the reckoning

It's May 2020.  We've been in quarantine for over two months now.  I somehow got through my second semester of my second year of grad school.  It was without miracles and amphetamines, just pure human wills and won'ts.  Racism is as rampant as ever.  Police still killin unarmed black people.  Donald Trump calls COVID-19 a China flu.  White supremacy is still the rule of the land.  We fight back with education and enlightenment, awareness and alcohol, riots and riots and riots.  The heart can only take so much.  I'm coping with lists and schedules, select interactions, calling in and calling out when necessary, blocking and unfriending, weed and love.  I've been on medication for a solid two years now.  It's part of my chemistry now and probably the reason why I'm still fighting.  My birthday this year was a close call of falling back into death traps.  I did not want to be alive and, well, I somehow got through that too.  The weight of the world is still on my shoulders, but I've learned to manage its heaviness and I know it's okay to put it down for as long as I need to before picking it back up again. 

Music is the only constant, but sometimes, it isn't.  When the music doesn't give me what I need, the question then becomes, what does it give me?  It doesn't have to be absolutely transformative every time.  How exhausting.  Music has become, I guess, just another tool in my toolbox, but it's my favorite one.  It's the one with the worn down edges that make it fit juuuuuust right.  When it's not my refuge, it's my dragging anchor.  When it's not my power source, it's my Vick's vapor rub.  I have learned how to balance my relationship with music and my life so that it's healthy, not... needy and relentless.  The music never lies, but sometimes it does.

The best thing about my life is the love and self-respect that I have for myself.  I did that without the music carrying me, like I'm a parasite grasping on for dear life.  I did that shit by myself and I have no regrets.  That's why I don't write in this thing as often as I used to- I simply don't need to anymore.