Month: March 2013

I truly don’t even know where I woke up this morning. I do know I’m disappointed about it. Not that I don’t know where…

…but that I woke up at all.

I managed to get some money and made my way to the metro stop in Owings Mills. When I get there I shuffle right to the ticket machine. My money goes right in and I know exactly where on the screen the next option I need to click will be. I’ve done this before. Too many times for this reason. In fact, I don’t even remember once that I took the metro for nobel reasoning. It’s always been for something evil. In any case, I’m starting to sweat. By the time I walk the short distance to the entrance the ticket is damp. I feel like everyone is staring at me. The businessmen and women. The staff. The hood rats. Shit even the little kids are ice grillin me. It’s like their eyes are talking to me. The eyes of an eight year old are sayin “You fuckin scumbag. One day your kids gonna be my age and you’re gonna be dead or in jail and he’s gonna grow up without a dad or some other niggas gonna raise him for you. Is that want you want, little bitch?”

And this kinda shit happens constantly. And when it happens, I just shake it off. It’s like when you fall and hit your head and see stars and you quickly shake your head side to side to try and get your shit back together. I shake it off and hop on the escalator.

The train is bumpy. The window is like a television to me. And just like life, the picture in it is blurry. Everything is going on outside. People on their way to work. Trees growing. Birds flying. Wind blowing. Cars driving. Shit is moving fast… life is moving fast out there. But on this train, in this body… more specifically in this cold heart, life is dragging on. It couldn’t end soon enough.

Shake that shit off.

I like to look at people. My grandmother used to sit on a bench with me on the boardwalk in Bethany Beach when I was too young to go cause havoc on my own and teach me about “people watching.” She explained that she could sit there and do it for hours. I could never sit still long enough to want to do it that long, but I do it often today.

You would think someone dressed like me, dirty like me, desperate and sick and looking like they’re gonna die any second like me…would keep their head down right? Nah, I like looking people dead in their eyes. It’s weird. It’s like I want them to see how hopeless I am. Either that or I want them to be like “Fuck you lookin at white boy?!?” So we can scrap and maybe I’ll end up not being able to look at anyone ever again.

Long, very long story short… I get my dope and get right back on the train. I decide, “Fuck it. I’m gonna bang this shit right here, I don’t give a fuck.” That was true. I don’t give a fuck. The speakers in the ceiling signal and that same tired ass voice comes on saying “For your safety this vehicle is being monitored…blah blah blah..” I look at the black dome camera mounted on the ceiling, smiling. I give it a wink, and get my shit right. The train is still bumpy, didn’t stop for me just cuz I need to shoot up. But I’m nice with it. I used to be able to take care of business driving with my knees, on an exit ramp…when I still had a car I mean. Imma get one soon though.

I wait till the doors close, somebody is two seats in front of me. I drag my sleeve up, poke my arm, pull that blood up into the chamber and boom. It’s in. The train bumped and I didn’t get it all in, so I just squirt it in my mouth. The train shuffled again, and I missed a little bit and got heroin and blood on the side of my face. I look up and this over weight black woman is looking right at me.

I look right through her and shake it off.

Yesterday I packed the kids up and my friend from Philly up and we drove to that same metro center. I was taking them to the circus. Might not be a big deal to you and believe me, I understand that. But for me, to take my kids to the circus…well, that in itself is something that brought tears to my eyes.

We went into the garage, me and the kids shouting the whole way so we could hear our echoes. It was funny when the baby tried it. Not quite loud enough to echo, but mine and my older sons laughter echoed immediately after every time. So it worked out. We went in and walked right to that same ticket machine I’ve been at many times before. I coached my friend on where on the screen to push and I had a quick flashback. We walked to the same escalator. It didn’t feel like anyone was looking at me. Went up to the landing and boarded.

The train was bumpy still, all these years later. Still bumpy. Only this time, I had my baby on my lap. He was holding my hand. When I tell you for me, this experience was nothing short of magical, you better believe me. I’m not gonna bore you with what happened the rest of the day in great detail. We went to the circus. We walked to the harbor. We walked back to the train. We drove home.

But I will tell you this:

I don’t think I will ever be able to do something as uneventful as riding a subway and not think about my prior life. I don’t think I will ever forget about how alone I was. I won’t forget about how I was suicidal and truly did not care whether I lived or died that day. I won’t forget about how my son grew up for his first seven years on earth.

I couldn’t forget even if I wanted to.

I will also tell you that I am completely ok with that because of how I felt yesterday. I felt the presence of G-d simply by boarding and riding a train. Does that happen to you? It does for me, more often than not. And especially when I’m with my kids. I look at the world differently. The train window holds opportunities to teach and grow and be taught today. It’s a very rewarding way to live and I couldn’t be happier about it.

It’s been like 4 hours since I realized I lost that shit. I think I’ve also lost like 5 pounds of sweat just looking for it. Meanwhile, my son and stepson are basically looking after themselves. I think I should pack em up and go to my boys house and see if he’s got anything. I’ve got like a half hour before I start to get real ill.

Fuck. Let me go check the car one more time.

I walk outside and the air is cold. The kinda cold that would’ve made my eyes tear up if I wasn’t so dehydrated. The kind of cold that in a few years is gonna have me sleeping in my car shivering. It’s gonna have me in a rest stop bathroom on 83 in between Bmore and York for 45 minutes at a clip, just to get warm. This is the cold that’ll have me posted up in the library for 6 hours after I cop my dope because where the fuck else am I going to go? Home? You think I can go home and face them? You think I want them to see me like this?

I’ll go to the library and figure out a way to stop living like this. What I mean is, I’ll figure out a different way, a better way from the 3,000 ways I’ve tried before.

Fast forward thru about 6 or 7 years of the most brutalizing, torturous, pain ridden and pain inflicting, death and despair filled, emptiness and hopelessness you can possibly fathom to today.

My phone went off at 5:45, I was still asleep. I got a voicemail a few minutes later saying that schools were closed. WTF? I looked outside and everything was white. An hour or so later I get a text saying that work is canceled. Perfect.

The baby woke up in a great mood and he stayed like that all day. My oldest was in a great mood when I saw him. He kept disappearing to build some city or something on his laptop. He surfaced to practice his sarcasm and “allow” me to make him food, nachos on request for lunch.

I feel like I have a mini me on my hands when dealing with both of them.

My 2 year old is talking up a storm but mostly using words in a language he must make up as he goes along…and does so with enthusiasm. He has a sense of humor already and I love it. He gives me kisses all day and says “Daddy I luff you” after every time. He calls for his brother when he’s out of eye shot.

But today he did something that I never expected.

Today my oldest son was in his room and out of no where the baby said to me “Daddy, where Canaan? Where Canaan, Daddy?”

I said, “I don’t know, call him.”

“Canaan! Where are you?”

Canaan hollers back from his room. The baby runs down the hall and stands outside of his door.

I’m standing at the end of the hallway looking.

“Canaan? I luff you. You take a medicine?”

I almost dropped to me knees.

My two year old son was making sure his older, epileptic, seizure prone brother took the medicine he needed so that he wouldn’t have a seizure.

Now, I understand that children parrot those around them. That’s fine. That’s partly the point here. That today my kids are hopefully going to be parroting the love that I give them instead of the evil I spread before.

Another point is that my 2 year old chose that subject manner and delivery to parrot in the first place.

But the most important part to me, happened on the other side of that door. I couldn’t see it. The baby couldn’t see it. But my heart felt it.

I imagined how much Canaan’s heart must’ve filled up with love at that moment.

The baby only knows so many words. But he knew the words perfectly to make sure his brother is ok and make sure he knew he is loved. Canaan has gone through more heartache caused by me in his first 7 years on this earth than most do in their lives. But not today.

As a father, I don’t think I could’ve felt another example of pure love more moving than I did at that moment. I am so blessed to be able to experience and see these things. I am so blessed that not only can I be present (physically, mentally and emotionally) to see these things in the first place, but also that my vision is no longer clouded with hate and remorse, so much so that I only saw things that served me and could never be open enough to receive any kind of Divine Love long enough to learn how to spread it around.

I knew as soon as I opened the bag that I got beat. I still had hope that there would be some dope mixed in with the powdered cleaning product that was used as a cut though. I guess it was a cleaning product. It could’ve just been the scare tactics that the D.A.R.E. program brain washed me with in elementary school. You know how they would say “You never know what these drug dealers are mixing in with that stuff. It could be bleach! Or they could be sprinkling rat poison on that marijuana to make it stronger. You just don’t know.”

I never bought into that, it must’ve just still been lurking around in my brain.

In any case, I wasn’t ill yet so I guess I wasn’t desperate enough. I even managed to wait until everyone went to bed. But you better believe as soon as that happened I made moves.  I unzipped my pants and took the needle out of the cut on the inside of my zipper. I took the cap off. I poured the powder in. Drew the water into the tool. Squirted it in the bucket… and looked up for a second. I was in the bathroom and got lost staring at myself, but not in the “Damn I’m sexy”  kinda way. It was one of those moments when you see your reflection, but you don’t see “you.”

Drug addicts often say “I didn’t even recognize myself in the mirror.” That doesn’t mean they think there’s somebody on the other side of the glass looking back at them like that bathroom scene in the Romeo & Juliet movie. Or at least I guess they don’t. Perhaps on certain drugs that makes sense, but what I mean is, I looked at myself and I saw the man I had become. It was terrible. My physical apperance was sad. Eyes sunken in, surrounded by darkness. Skin pale. Scruff on my face. Finger nails black. But what was more impactful was what I saw inside of me. I was tortured and beaten badly on the inside. My own flesh and blood was asleep in his bed, probably hoping that tomorrow would be different. Maybe tomorrow my daddy will be nice. Maybe tomorrow he’ll get my stuff back, maybe he’ll take me to the park or the movies or maybe he’ll love me. I can’t imagine what he must’ve thought. I was broken and to make matters worse, I was tortured and beaten by the only person that I would ever let do that…

…me.

I teared up. I continued to look at the reflection and everything went glassy and blurry through my tears. I couldn’t stop and I didn’t have a choice. When I’m in it that deep, I don’t have a fucking choice anymore. I drew the shit into the needle, tied off, took a deep breath and pushed that plunger.

My arm was on fire. Like, so on fire that the hospital became an option in about 20 seconds. But I felt the dope. There was just enough to satisfy me. The danger associated with shooting up ajax wasn’t big enough for me to blow my high. Fuck it.

I walked out of that bathroom and blew right past the mirror. It wasn’t even there anymore.

Right now as I type this, I have two sleeping children. Both with something going on in their chests and the baby stuffed up in his nose. My oldest soldier sounds like he has the voice of a 65 year old black man who’s having another go at puberty. (I’ll give you a minute to visualize that one)

My baby has woken up twice and he’s probably going to wake up 4 more times before the sun rises.

Tomorrow I will wake up and thank G-d for another day and ask Him what I need to do and then I’ll do that. And I’ll work hard and I’ll come home and do it again. And I will look in the mirror and be grateful. I will look in the mirror and see the man that I have become…

…and I will be pleased with that.

It’s a funny thing how today I can look in the mirror and see myself, but see a completely different person then I did before. I could never go back to being that man. And fuck all that “One day at a time” bullshit. I know I couldn’t. There is nothing imaginable that would deter me from being available to go in there and scoop that little soldier up when he’s crying and hold him and whisper to him that I love him.

Nothing.