Muliple beings

MULTIPLE BEINGS


I’ve lived in so many places, been through so many situations, and met so many people that it always seemed as though I lived multiple lives. If I had to fill out a timeline during one of my many social studies classes in high school, I can honestly say with absolute certainty that I was never able to complete the assignment. Even my childhood was a mystery. I can account for seeing a few old pictures of myself younger than age 14 but that was years ago before we lost most of our belongings in a mysterious house fire in Conroe. I piece together all that I’ve heard of myself when I was younger from my siblings, my mother, and on rare occasions, my grandmother, nevertheless, I can’t help but to feel like a ghost roaming around a living mortal. I’d take the time to go back in this essay and change the title to “Oblivion,” but that’ll be a stretch.

When you’re lost, it’s not easy to find yourself again. I struggle with my current life and wonder about the past. I can ponder on a day that is unveiled by nostalgia combing the catacombs of my brain and opening a door that has been closed for awhile. Although when I wake from this memory and return back to reality, I find that I am moving at a speed so accelerated that I am burying the recent past in more concrete, concrete I have not the power to break through. So as I journey on, I create such vivid details of my childhood and replace the debauchery that no child should every face, a harsh road that no child should ever stray. I once heard a therapist say that “memories are like roads, sometime we lose their location but we eventually find them.” It took me time to dissect such an opinion but I found no merit to compare it with my disassociation. Even if it had registered that I was repressing my childhood, I wouldn’t have done it for too long, it would end up oppressing me.

My childhood was the supermarket of human suffering. The abuse I took, the poverty my family lived in, the jungle that closed in on us everyday; it is the only memory that I can use as a pinpoint and make my way to present-day. Families rise and fall in America on occasion. Bloodlines die off without legacy and the long lineage of history finally finds it way into the undertaker’s dominion. My family lost a lot. We spilled a lot of blood, scarified a great deal of dignity and respect while feeding into the stereotypes of African-American people. One thing we can say that, one thing that we can flaunt proudly, is that we survived, slowly but surely, we made it out of the depths of the wastelands we’d been left to die in. My mind never leaves the many obstacles that other young African-American males like myself would have to climb while growing up; gang life, drugs, murder, prison, as well as the epidemic of HIV/AIDS. The challenges of making it is difficult but no one makes it out of a war zone without losing a piece of mind, its like losing a bit of life, but not all of it, it’s fortunate trade. I have nothing short of an honest hope for the many left in the wastelands, miseducated and isolated beyond comprehension. I keep my voice high and my pen moving because if there is anything that keeps me living, it is having a voice to begin with. I would take the time to go back in this essay and change the title to “Oblivion,” but I’m still alive. I say that with a smile, bearing my many scars, taunting the perils of battle like a fearless soldier. I’m still alive.


[2005]