Baller Alert Entertainment & Lifestyle
What bothers me the most about women, who date pro ballers, it’s that they usually have some sort of past that they haven’t dealt with and they go and enter into these straining relationships. A lot of the times, the majority of those who do this, they haven’t really dealt with that pain and they allow these other men to come in and add to the hurt that’s already there. The saying “only the strongest survive”, is beyond true when your battling in this arena. The strong willed confident women always come out on top with the 14 carat diamond sitting on their left ring finger. It takes strong mental stability to keep up with the games and bullshit that comes with trying to make a mark in this territory. You have to deal with and outwit the catty and malicious women who throw themselves at your man, and will sacrifice any and everything to knock you out of the picture. These men will bluntly cheat in front of you as if it was no big thing, and swear that they never touched her. As a woman in this game, your heart has to be filled with an eminence amount of strength to be able to withstand the: infidelity, the lies, sometimes the neglect, and knowing that when they are out on the road thousands and thousands of women line up at their hotels every night just waiting for their chance. Knowing who you are is a vital key with remaining sane in this endeavor, and even all throughout life. It’s so important that we as women spend a little more time uplifting one another and a little less of tearing each other down.
It’s hard to believe that something as precious as being a woman, doesn’t hold more value to the men that we women create. For years, stretching back to the time of slavery, the value of the black woman has always been lower than what it actually should be. The men of today are almost subconsciously bred through society to not give a damn about us as women. The whole logistics behind the stigma that is prevalent in the views of women today seeps far down in the roots of our culture, and would take more than time to unravel them. However, Tupac does say it best “Time to heal our women, be real to our women, And if we don’t we’ll have a race of babies, that will hate the ladies, that make the babies”; doesn’t get any realer than that. The fact that things are the way they are, and have been this way for quite some time, this only means that we have to take the initiative and change our ways and actions to in order to alter the way that they view us.
I carried a lot of baggage into the relationship I had with Gerren, and pretty much every relationship after him as well. I thought that once we moved to San Diego, everything in my past would be erased and I could magically move on happily throughout life. Unfortunately that’s not how life goes; I learned that the hard way. If you don’t deal with your problems head on when they first occur, they will only grow bigger before eventually overcoming you. My issues with my mother and not actually having a decent male role model negatively altered my views on dating men and how I should be treated. Had I properly handled all my emotional problems before adulthood, I more than likely would have chosen a different route in life. As women, I feel it’s beyond necessary for us to take care of our emotional well-being more so than men. Women are the foundation for life; we are the reasons as to why men have life. By fixing the foundation of this problem, I know for a fact that building on top of that foundation will devise a stronger us and will create stronger men.
Lesson: 4 Know who you are, and appreciate your self-worth…
Men honestly don’t want a spineless emotionally unstable woman. Even better, we as women shouldn’t even want that for ourselves. Having mental strength and security in the beauty of who you are will allow you to withstand the emotionally breaking situations that come within dating an athlete. If you allow them, men, especially those in high regards, will change everything about you and mold you to who they want you to be. “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for everything”; having your own two feet to stand on allows it to be a little tougher for a man to knock you down. It’s great to be a woman of submission, because even via the bible, we are taught that is our role in life. Knowing your value and trusting who you are incorporates so much more value in who you are, and it also makes you an even bigger asset to not only yourself, but as well as your family, your friends, and even your man.
Moving to San Diego with Gerren almost made me feel like I owed him everything that I was. He was pretty much my knight in shining armor, Gerren rescued me from the hell-hole that I was once living in and introduced me to an entirely new life. I thought I had nothing to worry about when it came to women in California, and that my relationship with Gerren was solid, I would never have to worry about him cheating or likening any of the groupies that threw themselves at him. I never really looked at myself as an all-out gorgeous girl, but yet I still knew I was fly. Once I moved to California, my thoughts on my appearance dwindled immensely. Everyone was a size 2, all the women had long hair, and it seemed everyone had beautiful rich skin. When Gerren and I grew comfortable and adjusted to living the Cali life, Gerren expected me to transform into a Cali girl. At first, I decided I wasn’t going to feed into the Cali bullshit because I was a Chicago girl. It wasn’t until I saw the women throwing themselves at Gerren in front of me and he not once put them in their place, I was aware that I had competition and all that security bullshit was thrown out of the window.
I had the hardest time trying to get down to a size 2, my being a size 8 was usually acceptable but being amongst these pencil thin women definitely had me feeling self-conscious. I remember being at home and I was cleaning and doing laundry, doing my usual house chores; Gerren looked at me with disgust and told me I was fat and needed to do something immediately to get rid of my weight. I hadn’t gained a pound since we moved to Cali. I cried for hours on end because never in all the years that Gerren and I began dating, did he ever find me unattractive. To get rid of the weight fast, I decided that I was going to force myself to throw up after I ate. The plan was to only do it until I lost a set amount of pounds and then I was going to quit, but it ended up turning into a full eating disorder labeling me bulimic. Gerren never knew I was throwing up after I ate, or if he did he never made mention of it, but I was determined to do whatever to become attractive in his eyes. I developed so many health issues from throwing up after every meal. I had extreme ulcers; my throat was so raw from the acid eating away at it that it made it hard for me to swallow anything. Even the teeth in the back of my mouth were beginning to turn for the worst due to the acid starting to make them decay.
Acne was a battle I had been fighting since my pre-teens. I tried everything to get my face back to being the way it was before I hit 13. We spent thousands of dollars on peels, microdermabrasion’s, laser treatments, pills, and cleansers, none of which worked. My skin is now forever damaged due to all the chemicals that I put on my skin. I even got weave for the first time so I could have that down-to-the-middle-of-my-back look that every woman in Cali seemed to have. I did whatever I could to change who I was in order to be “loved” and socially accepted by people that didn’t give a dam about me. I wasn’t comfortable with who I was because I had, I would have never let him have a hand in destroy who I was.
Looking back at things now, I made all these changes to myself at what expense? Everything I changed, I changed for him, and what makes it even worse, is the fact that we didn’t even stay together. In all actuality, I did more damage to myself than good, and even then I never dealt with those problems. Football player, basketball player, doctor, or millionaire- we should never allow a man to have so much say in whom we are that we change things about us to fancy their egos and image. Any man who comes into our lives with the intent of perusing a relationship, should do so accepting everything about you and if there are a few flaws he should be man enough to help you fix those flaws together as a form of enhancing you and beautifying a better you; not as a means to of creating something for his own pleasure.
