I been thinking bout my trajectory lately. A lot. How strange it is to use word, let alone experience it in its intended meaning. Talked about it all with several people this past week. Didn’t intend to, it just sorta came outta me, another substance my body’s yearned to expel. Altogether natural and toxic in large quantities, when held onto for too long.

Last week Stephanie told me about a doc called “Dropout Nation.” It followed four shorties at a high school in Houston that’s considered a “dropout factory.” A place where hope ain’t nothing but a concept. Like equal rights or the american Dream. These shorties epitomize struggle. Deportations homelessness gang violence mental disorders teenage pregnancy. What it means to be of color in the hood. Watching ’em struggle through school and life brought a mist to my eyes which I held back, resisting the urge to pour a tribute to ’em in the teachers’ lounge. In an institution that couldn’t save ’em. Barely saved me. One I possess a lack of faith in most days. Part of me wished for my eyes to bleed so that the pain might finally subside, rid itself from my being, so that the shorties could witness me feel for ’em, so that I could blind myself from their woes. Their reality. The reality that links me directly to the past I often neglect yet seldom forget.

There are moments when life seems dreamlike. Fantastical. When the sun shines with the ideal intensity of mid-spring. The wind blows a soft whisper into the day, tickling your fancy enough to keep you longing curious optimistic. Trees dance along to its tunes, secrets. Everything’s perfect. When I’m sipping with friends, dining with kicks, locking eyes with someone potential. Everything’s right. I don’t think of the pain sorrow or sadness. The loss struggle and regret. I think up schemes to prevent the present’s demise, my inevitable descent into the past.

Lately that’s meant creating elastic of my being, stretching myself so far so thin that my essence is no longer discernible. A spider’s web, transparent yet fully active. Purposeful. Long nights, daily dinner drinks cafe, expending the final droplets of energy I possess for others to feel as though they’re connecting with me. Throwing all my funding at halfhearted social interactions to convince myself of my life’s merit. To ignore incessant murmurs of failure, dropout, phony, death. Whenever I’m asked about my key to success, the inspiration for my escape, I fall back on my mantra.

once you stop running you start dying

And so I don’t. I go until my lungs quiver, remaining traces of oxygen desperately grasping reaching for life, til the saliva loses its grip on my tongue and evaporates, til my knees buckle back stiffens heart bursts. Then I go some more. I sprint toward a goal, an end I can’t conjure imagine except I always can. Vividly. I know exactly how it looks.

It looks like those shorties lives and possibly their futures. I can’t say I finished the doc and so I don’t know how they wound up. Couldn’t stand to witness some of them fail. Already know that story. Seen enough of it. Maybe you’ll watch it and tell me someday. Maybe you’ll care enough. Have hope. Maybe. You will.

I know exactly how it looks. My end. At least how it’s meant to, which leads to my enduring disbelief of the current continuous moment. In Madrid, San Augustin del Guadalix writing this shit as I sip te negro suenos de canela. In Chamberi linking several times a week for drinks lunch dinner. Sometimes remaining platonic, extending glances across the bar the table, subtle smirks preceding sips of blanco de la casa. It’s nice, lovely in itself but it’s what happens most nights that perplexes me. Rattles my brain. Fucks my perception of life up.

I used to play house with my siblings as a shortie, constructing forts with the three levels of our bunk bed, occasionally throwing a chair in the mix to alter its structure and functionality. We’d birth wild scenarios during these sessions. Dinners downtown, on the mystic blue overlooking the pier. Millions of tiny lights warping through fiery windows, applauding us for a wonderful night a wonderful life. Aperitifs outside quaint parisian cafes. You and your lover sneaking gentle pecks between mouthfuls of buttery flaky croissants. Some street musician hoping to make a quick euro serenading you through an untuned saxophone. Nico laughed at me for enacting that, pretending to kiss Gabrielle with a full mouth, swishing a non-wine in my hand cause I saw some motherfucker do it in a movie. He laughed because I looked ridiculous but also because it wasn’t attainable, realistic. We never left our neighborhood, let alone chicago for real adventure. Hadn’t the slightest motherfucking clue where paris was, how to get there. What aperitif meant, how to sip it and inhale its aromas simultaneously without seeming like you were trying to experience it. Just experiencing. Life love contentedness. Freedom. We knew the vague premise of a dream, what it meant to possess and desire one, but never how to pursue it obtain it. Wild scenarios.

We never believed the pictures we painted would manifest themselves in reality then or now. The idea of a good happy prosperous life was as clear as a walk home from school was. As straightforward as they seemed internally, externally they proved to be thick as an iowa haze in mid november. A storm without rain. When analyzing the impediments of the disenfranchised outsiders tend to neglect the minutiae. Walkin to and from school ain’t simply liftin your feet mechanically n linkin wit homies along the way, a few locals smilin and wavin you off for a spectacular day. It could be that but it often wasn’t. Shoulder checks, deep breaths, calculated posture, precise pivot of step, curated gaze. Everything was performed with the intended purpose and goal of remaining neutral while implying a willingness to fight if necessary. Your hands were readily available for whoever possessed the guile to test you whenever. That survival often implies dipping through the first gangway but often ain’t always. You ain’t always gon run. The minutiae makes a person a circumstance.

At this point in my life minutiae seems like a labyrinth of what was what was supposed to be and what is. It’s exhausting attempting to work through it all while also maintaining a healthy amount of sadness. I know I’m always gonna be sad but it doesn’t have to occupy a primary space in my mind. I can whittle it down into something manageable and maybe someday destroy it altogether. That terrifies me, existing without sadness. Possessing in mind a clear picture of life, where I’d like to go and how to get there. Being open with myself and others. Loving someone while extending to them the possibility of knowing and loving me wholly. Being free and able and willing. I’m willing to try but the shit scares me. Leaves my equilibrium in a funk, my lungs tight.