Reflections - Winter Break pt. 2

The next few days were full of the same crazy and painstaking 12+ hour days, but the hurt only began to come. The next week my father called me and told me my grandfather was in the hospital with a flesh eating virus. He almost died and his future was unsure but hopeful.

 Clarence E. Hill, my grandfather, my fraternity brother, my friend was almost taken from me. Only meeting my grandfather my sophmore year of high school, I have only 7 years with him. My mother's father never clamied her. He deemed her too dark skin to be his child, so I never got to see him...until his funeral. My greatgrand father was my grandfather, but alas he was snatched away from me in 1994. He helped raise me and my mother, taking me in when young mother could not raise me, my sister who is one year younger than me, and deal with the divorce from her 1st husband.  He was my first father. He is where I got my work ethic, my determination, my role model. I did not get to have that with my father's father. I was grown when he met me, and with him living in San Antonio, we hardly ever get to talk. 

No one in my life stays for long...noone is in my life for long.

I have had over 26 friends die since matriculating in to Mesquite High School in 2001. Too many friends turn fraudlent, too many likes never love, too many loves lost to time. I should have seen it coming. Denial is not only a river. Its really hard for me to handel. I don't know how to handel it. That is why I am writing. I am not a talker (SHUTUP LOL), I am a writer. 

The New Year really meant nothing to me. NYD was just another day...So was TRP Day. TRP EVE WAS SO OWT. CLUB STING IS THE SEXY SPOT IN DALLAS. I woke up on my birthday watched ESPN till All My Children Came on and then it is all a blur. Woke up Saturday morning and came back to Baylor...My sisters Chan and JJ came through with Valarie on thier way back from San Antonio. I love to see my sisters, but with joy comes pain. My grandfather isn't doing that much better, and neither is my mind. 

Relections - Winter Break pt. 1

"I need to make change, but I don't want to break 100"

This past winter break was extremely hard. It was the first break completely without my ex-girlfriend of two years...we met in the winter of 2005. Work seemed extra grueling this year, working multiple 14 hr days in a row, going in at 8 a.m. and leaving at 1 a.m. the next morning. Working in retail, especially this season, killed my Christmas spirit. Christmas has became the day before Black Friday, a precursor to more superficial materialism. A lady even complained to me about the mall closing early on Christmas Eve, because she still had more shopping to do, with 8 bags in hand. She never thought about how I felt, the mall employee who has busted his ass more weeks in the madness and just wants to go home to his family. That Christmas Eve I relaxed and passed out after a nice meal. And then came The Day Before Black Friday. 

My father works for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a sports  reporter. He covers the Cowboys, and every year I am at the game, in the press box with the free food. Its like a small heaven, football, food and my father. But this year I was too tired to go to the game (THANKS CHAMPS SPORTS) so I opted to just spend some time with my two younger sisters and my step mom. I love all my sisters, Raquel, Te'Ayrra, Channing, and Jhira, so I decided to be with Chan and JJ(Jihra) in the morning and De De(Raquel) and T in the evening. As soon as I walked in Chan and JJ greeted me with smiles and excitement, immediately walking over to the tree and handing me my presents. I handed them theirs and they blitzed up the stairs to the new Wii. (I promise that game is crack.) Then it was just me and my stepmom (DUNN DUNN DUNNNNNN) and I didn't know what to expect. We have had an extremely rocky relationship eversince I first found my Dad April 1st of 2003. Something about her just always dug at me and it contiuned to. So I sat down, took a breath and calmed my self. She asked me to clean out the fire place and rather than flipping out, (I was in a fresh ass outfit, lol, I had a sweater and an Express shirt on, I was cute), I took off my shirt and went to work. After that my stepmom set in to give me another lecture, which caused so many of our previous conflicts.

But then I started to listen, or rathered she started to talk to me. She empowered me with information I never knew. When my mother first met my dad and stepmom she told them that there was nothing more she could teach me. I was too smart and she knew that she didn't give me the intelligence. She basically gave them the responsibility to understanding me and forming for the rest of my high school years. But Valarie said to me that I had also greatly surpassed her and my father. I was blessed with intelligence that my father didn't give to me, neither my mother, but God. This hit hard home with me. My mother never likes to show her weakness and for her to say something like that to Valarie was an outpour of honest emotion that I had been clamoring for for years. I pictured my mother not comprehending why I was so smart. It hurt me, because she was the reason why I was so smart. It was the fear of those world famous ass whoopings that kept me in the books. The want to alleviate her stress of working three jobs to suppport three kids that pushed me to learn. 

I then went home, to my sisters and mother, seeing it all in a differently light. I feel asleep, because I had to be at work at 12 AM THAT MORNING!

TO BE CONTINUED