Priceless Inspirations (14 page)
That did it, and my stalker zoomed off. I didn’t see him or that car any more on the rest of the drive home, but I was still all shook up by that. I live by myself and I only have security guys around me when I travel and do events. That was the incident that led me to first start thinking that maybe I needed to own a gun, and learn how to shoot it, just in case I found myself in a situation where I needed to defend myself.
I did get a gun, and I’ve taken some classes on how to use it. I’ve been to the shooting range a few times, but I’m not sure that was such a good idea. I want to be safe and I sometimes feel like I need more protection, but I’m just not comfortable holding a gun. I’ve realized that too many people I’ve known have gotten shot and this has made me terrified of guns. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do to feel safer from stalkers, but I’m going to have to do something. You can’t be too careful.
Toya’s Priceless Gem: Dating bailers and rappers is fine, but remember their fame and their money are theirs. It’s so much better to have your own. No one can ever take that from you
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Everybody’s got some fake friends, and it doesn’t matter where you are in life, there are always gonna be people who only like you because of what you can do for them, what you’ve got, or who you associate with. Even before I had a television show, and even before Dream was as big as he is today, there were girls who only wanted to be friendly with me because they thought they could get something out of it.
You know what I’m talking about. Some girls want to hang with you because you’re pretty and they think you can help them get guys. Some want to hang with you because you’re smart and they want you to do their school work, or because you’ve got cute clothes and they want to borrow them. Still others want to hang with you because you have some money to spend and they don’t have any.
Now that Dream is so well-known, a lot of girls want to be my friend because of him, even though we aren’t married anymore and I don’t see him that often. They’re really nice at first, but before too long, they start asking things like “When you gonna see Dream?” and “What’s he like?” and “Can I meet him?”
It’s happened to me so much that I’m a whole lot more suspicious of people than I used to be. It’s harder for me to trust than it used to be, and I take longer to get to know people before I call them “friend.” I’ve learned to be real careful about what I say out in public, even if it’s just chatting with the girl who’s doing my hair. There are some sad and crazy people out there, and it seems like every single one of them has a blog. I don’t want anything that I say to come out on the Internet all twisted into something I don’t recognize. I know it sounds paranoid, but if you’ve ever had someone start spreading some lies about you on the Internet, you know how I feel.
So when I first meet someone new, and even when I talk to my old friends, or friends I’ve had since middle school, I’m careful about what I say and how much of my business I share. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
What I do know is that friendship, true friendship, is very, very important to me. In trying to find and keep true friends, I’ve made my share of mistakes. Here are some things I’ve learned that I hope can help you sort out the fake from the real in your own friendships.
Hanging With the Older Kids
Growing up, I didn’t have many friends, and most of the friends I had were older than me, sometimes by only a year or two, and sometimes by four or five years. When you’re a kid, even a year or two of maturity makes a big difference. There’s a big difference in what you might be doing and feeling at ten than at 12. There’s a big difference between twelve and fourteen, and a big difference between 14 and 16.
When you’re older, age doesn’t matter as much and it’s easy for a 25 year old and a 30 year old to be close. However, being 13 and hanging out with girls who are 17 or 18, makes for a big difference in what’s legal, acceptable and appropriate.
I would have argued with you about this when I was 12 or 13. I would have said that I was plenty mature and I was cool with hanging with people older than me. Now that my daughter is about this age, I can say with absolute certainty that I wasn’t ready to hang with kids that much older than me. They were more mature than me because they were older, and their bodies and brains were in different places than mine. Most of my daughter’s friends are her age, maybe a little younger or not too much older. It’s better for her. It would have been better for me to have friends my own age, and I would have had friends my age if I had listened when Uncle Nat and other family members were trying to keep me away from my older friends.
When I look back on it, though, I don’t think I ever had more than few friends who were my age. I wanted to be with the older kids, so that’s who I looked for and tried to hang around. I thought by hanging around with them, I’d be cool and more grown. I thought that hanging around with them made me as mature as they were, but I really wasn’t. I was still 13 or 14 on the inside, I was just doing grown up things.
Like you already know, this caused me the kinds of problems you want to avoid.
Friends
My closest friends when I was in school were Tasha, Kiani and Ashley. Of the three, Tasha was the friend who was in my life the longest, and who was probably my best friend.
Me and Tasha were tight--jam tight. We did everything together, and everything I had, she had, and every guy I dated, she dated his friend. We used to dress alike, act alike and be alike in every way we could. Tasha lived with her mom and her sister. Everyone said she was the pretty one. She had a cute little mixed look that the boys liked. She had the kind of freedom I wanted to have. She could stay out as long as she wanted to and sleep over at anyone’s house she wanted to. I wanted to do that, too, but at the time I was living with Uncle Nat and Aunt Kris, and they wouldn’t let me. They wouldn’t let me have sleepovers either, so Tasha and I didn’t get to do that, but just about everything else two friends could do, we did together.
We started hanging out in middle school and stayed tight all through school and beyond.
Even then, people were warning me about her.
“Tasha want to be like you,” other friends and relatives said about her. “She always trying to copy off what you’re doing and saying and wearing.”
I did not see it like that. The way I saw it, we were just tight. Of course, Tasha and I wore the same clothes, talked alike, acted alike, and thought alike. It wasn’t that she was copying me; it was that we were just friends like that. I thought it was completely normal for us to be so much the same. I thought that was just part of being real good friends.
Every now and then, Tasha would do something and I would wonder if we were the good friends I thought we were. Once, when she was dating a friend of Dream’s named Bobby, she ended up going on a double date with Dream and another girl when Dream was supposed to be dating me. She didn’t tell me.
I thought it was strange that she didn’t say anything, especially knowing how I felt about Dream and all the drama he was putting me through with other girls. Maybe that’s why she
didn’t
tell me. She knew how much I was going through and she knew that the information would only hurt me.
That’s what I told myself at the time.
She had her baby a couple of years after my daughter Reginae was born and had to get her daughter everything Reginae had. As Dream became more successful and shared his wealth with me and my daughter, I started to notice things I hadn’t paid much attention to before.
Like how she was with money.
I never have been the sort of friend who kept score with money. If you’re my friend, and you need something and I have it to give, I give it. I’m not like “You owe me that money” and I don’t count every dollar I lay down versus how many you lay down. If we go out and you’re short and I got something, I’ll cover you and it’s no problem. I figure you’ll catch me the next time, or pick it up when I’m a little short. It’ll even out because we’re friends and that’s what friends do.
Tasha wasn’t like that, especially once Dream started really making money and everyone knew it. Tasha would give me $20 when we were out some place and I was running a little short, then come over the very next day at seven o’clock in the morning to demand her money back from Dream like I was some kind of deadbeat and she was the repo man.
“Where’s my money at? Where’s my money?”
I remember Dream turning to me with his mouth open in amazement.
“That’s your
friend?
” he would grumble, reaching into his pocket.
As we got older, I noticed that while she always wanted to hang with me and was the first to accept an invitation to go out, her money never came out with her. She never wanted to pay for anything. She seemed to feel like I should cover everything with the money Dream gave me and that her only contribution should be to show up, even though she knew how much I hated to ask Dream for money and how much I had to go through just to get it.
“Opportunistic.” That was the word people started using to describe her. “She’s out for what she can get, and she’s gonna try to get as much as you got.”
I was warned. My older cousins told me over and over again, and they could see what I couldn’t. You can’t always go off what people tell you. You’ve got to go through it and learn it for yourself.
Finally, after years of friendship, I started to see it. I took her daughter to Disney World when I took Reginae. Of course, I paid all of the expenses and didn’t ask her to contribute a dime, but she’s never invited my daughter anywhere or out to do anything. Every year I send her and her daughter something nice for their birthdays, but when mine or Reginae’s rolls around, not even a card.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not boiling friendship down to who spends what and how much. I know not everyone has money to spend on gifts and stuff like that. But you do start to notice it when people are the first ones to want to hang when you’re spending
your
money, and the first ones to complain when they have to spend their own. You start to notice it when people don’t even offer to contribute to their own good time. You start to notice it when it seems like you’re making all the effort in the friendship and the other person can’t even remember to pick up the phone on your birthday.
The Mistake I Made That You Shouldn’t
I let it go on longer than I probably should have because of how close we were when we were younger and the fact that our daughters were friends. The other mistake was that I didn’t say anything about it, when I probably should have. I don’t think she really knew how I was feeling and it might have made a difference if she’d known.
My friendship with Tasha taught me to watch out for onesided friendships, and to avoid friends who only want me for what I have, who I know or what I can do for them. My friendship with Tasha taught me to be on the look-out for friends who try to copy everything I do.
For years, I had been talking about starting my own boutique. I love fashion, and I love beautiful clothes. I love helping other women find a look that sends a message or makes them feel sexy. It’s been a dream of mine for a long time, and I’ve been talking about it long enough to make Tasha start thinking about opening a shop of her own.
I was trying to put my ideas together, find a location, get some investors and the like, and Tasha was doing the exact same thing. She found a great location and worked very hard on her store.
When her store opened, I went to support her. I spent money, and I told my friends. I found it strange that she never offered to help me get my store off the ground, share her expertise in retail, or even suggest that we go into business together, since we both had the same idea.
For Tasha, friendship was competitive, which I guess isn’t the way I think good friends should be. After years of talking and planning, though, I did finally open my store, The Garb. It’s got lots of stylish, fun, cool clothes that look great without costing designer money. When you’re in New Orleans, you’ve got to stop by! Here’s another example: When I found out that Dream was having a child with another girl, I was broken up. I had moved to Atlanta by then, and I was lonely and depressed anyway. The news that Dream had gotten another girl pregnant was really just too much for me. I didn’t know anyone in Atlanta to talk to, so I called Tasha in New Orleans.
