I’m often brought to a place where I can see the events of the past a bit more clearly than I ever could before and it requires me to have a greater measure of emotional control to deal with it, but I see it as very necessary. In order for me to gain a grip on what I have been doing the past eleven months I must consider the actions I had taken in the past and realize that those choices were all, “misguided” to say the least. I thought about my life more in terms of what it should be based on what I thought I deserved and I always found myself insecure and unsatisfied with the results of the fallacy. In retrospect I know that it is not always about what you want and more so about what you do that matters to people in this lifetime.
I chose things out of selfish ambition and out of pride more than out of feeling like I wanted to do something good for someone else for any reason. She meant a lot to me but in the days, months, and years that went by while we were entangled in each other’s affections I pushed her feelings and needs to the side in search for the things just beyond my grasp. For the things that “teased” my senses within my line of sight but at the same time seemed to remain intangible. There were weeks that went by when we would not consider one another; we just lived in the same space. There were times when we might both be trying to say the same thing but wind up arguing our points until one of us, usually her, would admit that we were being a bit foolish. I made the excuse that everything I was doing was so that we could have a life we could be proud of instead of the kind that we had long before either of us knew the others name.
I was jealous, sometimes for a reason and sometimes because I was a drug addict, who couldn’t properly handle his own emotions. I wanted a family so bad that in the middle I lost sight of who I had to please in order for us to be together to have the family. I was jealous because I thought the worst of myself and I assumed that a lot of other people thought the worst of me too. I went out to parties and cheated on my girlfriend because I thought I should take every opportunity to do all the things that made me happy in life regardless of how anybody else felt. I thought I had to play the role that most young black men find themselves in these days; the hustler, the player, and the drug dealer.
Little did I know at the time she saw right through all my lies and she was a bit better at the game than I was because as hard a shell and as much gunk as I carried on my shoulders, she still carried more, but I never really listened to the warning signs. I’ve come this far and now when I look back and I try to place myself in the situations in hindsight, the “thing” I see in my shoes, was more monster than man. That being whose face looks just like mine, he’s not me, but I know he’s still lingering around, somewhere. He did more damage to the people I love than I care to think about, and somehow they’ve forgiven us for the scars we’ve left, but I haven’t been able to forgive or forget that man, that monster with my face.
