Rolling stone part 2 /2 (aka movin' on and on)

01/07, Terrie and I move to Santa Ana

07/07 Amidst the growing bullshit manic wave number two starts to hit

08/07 After a number of hospitalizations, in July, I fly home to Boston

08/07 Having had plans to attend graduate school in Berkeley in the fall, I insist to my doubting parents that it is the place for me to be, so they fly me out there and I last no more than a week before jumping my manic self back on a plane (with an assist from my closest friend from high school, Ryan).

09/07-08/08. It was an especially dark year at home. Routinely slept 12-14 hours a day, only barely functioning enough to bum cigarettes off my mother.

08/08. Somewhere I muster up the gumption to pretend like a give a fuck about the cult of productivity enough to attempt to return to Berkeley. I fly back out to Berkeley to give it the old grad school try.

09/08. Still depressed, lost, and confused I go to the well with Maria one last time, this time with talks of playing for keeps. In fact, I kinda proposed to her via myspace (so fucking lame I know, but desperate times…). She’s back on board.

08/08. Stressed out over the way things are going at Berkeley, a fight over FB IM would be the last I ever heard from Maria. Much love to her for the effort, a rider if there ever was one.

09/09. Grad school has been difficult, a journey wrought with being overly medicated to the point that damn near cripples me physically, but we were scarred up and still flowing to that point. Feel lighter without having to worry about living up to Maria’s expectations of courtship (btw, Maria was in So Cal, while I was in Berkeley for this last go round, so the distance was a stressor as well), and eventual husbandry. With a case manager and doctor’s recommendations in hand, I ask my advisor to postpone my MA exam for the coming spring. Request is denied. Instead of hopping over his desk, and showing him a thing or two, the anger is internalized, and I go manic for wave # 3.

02/10. After a manic wave that saw me hospitalized in the Spring as well, I exit the hospital and come home to an eviction notice on my door. Fuck it, I thought, and flew back home, yet again.

03/10-08/11. Boston bound. Thanks to many a game of Madden online via Terrie this stay at home wasn’t nearly as bad as the ones three years prior.

09/11. Decide to move to Atlanta

08/12. back to Boston, folks.

Papa was a rolling stone (it's in my ancestry as Jay-Z notes) / timeilne part one.

On the move,

Instead of a typical post, I figured I’d try something different, since last night’s sleep wasn’t the best, the desire to put together a regular post would feel forced.

Perhaps reflective of my own instability and/or lack of direction, even prior to my diagnosis I’ve decided to make timeline with brief annotation, noting the physical moves I’ve made since graduating from the old alma mater (University of So. Cal, if you were unaware. Fight On!)

05/04 graduate, move out of senior year dorm to summer apt in the same building

06/04 begin work at the Black Sports Agents Association

08/04 moved off campus and rented a room

02/05 too drained by office politics and depressed by the Brenda situation to say in LA, packs up the Corolla and makes it home to Bostonin just under two and half days

03/05 Eurotrip. Pope JPII dies on my 23^rd birthday, while I happened to be in Rome. It should be noted that on that day, Maria was literally the only person in the world, to acknowledge my bday without prompting. Sidenote, the prince or Monaco, died the following day, as we approached. Weird.

06/05 like a loyal hounddog flies out to see what was up with Brenda to make sure the door was shut around the time of her graduation. It was. Surprises Maria in OC with visit while out there to see if that door was still open. It was. Goes back to LA and escorts Brenda back to Yakima, by Greyhound. Files back to OC to kick it with Maria for a couple of weeks or so. Good, carefree times were had, so many so that seeing what was there (while intuiting it was nothing) seemed like a good idea

08/05 Flies out to OC to make it work with Maria. Made the crucial mistake of half-stepping, however, or not keeping my thought, word, and deed in alignment. You know, saying one thing and doing another. I guess she was tired of the BS, and started seeing someone else… while I lived 2 complexes down. Mania and homicidal/suicidal fantasies ensue.

11/05 Despite a trip to the firing range, to ease some tension, it’s thought best not to make headlines. Fly back to Boston, take rage out on father with a right hook the eye as manic firestorm ensues.

11/05-01/06 on probation and hospitalized for the assault and manic wave respectively

04/06 PO grants permission to go out of state to pickup and transport home the Porsche I had bought during the Maria unpleasantness. Of course while out there, we rekindle things.

05/06 Around memorial day, drive from boston to DC to visit older sister, Jessica. Kick it there for the weekend the drive down to ATL to visit the homie Terrie. Oh and yes, I left Boston with the original intent of going straight to OC to live with Maria, again…

06/06 Terrie and I open up our sportscars on the open road and drive from ATL to LA/OC respectively.

12/06, Maria and I finally have enough of each. Move out of her apartment after blowing up at her, and I move up the freeway with Terrie at his sister’s crib. 

Escalator to Nowhere, No thank you.

To further touch on what was written last time, being diagnosed as having bipolar disorder was not my choice, however passing on many a socioeconomic “privilege” has been.

Again as is often the case we have to take it back in order to go forward. I was fortunate enough to receive some of the finest education the New England Prep School circuit has to offer. Beginning in kindergarten at the Meadowbrook School, I was found myself at the crossroads of privilege and opportunity. Though I always appreciated the friends made (with whom many I have reconnected via facebook- including my first girlfriend, and yes, she was the prettiest girl in the class :) and later came to cherish the intellectual/academic bootcamp that Meadowbrook provided, the track upon which it set me led to a veritable vortex of khakis and cardigans. Despite being young I sensed that this track would take me on a special ride, one that would separate me from my neighborhood friends, who didn't have to go to school in fifth and sixth grade, with the option of a turtleneck or tie under their blazer (note: to this day, I have an especial aversion towards neckties, and only wear them when I must (read: never). Despite their seemingly innocuous origins from many centuries ago (the particulars of which I'm too lazy to google and relay) as yet another accessory that has form, but no function, having something akin to a dangling phallus hanging around my neck that can be turned easily into a noose-like hanging mechanism never sat well with me, as a young black male. 

After graduating Meadowbrook, I went to an all-boys school for seventh grade, in retrospect only because my best friend was going. Yet in the limited foresight of my twelve years, I failed to see the foolishness and foulness that comprise the daily goings on of hormone fueled, pubescent boys with no natural outlet for their nonsense.

Aside from seeing everything from feces being transported from the john to a literal hole in the homeroom wall for an especially foul-smelling start to many  morning, farting contests in class,  games of soggy cookie (google it, if you must) to hearing about cocaine and champagne fueled parties of the upper class boiys  while parents were out of town, I was out of place from jumpstreet. The misery that gripped me during that year was reflected in an uncharacteristic underachievement in the classroom, save for Latin, the only class I enjoyed.

As it relates to “privilege” however, I quickly realized these were not my type of people. While generalizations can be risky business, on the whole, in relation to the people I’ve met since, at Belmont Hill I had the misfortune of meeting some of most overprivileged and underexposed dirt bags this side of the Mississippi. I didn’t care then what office their daddy held, what which sports team he owned, what fortune 500 company he founded, whose Ivy league admissions board he oversaw and still don’t today. At that age, with no young girls to occupy a young boys mind, about the only thing I cared about was whether their daddy taught them how to throw a decent spiral.

Enough with the nonsense, I said, I quickly opted for a degree of normalcy, and left the prep school bullshit behind and went to public school, where I had the privilege of having my social skills nurtured by a cross-section of the population that was far more reflective than those I had or would meet along the escalator to nowhere.

On blaming the victim (for lack of a better term).

My little sister, Nicole, in the sage wisdom of her 23 years (note the sarcasm, should it not be directly inferable), suggested that my circumstance was of my choosing, that somehow or another my diagnosis, the chaos that followed it, and the assortment of seemingly ill-advised decisions was a conscious series of events, the outcome of which were voluntary.

Oh young sister, learn a thing or two, inform yourself about mental illness in general and bipolar disorder in particular before you further expose and embarrass yourself, I implored. This rejection of her sentiment was expressed directly and somewhat indirectly, but it reeked of blaming the victim, for lack of a better term.

First and foremost, I am not my diagnosis. Transitively said, a person with cancer is not cancer nor are they hardly “cancerous” nor carcinogenic, nor anything of the sort. My diagnosis is an incidental, genotypic marker of sorts, one which hardly defines me in sum. Secondly, the diagnosis, and any of the decisions made under the influence of mania and or depression, should be taken for what they were. This is not to run and hide behind the, “it wasn’t me, it was my illness” excuse, but if temporary insanity holds up in the court of law, why not that of familial opinion? Furthermore, aside from semantic distinction and connotative understanding, if someone can succinctly explain the difference between an excuse and an explanation, this armchair psycholinguistic fanatic is all ears. But I digress.

For a corollary that reeks of victim-pointing let us take a look at the hot girl (my ex-girlfriend, Maria, for example) who despite her best efforts is continually hit upon by any number of thirsty guys in a given day. Not once while being regaled with her stories of potential suitors harassing her did I suggest to my former flame, even for a moment, that there was anything she should have been doing to thwart their suggestive approaches. She dressed modestly, yet because of her dollface and enticing assets, regardless of her sartorial choices, she, as a waitress, often found herself on the receiving end of many a cat call.

Let’s take this scenario a step further if you will allow. Let’s talk rape. There are any number of reported cases when a female will be raped more than once. How would it sound if that victim’s family members were to say, “Becky, you slut, you could have avoided this from happened multiple times… You should have taken even more precaution, etc, etc.” It sounds horrible plain and simple.

So when the bipolar guy goes off the deep end more than once, yet he is on his medication and going to therapy per doctor’s orders, somehow it’s his fault that these episodes keep on occurring as if there was something more he could or should have been doing. (Ok, I lied, one final corollary. If my diagnosis was cancer, as suggested above, or any physical illness for that matter, and the tumor kept coming back and resurfacing after extended periods of remission, how fair would it be to say, “Chris, you’ve been in chemo, you’re taking your pills,” that cancer you chose to have really is your fault. Yes, folks, it would sound as ridiculous as it does sadistic.)

For everyone’s information, now that I am out of the house, I am on my meds (20 mg of abilify daily) In fact, just to quiet any future or further complaints from the peanut gallery and further ensure my sustained wellness, I may up this dose or add a mood stabilizer to the mix, since abilify is typically classified as an antipsychotic, which can complemented by stabilizers).

Teaser for you folks at home: In my next post, tentatively titled, “Finally Homeless” I hope to further discuss privilege, and what may seem like a masochistic rejection of it, as it regards my current(ly changing) circumstance.

It will further get you up to speed, but the narrative posts, and my non-creative, story-telling self, had to take a break from the narrative updates, to give you a piece of my mind, as I prefer to do. Gah, attempting to improve on the biographical sketching though, for your entertainment and my own, my look into creative writing techniques, so as to avoid the linearity and dryness that may have affected the readability of my last few posts (apologies, folks.) 

It's all in me and it's all on me... "Finally," (in the rock voice).

To so unceremoniously infer that my mental welfare was a distant second to the whereabouts of the dog let me know where I stand. Combine that with more than a couple of elevated cleaning/purging sprees to counter the hoarding that surrounded me like a virus, and it was obvious to see where I stood in my mothers’ eyes: as a problem.

Her material stuff mattered more than my mental sanity. Her Canine meant more to her than her Chris.

This is not to knock my mother in the least. I’m obviously biased, but in less than hyperbolic terms I have long referred to her as the world’s best mother, having been there every step of the way for me for a solid 30 and one half years. She had been my rock, a beacon in the darkness, and a hero, yet the toll of my cumulative toll of my diagnosis on the family and apparently her peace of mind had become too much to bear.

Because many of her possessions had been moved, rearranged, and some of the junk simply tossed to preserve my sanity, her peace of mind was impacted. From the Beta, incident forward I was on thin ice, knowing my days at the house were numbered.

Fast forward a couple of months, and with the pressure to leave mounting, I finally said fuck it. The under the breath, indirect comments pointing the door, left me with no other reasonable, sanity-maintaining alternative than to hit the homeless shelter.

During that time, I began working at Whole Foods. It is a wonderful company and everything is run like a well-oiled machine from top to bottom. In terms of my desire for cleanliness, order, and efficiency, it has met and exceeded my expectations. The customers are happy to shop there, and my co-workers may as well compose a model UN. The produce apartment alone, for example,  is comprised of Latinos hailing from any number of companies. Mad cool, and it gives me the always appreciated opportunity to bring out the Spanish, having ‘em think I’m from the Dominican or something is always fun to me.

With cash in my pocket, and EBT that hits on the seventh of every month, despite the what could be seen as bleak circumstance, the depression which gripped me mercilessly throughout my 20’s has yielded to an ever-present optimism, and as corny as it may sound a gratefulness to be alive having endured it all and come out stronger and richer (eh, well in spirit, at least through it all).

Atlanta was a truly transformative time, and though it was fraught with curveball after change-up, after beanball, it brought me back to life. It was an assist from a friend who saw his comrade hurting, and though things didn’t work out as originally planned, they worked out all for the good, as they always do, even when it may not seem so.

Now I find myself four months shy of 31, and feel incredibly blessed at this particular juncture to have everything falling on me, without the necessity to deal with anyone else’s non-sense. Though I wouldn’t go so far to call myself a loner, when left alone to isolate then integrate when it makes sense to do is when I’m at my best.

Due to an exceptional flood of scholarship monies saved up throughout college (roughly 20K) and an additional 50K via an inheritance, I was essentially retired from 2004 to the summer of 2007. Money was not an issue, and not having yet found a place or reason to work with that much dough in the bank, I was living life somewhat recklessly from a financial standpoint, but it was part of a long healing process, rebounding from the heartbreak of losing my college sweetheart, Brenda.

Though my sancha (Mexican slang for sidechick/mistress) was also my heart, looking to her to heal the pain of a love lost, was an idea whose foolishness was reflective of the desperate circumstance in which I perceived myself to be floundering in.

Next up on the save-a-drowning-Negro list was graduate school. That was a no go, and to be honest, college was just something I did because it was always expected of me. Though I achieved, there was never any conception, let alone desire to continue my studies along any set career path.

The cult of productivity, which demands that we do something, more than anything pressured me to go back to school, but given everything I was dealing with outside of the classroom, a year’s worth of credit and a lifetime worth of lessons were earned.

As it regards both my love life and school life, it is best as the Notorious BIG cautioned, to “only make moves when your heart’s in it.”

When you half-step, pump-fake, or bullshit, you end up playing yourself in the end. And forget about taking short cuts as they undoubtedly end up cutting you short. Life is a continual process of paying dues and sacrificing to reach your next goal be it immediate, eventual, or ultimate.

For the sake of reflection and projection of the instability that gripped me since my post collegiate life until very recently, where insanity has given way to a long ago lost focus, I composed a timeline for myself, which I will share here for posterity’s sake if nothing else in my next post.  

up to speed, part two.

So in my best efforts to fulfill my filial duties as a good son, hearing the words, “mother”, and “surgery” in the same sentence not only expedited my plans but changed them.

Having just quit my job and having planned to live life in the A to the fullest simply by doing me, my mood was as consistently good as it had been since my diagnosis. I had wanted to come home ever so briefly and show my mother and little sister Nicole, the made-over me, but that phone call from Nina changed things, and quickly.

There was a hiccup of course with my last paycheck due to overdraft fees, so I couldn’t even afford to fly back home without my cousin’s help. She booked my ticket and I flew back the next day when I realistically could have stayed in my apartment for another two weeks handlin’ bidness and having fun.

Because narrative isn’t my strong suit, nor is it my preferred manner of writing, allow me to share on story that was indicative of the dynamic that prevailed during my time at home.

Of course after getting more news, it turned out that my mother was having something very minor done. My thinking was, if it was so minor, why say anything at all. I would have appreciated if she had kept it to herself or given details so as to not throw people into crisis mode.

Nonetheless I was back at home feeling swell, doing my best to function amidst the chaos. Psychological disorders seem to run matrilineally in my family. My Uncle is bipolar, my mother’s mother’s was suicidal (and successful I would later learn), and my mother, bless her heart, is a hoarder. As someone whose proclivity towards cleanliness, orderliness, and efficiency was probably developed to counter her own foul living habits, let’s just say there is bound to be some friction.

Hoarders, as I’m sure you know, regardless of there reasoning for their compulsion like to collect. And collect. And collect. Furthermore in my mother’s case her stuff is strewn about the house with no seeming method behind the madness. And though she swears up and down, she knows where all of her stuff is, this is the same woman, who, if asked for a cigarette, has to pat down ten different pockets in order to find one (and of course it’s rarely without a sigh or a teeth-sucking seeing as how she is with her nicotine).

In any case, rather than psychoanalyze any further, let’s just say my little sister is essentially a clone of my mother, and as such she adopted her habits to acquire material junk and then spread it around like a virus. And don’t ask either one of them to clean up after themselves as they had both implored my little cousins to do when they stayed with us at the house, because apparently that’s just too much to ask. Ever wanted to make yourself breakfast in a clean kitchen? Me, too. Only thing is at my mother’s house cleaning the kitchen will take a solid hour out of your day to the point where you say fuck it because nine times out of ten it’ll look like nothing was cleaned at all by the end of the day. Attempting to function in that house was like running on a treadmill at world class speed 24 hours a day. If you wanted to get anything done, (e.g., personal goals – I came back from the A with a  8 page typed lists of goals, categorized by type – yes folks, it was that type of party), that required focus, good luck finding a clean and orderly space to do it.

Perhaps my frustration is shining through, and if so good. If not let’s just say cleaning up after two women with these habits, a shedding and unspayed dog (canine blood on your sock is a good way to fuck up anyone’s morning), and attempting to function, simply didn’t work out too well.

Rather than regale you with details of each and every incident that let to my premature departure, I’ll highlight the one that was the proverbial straw that broke mama’s humpback.

On a night like any other my mother and sister were in straight veg mode, watching some vomit in your mouth inducing trash TV. Rather than pace and surf the web in the other room, I decided to take the dog for a walk. Truth be told, maybe it was the boredom or frustration, or them both in concert, but for a good time over my four month stay at home, I was somewhere between elevated and hypomanic. For me this means a relatively low degree of synchronicity (finding meaning in certain stimuli, that to others may be disregarded as insignificant). Combine this was some delusions of grandeur, and you’ve got a recipe for adventure. Back to the chase. I was at the part and it was probably around midnight when I passed the pool, which had recently closed for the winter. Closed for most people that is. I tied the dog up, climbed the 15 foot high chain link fence, and went for a dip.

Of course, it was trespassing, but I’m rather conscious of the decisions I make the consequences that any of them may carry. To borrow from Jules in Pulp Fiction, the what if’s are always contemplated. Worst case scenario, a cop could have seen me, which could have earned me a stern warning or a trespassing charge. The former would have been shrugged off, and the latter would more than likely have been dismissed as the good courts in Newton typically don’t waste their time trying nonsense cases. The risk was taken and nobody was the wiser.

Unfortunately, however, it was colder than had been expected, and I found myself walking around dripping wet when I passed by the middle school and noticed one of those obstacle course that they used for team building activities like trust falls and such. I untied Beta, (that’s the name of my mother’s German Shepherd, by the way) and walked over to the obstacle course.

After messing around on the equipment for about 15 minutes, it seemed like Beta must have been PMS’s in a major way or something. Either that or she wanted to let me know she would be deducted style points from the way I mounted the obstacles, but this bitch ( and yes, I can her that without reproach or hesitation, as she is a female dog), started attacking me.

A german shepherd in the middle of the night decided to use your extremities for chew toys can be a little more than off-putting especially when the motivations and intentions and possible outcomes of her chomping are all unknown. Rather than wait for her to lock down on my jugular and bring the night to a terrifying close, she was ditched.

To this day, I’m still not sure what cause her to turn on me. Maybe her microchip went haywire. Shit who knows, maybe she didn’t take her bipolar meds that morning.

I decided to walk of the pain and confusion, since by that time it was the middle of the night. Knowing my mother had already, locked up for the night, I did my best Forrest Gump, and kept walking. And walking. And walking, somewhat aimless until the sun started to rise.

Of course by the time I got back the door was still locked. Time to get creative. I decided to get in by removing the AC from the side window, because my teeth were chattering by that point. Having ditched some of my clothes at the park, to the best of my recollection, I had on a hoody, soaking wet basketball shorts, and a mean mug, the result of the spots of blood that had collected by the bite marks on my hands and arms.

I’m shimmying through the window, when my mother sees me from the inside. She meets me at the window as I’m climbing in from the outside, and the first thing she says to me, looking disheveled and out of sorts is, “Chris, where’s Beta?”

It's all good, baby, baby (In Biggie Voice). An up-to-speed, biographical sketch.

It’s all good either way is the motto that has been adopted these days. Much has changed since my last autobiographical entries, and this quick sketch of the last year will hopefully get you up to speed..

Despite my apologies for my absence, efforts will be made to check in more regularly for those of you who have composed my loyal readership. (On that note, I’m happy to report that each entry has been getting about 30 hits on average with readers as far away as Germany and Russia. (It may not sound like much, but for word of mouth’s sake, it is to me. Furthermore, as my friend Chris says, "A lil' something, is better than a whole lot o' nothin'.).  That’s a good sign that the work here is positively impacting someone out there, so consider me happy on that end.) Anyhow, please allow me to continue with the narrative.

So much has changed over the past year in general, and the past four months, have been especially instructive .In the following paragraphs, I’ll do my best to give you the highly abridged version of the goings on.

After hearing that my mother was having an unexpected surgery (unbeknownst to me at the time it was very minor and routine), the heaven carved out for myself in the A, was left at the drop of a hat to fulfill my filial duties as they were perceived. 

When I left to Atlanta in late 2011, I was 225 lbs, slept 14-16 hours a day, wasn’t working, (unless of course you call bumming cigarettes compulsively from my mother a job), and instead of continuing upon this dead end trajectory, I moved in with one my closest friends to attempt rectify both of our situations.

It was a reintroduction to adulthood and the responsibilities it entails, a veritable crash course if you will, seeing as how he was in jeopardy of losing “it” in the proverbial mental way that was all too familiar to me and losing his apartment in a very real, “get yo’ black ass on the streets, way”. My little sister, Nicole, in her sage wisdom, advised that me going down there was like jumping on the titanic. At the time I remember thinking doing so was better than doing the dead man’s float in the middle of the ocean.

Thankfully, within a matter of months in Atlanta many a stride were made to end the catatonia that had seized me in Boston. I started working at a grocery store as well as writing papers as a side hustle. On the weight front, I got back in the gym to regain my once, svelte figure. Somewhere the inspiration struck, to give grad school the old college try, as I soon got the ball rolling on a January 2012 entrance (more on this coming up in the post).

Back against the wall pressure to create that diamond had been applied. But wait, there’s more…

Despite our best efforts to keep the titanic (i.e. our living situation afloat) my friend had to return to LA to tend to his own family obligations. That left the kid with a once friendly leasing agent threatening eviction on a basis that was more regularly and routine that was pleasant.

I was solo in the A, making moves to salvage a situation that I knew was leaps and bounds ahead of what I left in Boston. Finally, the leasing agent had had enough, and once legal action was pursued, I moved what was left of my friends belongings as well as my stuff across the hall to a friend’s apartment across the way.

Around the same time, in addition to working and dealing with stressors of piss-poor management, I attempted to try grad school for the final time after already having left my MA in African Diaspora Studies on the back burner at Cal. This time around I chose to look into social services, specifically, mental health counseling at Mercer University, a small school in Atlanta. 

Due to everything that was going on at the time, and the repressed trauma that the program invoked, I was forced to bail, but not before I collected an 11K student loan that gave me the means to secure a two bedroom apartment as I awaited my roommates return from Cali. Long story short, it bought us time, but despite our best efforts to come up with what should have been, under less trying circumstance, wholly doable rent, we were unceremoniously given the boot from that apartment, too.

It sounds worse than it is folks, and if you’ll kindly refer back to the aforementioned introductory quote, it led me to many a lesson and to my current station, for which I couldn’t be more grateful. (Sidenote, understandably this is, as stated, the glossed over, extremely abridged version. Apologies again, if it comes off with a who dunnit and what for vibe, but read along, and we’ll get there.)

After losing the second apartment, and being exhausted by what would by my final move in the A, I found myself sharing a two-bedroom apartment with the big homie Donald at the grocery store. The rent was agreeable to my budget, and due to my diligence at the grocery store, I was promoted from greeter (I was the, “Ask Me” guy/director during an intensive and massive remodel who directed bewildered customers to their desired product during the nearly year long overhaul) to natural foods specialist for those few shoppers in the A, who were on the healthy eating bandwagon.

In less than a year, I had lost 40lbs, put on a good deal of muscle mass (set a new personal record and finally broke the 225ish one rep max on the bench), put the cigarettes down (perhaps the most wondrous of all of my accomplishments in my book, seeing as how smoking had become damn near a job of mine on its own), and gotten my focus back. It was the best of times.

During my time in the A in general and the grocery store in particular, much was learned. The benefits of going hard at a fixed income, menial, salaried position became clear. You can actually move up and be compensated accordingly for your efforts, even if you don't think they are noticed. Aside from meeting dear friends who are on speed dial to this day in the mental rolodex it was a transformative period. It was a rehab of sorts, and despite it costing me nearly 20K in student loans to be repaid, it was worth every penny.

To bring the story full circle back to the my current station, despite having a foothold on the fast(er) track at the grocery store, I decided to throw caution to the wind (as had been my MO to that point) and gave my notice at the job. The free spirit in me, wanted with two weeks left on month to month rent, wanted to get on his Thoreau-Emerson, transcendental tip, go live and Stone Mountain while focusing on writing full-time. The transient, nomad, vagabond, wanderer (Metallic Fans, note the reference to these seeming pejoratives) in me has become quite accustomed to moving, and being where I want to be at any given time. Though several options were considered, I decided to use my last paycheck from the grocery to store to make one last move, before I got down to writing passionately and purposefully.

Again, as is typical with much that I have done, it sounds more rash than it is. One of the phone calls I had made in the A, was to a former friend and business mentor who does brand management for celebrities, and has quite the resume to back up his exploits. I figured that with my mojo back, and him behind me, this was the time to seize the day, go for the gusto and all of that good stuff. I was amped as they say.

In my excitement, before delving into my dream, I decided I wanted to come home, visit the fam, and show them the new me while leaving me just enough money to get back to the A and continue upon the aforementioned plan.  

As I was the library during my morning visit there, my cousin, Nina called me and in atypical and very troubled tone told me, “Chris, your mother is going in for surgery, what’s going on?!”

. . .