CARE FOR ME, BUSY/SIRENS
TW: suicide
I been in a strange place.
During a performance May 8th I had a whole breakdown on stage. I felt off the entire day, wasn’t my best performance. It was the first Mother’s Day without Granny being on earth, seeing Dad grieving the lost of his mother. I was a bit triggered because when I was out of town performing last year, she died. Part of me does get a little scared something can happen while i’m away.
At the venue, I was having flashbacks of conversations with my mom regarding my near death experience with covid. She tells me often that was the scariest moment of her life. We had to talk to each other through a glass at a distance over the phone. I was too weak to walk towards the glass, and can barely speak on the phone literally relearning how to breathe being hooked to machines.
Admittedly I been in a space of wanting to disappear. What holds me back is knowing my moms reaction to it. Also remembering how my college campus responded to an individual committing suicide Fall 2013. Everyone was dead quiet the following day. You only heard people crying.
My brother called me the other night and basically pleading for me to take the route of “radical accountability” and make amends with people I have walked away from for my own health. Yes, I do care, at the same time, all these years I have placed everyone & their needs above mine. I am tired of over-extending myself. I no longer have the energy for that. Then he brings up the death of our other brother Evan. Evan died March 2020, a week before his birthday. Me and Evan had issues with each other over business for 8 years up til that point.
A week before his passing, he reached out and asked to talk. I said I was down, and that we should figure out a time. My work schedule was ridiculous having 4-5 days in a row working from 3pm-12am. Me and him never got to talk because he passed away. In relation to the current situation at hand, the question of never knowing what can happen the next day, the next week was brought about. I deal with survivors remorse all the time. From being the first of the males in my family to go to college and finish. Seeing a place beyond LA. A high school friend died in a car crash my sophomore year. I never got the chance to resolve our issues as we wasn’t speaking at the time. It definitely sting a bit. Evan obituary sits at the same spot on my desk everyday. Most recently it’s been the issue of grappling with success and doing definitely things folks I came up with wanted to do but went on a different path.
These days, my paranoia has been flaring up. Kinda feel like I been wandering around and trying to figure out where I belong. No one has done anything, but I side-eye people a lot. Like are you going to be the next one to hurt me? While friends on May 8th gave support, I went into that defensive mode. Fight or flight.
The whole “the world is out to get you, protect yourself” mode. I feel embarrassed for thinking like that. No one absolutely deserves that. There's so many people I haven't gotten back to in weeks and I feel guilty.
I present my heart with trembling hands with new people in fear of someone snatching it or me self-sabotaging and dropping it my damn self.
*Dreaming With Trauma Visualizer (snippet.) Shot & Edited by Kroll. Creative Direction by Lawan Thomas (Luhweezy)
Being young black, dark-skinned & queer, just feels like you gotta learn the ability bob & weave at any given moment. I avoided death a few times off that survival instinct. Those incidents led to being diagnosed with severe anxiety & PTSD.
I hate talking about this shit so often. I guess I yearn for someone to relate and actually understand what the hell is going in my mind. I want to talk about other things than whats wrong. More about the positive connections I have with people.
I hate endings, but I be damned if I put others before myself again and feel my spirit break because of that.
This entire month, feels like the world around me is collapsing. Juggling three jobs, breaking down my emotions to understand why I am, the way I am when it comes to developing relationships with people.
My homie Keirock told me to surrender to God. Full on surrender. Another friend of mine, Jadlyn said the same thing. My pastor called me earlier this week right on time talking about the same thing.
There’s so much to celebrate. A lot. I released my first album. The second single is getting thousands of plays. Getting offers on progressing my career. One of my main inspirations, Saul Williams knows who I am.
Yesterday, I spoke to a new friend, Kuahmel about the health of spoken word artist. This is real. If you are not careful on all levels things can get dangerous. One level is it's putting everything out there for people to consume in terms of your story and parts of yourself. The other is actually acknowledging within' self what you need to proceed and taking care of self. In March my left was out of commission. Now my right foot decided to give out.
I know so many artists with health issues. Now I'm experiencing that on a mental and physical level. An hour ago, my father just asked, whats going on with you? I said I'm okay. He said that's not what I asked, and I broke down. Could barely say everything that's in my mind.
I don’t know what exactly it is, but I feel unsafe.
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