It's Time...

Two long weeks have passed and I've truly attempted to act like I'm okay, well, I'm not completely okay and words have always provided me a sense of relief, so tonight I'll relieve some of the pressure that has been weighing on my heart and mind.

I walked into 2020 not knowing what to expect, I'd recently left an entire decade of memories behind me with hopes of creating new memories and stories without reaching back into the past. In life, I've always thought that it's one foot in front of the other, in both good times and bad. Tonight, I'm trying to remember the good whilst leaving the bad exactly where it's meant to be, in the past.

The death of Kobe Bryant was one of the most shocking events which hit home as though I'd lost a family member, lost a friend. For days I found myself crying and wondering how someone like he and his daughter, along with the other passengers, could be taken from earth so quickly and tragically. I grew up with Kobe, watching his game progress from high school into the NBA; truth is I saw too much of myself within the way he approached the game of basketball and people too. IF you didn't grow up around the sport, you probably wouldn't understand the level at which NBA players play, the simple nuances of the game and choreographed movements are like poetry in motion. On January 26, 2020, the motion and importance of sports truly stopped for me, this feeling had been coming but losing a figure so polarizing caused me pause and reevaluate my fandom per se. The loss of Kobe Bean Bryant, to me, was the worst pain I'd felt in some time, it was too real, too soon.

Some days I wake up and look into the mirror in order to see what changes have taken place during the course of my few hours of sleep. I've started to find gray hairs have infiltrated my face and I've also noticed that my hairline is beginning to fade like the icebergs in Antartica (see what I did here). My mindset began to change as well and with that some hard realities also set in, like that of happiness.

We often trick ourselves into thinking that another person completes us or defines us; I won't go too far into this but the thoughts are real. The truth is we're the ones who steer our own emotional ships and the onus is ours to hold. Relationships can be difficult and that can be a relationship with another or the relationship we have with ourselves. From 2012 - 2019, I wasn't honest with myself, I wasn't honest with another, and I floundered almost to the point of extinction, if not for a few friends who wouldn't allow me to fade away. I really thought I'd crumble coming into January of 2020, I thought I'd play games with my heart, mind, and time, her heart, mind, and time; I thought I would continue to sit within a place of loneliness and continue to make excuses for why there wasn't progression within the completion of the house which was built on the sandy shore. The writing was written on the wall and finally, I looked up and acknowledged the message which read, "Note to self, you'll survive..."

"The universe removes everything that you place your worth in, to remind you that it doesn't live there." - Mark Grooves

As we fast forward through Jeffrey Epstein, Covid-19, PPP, $1,200 Stimulus checks, Black Lives Matter, black lives which didn't matter, North Korea, China, famine, no sports, President Trump's tweets, Karen(s), and my passport expiring there is still a second half of the year left for us all to face.

A friend of mine sent me a text today and it read, "I'm worried about you", another friend who has been clutch for far too long, sent a text, "How you holding up", another friend asked, "How's the morning treating you", and another friend said, "You need to come to this house and drink whiskey". Let's be honest, how can you say no to quality whiskey, the answer is you can do so if you're drinking quality vodka with fruit punch. I see so many of you shaking your collective heads at me, casting judgement! Sue me, I'm living my best life, well, not the best, I think my best is still before me if I'm granted a bit more time.

This piece had a different twist than I was initially going to write about, so perhaps it's not quite time for me to say what I want to say, though it was time for me to say something.

"Note to self, you'll survive..."