Hot damn! We are only 12 days away from Christmas! Time flies when you’re having fun, huh? At this time, I’m gonna take a little pity on myself, please feel free to join in…

My Christmas list was comprised of only two things this year, and both of them could’ve been easily gotten. Neither was extraordinarily expensive or time-consuming. But, as you probably guessed, I didn’t get what I wanted. And on top of that, I have to spend Christmas alone, more than 1000 miles away from my family again. For those that know me well (and that is one SHORT list), y’all know how much it kills me not to be able to see my kinfolks right now. I’ll wait for all of the heartfelt sympathy to subside before I continue… Now, that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s move on. A few things are on my mind at 12:18 a.m. EST and figured I would share them with you. If you thought you were gonna get another poem as an entry, just wait a damn minute! I’ll do that tomorrow! Right now I have to bear my soul to my PC and you all are my witnesses.

First off, Richard Pryor died this weekend. That hit me like a ton of bricks. I am huge fan of black comedians and Richard Pryor was the Godfather of them all. We should all take a moment of silence to reflect on the enigmatic angel of laughter that has been sent home to be with our Father… Some friends and I were discussing some of the tragedies that have happened in the entertainment world over the past few years and on of them said that Richard Pryor’s passing was a bigger tragedy than Aaliyah’s untimely demise. Now this isn’t something that can be proven with facts, but let me give it a try anyway. While Richard Pryor is well known in this country for his brash stand-up (y’all know “Live on The Sunset Strip” was off the damn hook!) and his hilarious movies, he was as big of a crossover sensation as Aaliyah was. My grandmother and aunties shed tears when Aaliyah died, my boss at the time wore black for a week straight and he could barely name 2 songs that she sung! But enough about that, thinking about death is starting to depress me just a little bit.

In an earlier post, I began to speak about some of the dreams and plans I had for my life that have seemed to fall by the wayside. It took me actually finding a list that I wrote in high school to face the music and speak about them. The first is probably the most obvious. I thought by now I would have my college degree, but I don’t. And please spare me the old tired clich d rhetoric about it’s never too late to go back and get it. That’s some bull%#&@$!! The longer you go without being in school, the harder it gets. True, it’s never too late, but at some point, you have to step and realize that if you haven’t done it by now, then might never do it. With that being said, I’m enrolling in one of those online universities this spring so I can get my bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. So a round of applause for me! Second, I thought that I would have opened some kind of business by now, seeing as how I hate working for other people and they say that people who feel that way make the best entrepreneurs. Now, I never was able to decide what type of business I wanted and think that’s what has kept me from doing that. But, I have narrowed the choices down to just 2, a nightclub/supper club and an automotive modification garage. I figure those are 2 things our community can never have enough of: places for someone to go get drunk and somewhere for you to get your car hooked up. The only other things a black neighborhood needs to survive is a small market/corner store and a barber shop/beauty salon. And get that look off your face, you know I’m right! Third, and this the one that kinda doesn’t make sense to me. I thought I would be married by now. That’s not to say that I haven’t put forth some effort to make this one come true, but I’ll save that story for another post. Maybe the next one (sorry poetry fans, looks like you gotta wait a few more days). And the last one on the list is I thought I would own my own home by now. After I read the list a shed a few tears because of how far off of my plan I was, I realized that all of these things put together made up my idea of a perfect life. Which got me to thinking. If this list is my idea of a perfect life, then what is my honest opinion of the life I lead right now? Let’s just say that the smile isn’t just upside down, it’s completely gone. I could’ve sworn that I had predicted what my life as a 20-something would look like to a tee in high school, and I’m so far off-base that I want to go back in time, apologize to that naive 16 year old who wrote this list and then let him beat the shit out of me! But enough about that.

Let me further expound on another subject I touched on in an earlier post. Contrary to popular belief, I was a shy kid in high school. And to be perfectly honest, I still haven’t gotten over that completely. Back then, I was too scared to talk to a girl on a serious level and commit myself to an honest relationship, which led to widespread promiscuity throughout high school. A female friend of mine likes to say I was just being a man-whore, but there’s more to it. When you’re so unsure of yourself to the point that being around a girl that you like turns you into jelly, what options do you have? Either stay a virgin or sleep around so much that it helps you develop a reputation and image that can stand on it’s own and keep you from having to overcome that debilitating shyness. But there are some harmful side effects to this. The persona that you create can become so powerful and overwhelming that your true personality has to take a backseat and you never truly recover from that. Looking back on it now, it’s so sad that it’s actually funny. In high school, I was the epitome of a jock, to a certain extent. I played at least one sport all 4 years of high school, and most of my time was spent on Varsity of JV. So, I guess you could say that I could handle myself on the field/court/diamond/track. But when it came time to be around some girls, I could be found in a corner somewhere or in the back of the group, by myself. A few of teammates saw this and their way of helping me deal with my problem was to set me up with as many fast girls as they could find. That was kinda detrimental to me at that age because it got to the point that the only things I could bring myself to talk to a girl about were sports and sex. And if the conversation wandered away from either of those topics, I was dead in the water. Then by my junior year, I had developed this alter ego (and somehow he got his own name; Moses. Don’t ask) who was like my version of the perfect man. Y’all know what I’m talking about; the guy that every man wants to be and every woman wants to be with. But this side of my personality was only a mask and not exactly the face I should’ve wanted people to see; he was shallow, vain, inconsiderate, pigheaded, conceited and downright rude. Basically, the biggest asshole you would ever meet. But I felt safe acting like that. I didn’t have to reveal too much of my true self to get what I wanted and everybody around me got to be around this “cool” guy. It seemed like a win-win situation. Until now. Like I said before, I still haven’t gotten over my shyness, but now it manifests itself in different ways. I’m withdrawn, emotionless at times, and I have a hard time expressing my true feelings in a normal, healthy fashion (which should explain my last post reads like a drunken tirade). Hell, I have a hard time calling a woman that I’m romantically interested in and maintaining a conversation! It really hurts because I know where I went wrong, but I’m not sure how to fix it, or if it’s even fixable situation. But we’ll save that for another day too…

(Just a hint for the future: if I run away from a topic, it’s probably because I’m not frame of mind to deal with it at that time. But today, it’s hard to see through the tears.)