I won’t ever have to ask that question again. (inshallah<\/em>!)<\/p>\n

She is my person because she sings to me (off-key) whenever there is dead-space in our phone conversations (you’d be surprised at the frequency of the dead-space, considering that we can both talk a head off). Sometimes, she uses her “FOB” voice, and that never fails to make me laugh.<\/p>\n

She is also not afraid to hurt my feelings. Like a good friend—a best<\/em> friend—would do, she judges me when I need to be judged, and she doesn’t hold back. Take this gem, for instance:<\/p>\n

“[Diva], you are this beautiful, smart, amazing person. But when it’s about [this guy], you turn into someone sad and pathetic that I don’t recognize!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She followed-up with:<\/p>\n

“If I hear his name again, I’m hanging up on you!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She then proceeded to press a series of buttons on her phone with her tiny frustrated fingers, just in case I didn’t get the message.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t even front like I was upset with her about it. All I had in me was a shoulder shrug and a nod in agreement.<\/p>\n

She ignores what I want to hear and tells me what I need to hear. And afterward, she will dance it out with me on the streets of D.C. while we wait for the Circulator.<\/p>\n

She is full of life and full of love. She can’t go a single place without making a friend, she happens to be one of the strongest young women I know, she will pray with me when I need it because she is not so narrow-minded to think that a person of a different faith can’t share the same God, and she would literally lay down her life for her family and her friends.<\/p>\n

On paper, it seems we are as far a part from each other as our places of origin are. But sometimes, your complete opposite is just a faithful mirror-image, displaying a reflection of who you are at your core, while simultaneously reminding you of who you have the potential to become. She is my sister from another mister.<\/p>\n

Back like she never left.<\/p>\n

(cue theme music)
\nBrooklyn & Punjabi MC (and we don’t stop)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been meaning to pay homage to my person since I started this blog. Ironically, though, the Mer to my Cristina will likely not read this post about her. Not because she doesn’t support me or think I am a great writer. On the contrary, she loves my writing and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[411,617,848],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-usual-dithering","tag-greys-anatomy","tag-mercris","tag-shonda-rhimes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7nB6F-1I","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}