Insecure: Issa Dee is Trash.Point Blank. Period.

Alert!! There are no Season 2 spoilers. Promise.
Insecure is one of the hottest new shows on HBO. I’d venture to say the only show that is more talked about than Insecure from HBO is Game of Thrones (that’s a whoooooole other blog post though). The show’s success makes me feel good. I was a fan of Awkward Black Girl, and Issa Rae deserves every break she gets. She’s an extremely talented woman and has yet to disappoint us. She’s definitely #BlackGirlMagic.
Issa Dee, on the other hand, is trash.
Now, after watching Season 1 of Insecure (not to be confused with the low budget film N-Secure, starring Cordell Moore and Essence Atkins lol) and reading all the think pieces, I came to the conclusion that both Issa AND Lawrence were trash. Issa wasn’t right about what she did, but her transgression was only a notch on the train wreck that was their relationship. My opinion was solidified by all of the disparaging comments made by the LawrenceHive on Twitter. More than anything, their response to Issa is what made me, as a Black woman, feel like I needed to fight for Issa Dee. I found myself echoing sentiments about how guys that were dragging Issa Dee wouldn’t be singing the same tune if the roles were switched.

And I’d be right. We all know at least one guy who has cheated dozens of times and expected a full pardon no matter the circumstances, but just the THOUGHT of his partner possibly cheating on him would send him into a cardiac episode. But, that’s not the point. It never was.
A couple of friends and I had a discussion about the Season 2 premiere. These are friends who reason well, so when my stance on something seems to be too far off from one of them I have to ask why. Well, come to find out, I didn’t see the last two episodes of Season 1. That’s a problem because the foundation of everything I felt was based on those two episodes not existing in my brain. Not that I agreed with her cheating. I admitted she was wrong. But I’d underestimated just how much Lawrence loved her and was trying to be a better partner, and I underestimated just how shitty Issa really is.
I won’t write an entire epistle about the episodes, but in episode 7, Issa showed her Black ass. First she tells Daniel, the classmate from back in the day with whom she cheated, he was “just a scratch [she] needed to itch.” Then she DRAAGGGGGSSS her best friend, Molly. Mind you, this is AFTER Molly runs interference to keep Daniel away from Lawrence since they are all at a fund-raiser for Issa’s job. Later, instead of bossing up and being real about having an affair when Lawrence asks her about it, she pretends to not know what he’s talking about then starts apologizing. She never uttered the words “yes, I did it.” Punk move.
This alone doesn’t make Issa trash though. Throughout the whole season we see her complaining about her job, complaining about Lawrence, complaining because the sun was just too bright that day (emphasis added lol). I think it’s safe to say that Issa Dee is dissatisfied with her existence. She blamed everything and everyone for her misery. Don’t like your job? Get a new one. Think your boyfriend is unmotivated? Talk to him about it, and not in the passive agressive “haha these bills tho, n*gga” way she approaches stuff. Lawrence sitting on the coach and not understanding how burdensome it was for him not to be adding to the house finances makes me feel some type of way, yes, but it does not justify unfaithfulness. Yo, if you cannot take it, then LEAVE. But she didn’t. She didn’t leave because she wanted the safety net that was Lawrence. Daniel expressed trying to have something with her, but that’s not what she wanted. She never intended on leaving Lawrence. For good or bad, she was sure he was going to be there keeping her bed warm. Starting over with Daniel was too much of a risk. It wasn’t until after she added the Daniel “spice” to life that she realized he wasn’t the miracle answer she imagined. He was just an orgasm. Her life still sucked, so it might as well suck with who she already had.
So, if these are the details, then why pray tell were we ever talking about men who cheat?
Red herring: Attempting to redirect the argument to another issue to which the person doing the redirecting can better respond; [it] is the deliberate diversion of attention with the intention of trying to abandon the original argument.

My Black sisters (and some male feminists) came out in DROVES to support the narrative about Black men cheating and not being able to take it when it happens to them. Alongside them were the sisters who didn’t feel so strongly about it, but were complicit with their silence. I’m coming right out and saying it- I was wrong and so were y’all.
The reason we turned the conversation to be about them is because we didn’t want to deal with ourselves. We didn’t want to talk about the dead-end relationships we’ve stayed in because we were afraid of growing old alone. We didn’t want to talk about how you may not have cheated per say, but you don’t protest your “work husband” Jamal doing stuff for you because you “deserve to be treated like a queen.” We didn’t want to admit that sometimes we allow what we see on TV, in movies, and on social media to be our #RelationshipGoals, even though we know they are not realistic or sustainable. In a nutshell, we don’t want to admit that sometimes we are also what’s wrong with our lives.
I’m no different. You may have heard the story about how I was with someone, got diagnosed with breast cancer, he was cheating while I was laid up at home recovering from a double mastectomy (he swore I was cheating with a gay guy), and then he left me for the crackwhore (she literally was on drugs and sleeping with men for money…including him) with whom he was cheating. There is just NO WAY I could be at fault in this huh? WRONG. At least three months before it came out about the cheating and him leaving, long before I knew I had cancer, I knew something wasn’t right. I fake broke up with that dude almost on a weekly basis, so much so that our friends stopped believing we were separated. You know why? I was almost 30. I was a virgin. I hadn’t ever had a serious prospect for a relationship and this guy said he wanted to get married (he admitted later he lied for sex). I stayed because I felt sorry for myself. I was a good woman who deserved to have someone by her side. I felt vindicated because he was a soccer player and it shut down every person who ever said I was too fat to end up with someone with his physique. I stayed because everyone was just so happy that I was with someone; even said I was a better person since dating someone. But mostly I stayed for sex. I’d been sexless for nearly 30 years and I didn’t want to go back to that life.
Mind you, a condom fell out of his wallet one day that wasn’t the brand we used. He told me the biggest, stupidest lie and I told him he was lying, but I stayed. Chemo had started and I couldn’t deal with losing him, even if he was a ho. No, I didn’t make him cheat, but he wouldn’t have been able to hurt me the way he did if I would have been brave enough to leave. And I think that’s what we should have been talking about, especially us Black women- why do we hold on long after we should let go. Honestly, if I were Issa I would’ve rolled out. I’m 33. Life has been ROUGH. I do believe in the come-up, but I don’t have the capacity to support someone who wants me to offer a 100% financial backing while he chases his dreams. Nope. I’m not paying for law school, med school, your start-up…none of it. And I’m not gonna ask you to do those things for me either. I can offer you emotional support and encouragement. I can give you free advice on business development. Heck, I will edit your business plan free of charge, bruh. But your dream is your dream and you need to make that work whilst still paying the light bill. Now, everyone doesn’t feel that way. That’s me. I know me. So I’m not gonna stick around then complain that you aren’t living up to my vision of you. You are not alive to contort to my fantasy. If I don’t like you-whoever you are and wherever you are in your life- then I need to take my butt somewhere else. Period.
I end by saying this- sisters, let’s keep each other accountable about our stuff. Be Molly… be real with your homegirls. Don’t be Issa. We are so much better than that. Ending a relationship is not the worst thing can happen. It may be what you need to find out why you are so dissatisfied in so many areas of your life. Go do some soul searching. And then jump back in the dating pool when you’re ready to be accountable in a relationship. Most of all, please remember how much we hate for men to use us as scapegoats when they are being trashy. Us doing the same thing makes us trash too. Don’t be trash, sis…. don’t be trash.
Flashe out!
