Priceless Inspirations (16 page)
It’s crazy, but I’ve had “friends” who were jealous of the way Dream provides for me and Reginae. One girl who I’ve known since high school also has a baby and a relationship with a guy in the music industry. She takes notes on what Dream does for me, and then uses those notes to try to get her man to do more. She’ll come to my house and look at what I have, and then get on the phone to her baby’s father.
“You know what Dream did for Toya?” I’ve heard her whine into the phone. “This is how a
real
boss treats his woman.”
She actually took
pictures
of things I have!
Not good
. Not at all.
The last time I saw that girl was at my birthday party a year or two ago. She came, she saw and I guess her jealous button got clicked. We don’t speak at all anymore.
That’s cool with me. I don’t need friends like that.
I’ve also had friends who were jealous of the way I looked. Some of them want to compete with me about it, like it’s some kind of “Who’s the prettiest” contest. Some girls wanted to hang with me because they only hung out with pretty girls. You have to be pretty to be in some of the cliques. I’ve never much been into that. That’s no way to choose your friends, based on what they look like. I’ve always wanted to be sure I was around people who loved me for the inside
and
the outside. And I’d never not be friends with someone just because of the way they looked.
I’ve actually had friends who’d say things like, “You can’t come out with me tonight. I gotta find me somebody, and if you come they’ll be looking at you and I won’t get no attention.”
For real?
Just because I like to look nice, you can’t hang with me? Why don’t you have confidence that you can meet someone regardless of who you’re with and what they look like?
It’s crazy.
No one wants people around them who are always criticizing or always trying to make them feel bad because of what they look like, what they’ve been lucky enough to get out of life, or who they fell in love with. People like to be around people who are proud of them, happy for them and want to see them do well.
I’m no exception. Sometimes it seems like some of my friends can’t be happy for me. It’s like they feel like I don’t deserve what I’ve got, like I haven’t worked hard for it, and it should have been them on TV, opening a store, getting married again, instead of me.
That’s messed up.
A true friend would never do you like that, and I know, because I have some true friends.
True Friends
I met my friend Danielle shortly after I moved to Atlanta. She had just moved to the city, too, and we went to the same hair stylist. She’s a few years older than I am, married and happy.
After I told her who my ex was, she nodded, but other than that, she never mentions him unless I do. She doesn’t introduce me with him in the same sentence, like so many people do. From the beginning, she was like “That’s my friend Toya.” There’s never been any of that “Dream’s baby mama” stuff that only seemed to add another level of drama to so many of my friendships.
As I’ve said, even in Atlanta, I’ve met lots of girls who want to be my friend because of my past relationship. Comparing those girls with Danielle makes having a friend like her all the more special. She’s been the one to help me plan parties and events. She’s been the friend I tell my problems to. When I’m hurting, she cries with me, and when I’m feeling down and I’m struggling, she’s the one to say “Let’s plan a girl’s day out!” and come up with something fun to do that will lift my spirits.
I can only hope I’m as good a friend to her as she’s been to me.
The Mistake I Made That You Shouldn’t
When you’re young it’s all about fun. You hear what you want to hear about the people you hang out with and the rest goes in one ear and out the other. As long as the person is fun, that’s all that matters. You might have a lot of people around you, because a crowd makes it more fun to chill and kick it. What I’ve learned is that I only need a handful of really good friends and really loyal family members in order to be happy. Being able to tell a good friend from a bad one, and a fake friend from a real one, has been all about experience. I wouldn’t listen when people told me about some of the people I had around me, so I had to learn the hard way. I had to get my feelings hurt, sometimes more than once. I had to get betrayed or backstabbed or lied about.
Now, I’m much better about seeing people’s motives from the beginning. I’ve learned how to stay out those situations before they happen, just by being more cautious about who I call “friend.” It’s okay to have different friends for different reasons. There are friends that you hang with, friends you share career experiences with and friends who know all about every detail of your life. I’ve learned that it’s okay to set limits on how much I tell certain friends, while with others, my life is an open book.
My circle isn’t completely right and tight, but I’m a whole lot better at figuring out the game and shutting down the play. Back then I didn’t know what I know now, but hopefully you can learn something from it and avoid some of the painful realizations that I had to discover the hard way.
Toya’s Priceless Gem: Keep your circle of friends small and loyal. True friends don’t care about what you’ve got, what you can do for them or what you look like. It’s enough that you’re you
.
Remember the saying: “Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear”?
If you’ve ever read anything about me on the Internet, please, please, please keep that old saying in mind!
It’s crazy the stuff they put up on some of these blog sites about me, Dream, our daughter and our lives. Most of it is straight-up lies. If you believe the blogs, I’ve spent the past few years with a different guy every week, from football players, Eminem, to half of the city of Atlanta.
Not true.
Rumors and gossip, whether they are spread in conversations or through texting or on the Internet, are something that a lot of girls and young women have to deal with. Some people think it’s cute to spread awful, nasty lies about the people they don’t like, or the people that they are jealous of. Even at my daughter’s school, there have been incidents where girls were texting and posting hurtful things about other girls, knowing that they were flat out lies. Gossip and rumors aren’t cute at all. In fact, they can mess up people’s whole lives, and the only thing I can say about people who spread that kind of trash about other people is that they must be truly, truly miserable.
I get talked about, and written about, plenty. I wanted to tell you about some of the stories and how I handle people who are lying about me. If you’re going through it with some mean people who are telling lies about you, maybe these strategies will give you some inspiration to get through it.
Stretch Marks Make The News!
Once, I had a “wardrobe malfunction” (I wore a belly top!) and pictures of my stomach ended up all over the Internet. That’s fine, except I have stretch marks on my stomach.
I got the stretch marks because I had a baby at a young age and gained a lot of weight. My skin stretched as I got bigger. Lots of women who’ve had children get stretch marks, but instead of pointing that out, people made all kinds of ugly remarks. It is what it is, people. I have stretch marks. Big deal. A lot of women have them, and I’m not ashamed of them.
For a while there, it felt like my stretch marks were the most important thing happening in the whole world. Everybody had to weigh in on how ugly they were, how dark they were, the whole nine.
Really?
This is breaking news? Toya Johnson Carter has stretch marks?
What about the war in Afghanistan? The record numbers of foreclosures and unemployment? What about natural disasters and corrupt politicians and all the problems we’ve got all over the world?
No. “Woman has stretch marks! More at 11!”
It seems like some people really love to find negative things to say. They don’t want to hear anything positive. They don’t want to know the story of how I donated the money for a girl from a less fortunate family to go to prom, from hair to shoes. They don’t want to hear about the good I try to do in the community. They want to catch me doing something wrong, or acting silly or in my bathing suit, just so they can bash me!
What did I do about it?
I first heard about the stretch mark pictures on Twitter. I’m always on Twitter, both to promote the things I’m working on and to stay connected to people. I was getting Tweets from people telling me about the pictures being up on the blog sites. While I did go and check out what was being written and posted about me, I didn’t respond to any of it. I didn’t even reply to the tweets about it.
Why?
Because it’s all a game. The bloggers need stories to drive traffic to their sites. Sometimes the stuff that they post isn’t true, but without information, those folks don’t get paid. So I try to look at it as them just doing a job, the best way they can. I try not to take any of it personally. Actually, when they
stop
talking about you is when you really have to worry!
You Weren’t Invited to That Party
At Halloween a few years ago, me and my friends went to a costume party. After the party ended, we were looking for a place to go to keep having fun. We ended up in a club or something and the vibe was really fun. I probably had a glass of wine or maybe two. I was killing in this little sexy costume, and all of us were dressed up cute. We were taking turns dancing and wiggling, but really just for us girls. It wasn’t like we were trying to entertain some men or working the pole or anything like that. I bet most girls have danced like I was dancing at that party. It was a great night and I really did have a good time, until the next morning when a video of us in our costumes acting wild and silly was posted all over the Internet.
Some people can take the fun out of everything.
I really didn’t see what was wrong with it. We’re all grown and it wasn’t like we had our children with us. We might have been acting a little silly, but mostly we were dancing and talking and having fun. Our costumes were sexy, but it was Halloween. Why not? Costumes are part of the fun of the holiday. The things people had to say made it seem a whole lot worse than it was.
The only reason I saw any of it was because my friends called the next morning and they were like, “Toya, you gotta see it.” So I went online and looked at it and I ended up reading a few of the ugly things people had posted about us. After I saw so much negativity, I was through with it. I shut the computer off and I didn’t look at any more.
It seems like every time I go out, something pops up about it on the Internet and usually it’s all wrong. They’ll say I got a car and money, when I got a handbag, that Dream threw me a party when I threw it myself, that I got a special gift from one person, when it came from another one, and on and on. Sometimes it makes me feel that maybe I should just stop going out, stop having parties, and stop doing things with my friends.
Then I remember that when you stop doing the things you like to do because of what other people might say about it, THEY WIN. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to stop being me, and doing the things I like to do with the people I like to do them with because of what a bunch of haters might say!
Let them write whatever; I won’t be reading it. I’m going to live my life and have fun!
Car Crash
People write things about my daughter, too. Once someone stole pictures of her in her cheerleading outfit and put them on a blog. Since she’s a child, I was able to get the site to take the pictures down. I even made sure I got the pictures back, too. I might ignore pictures of myself and not comment on the lies at all, but she’s just a little girl. There are safety issues and privacy issues with her. I’m not playing with that.