I popped an Adderall (I have a prescription) tonight because I was completely flustered and my mind just wouldn’t be still. I have tons of work to do if I’m gonna find an agent and kick my acting career into full throttle. But just as my mind started to slow down, I began to listen closer to the music playing from my “Heartbreak” playlist on iTunes, and I started to remember where the lyrics took me last. I thought about where I was a couple of years ago and the inception of this playlist. Then I had a fleeting thought about a friend who lived nearby and typed her name into my phone to call her. Her name didn’t come up, but another name that I didn’t recognize did. I touched that name and it opened up a document where I’d typed the name in some note on my phone two years ago. The name that came up is very insignificant so we’ll skip that part. The other notes that came up were notes that I thought I’d lost forever after my purchase of the iPhone 7 back in September. Apparently these notes had been saved in some other format and in some other file and were not readily acccessible like most of the newer notes I now have in my phone. Nonetheless, I’m elated that I found them. Words I’d written while and about going through my recent breakup (the first time), words I’d written about my mother, words I’d written about my hopes and dreams and goals and setbacks, and words I’d written about nothing were all staring back at me now. The latter is what intrigued me the most though, because now those words mean something to me. I can now reflect upon the person that I was two years ago, my state of mind and the state of my heart back then. I’m not that guy anymore though. Not because my character has changed or even my ideals. But I’m no longer that guy because my environment has. The climate of my life has drastically changed and I knew back then I needed it to change.
Then a song by Mint Condition came on. “Unsung”. I love that song. I remembered for a moment that when I first heard the song a few years back it put my mind on my grandmother. Man oh man how I love that woman. If she wasn’t almost a thousand I’d call her up right now so we could talk about what’s on my mind. She’d love to hear it. She’s a good listener that way. Plus I think I intrigue her. I make her think about things in ways she’s never considered before, and she lets me know that. I like being wise for her because she’s always been wise for me. Okay okay, back to this song though. Then I started to think “damn, I hope that if the world never gets to know how great I am that someone will tell my story.” Maybe Mosiah and Myava could get together and write a dope screenplay about my life and all of its tumult. But then I thought, wait, “I’m gonna let the world know how great I am on my own.” That’s why God put me here; To be great. And I’ve got plenty of life left to live. So then I started to sing the song out loud… “No one ever wrote the story of your life. And no you never won awards for all your sacrifice. Unselfishly you changed the world within us all. One by one. You were a hero, UNSUNG.“ Sheesh!!! It’s deep, right? Right! I immediately began to think of my mother, so then I started the song over. When I heard “You make our world a much better place… So courageously you stayed when others turned away“, then another part went like “Putting your own welfare aside, you took the risk and put it all on the line. You saw the lead, and there you were. Still you never asked for anything back in return.“ Mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!! That shit right there! It rocked me. And its not like I haven’t heard this song many times. It was just this time, I was like “Look at God”! I need to tell my mother’s story. She gave her life so that my sister and I could live ours. I think I owe it to her to do just that and to tell the story of her very short 31 years on this earth.
Then I remembered, I had already begun to write her story down. I started writing my mother’s story a couple of years ago while up during the wee hours of the morning at work patrolling the mean streets of the Third District in uptown Washington, D.C. And the words I had written almost two years ago, tonight, have been found.
InMyNativeScribble 