saw beyonce. life changing experience (again).

.

i can still picture us hanging out in his dimly lit room as he sang his heart out to tasmin archer’s “sleeping sattelite.” i didn’t get it. i just didn’t hear what he did. where was the beat? how do you dance to this? what the hell was is it even about? he just said, “it’s about failure. human failure.” still, i didn’t get it.

i cannot remember how he and i met. i think it was at teen night at woody’s, the first gay club i ever patronized. he went to high school with a mutual friend. i didn’t. i was a high school dropout. what i do know is that we entered each other’s orbit sometime in the fall of 1993. we were fast friends. he was a loner and oh-so whimsical. his presence was sporadic but i really didn’t mind. except when he played this damn song!

released in late 1992 in the UK and in the US in early 1993, “sleeping satellite” is the debut single from british singer and songwriter tasmin archer. the song blends pop, rock, and folk and lyrically references the apollo moon missions from 1968-1972. the song’s ethereal production, coupled with archer’s emotive vocal delivery, express a sense of disillusionment. the song’s metaphorical title, “sleeping satellite,” can be interpreted as the untapped potential and dreams of those still holding out for hope in a world that often seems indifferent.

in 1994, he asked me to accompany him to a doctor’s appointment. i really didn’t think much about it. it was an opportunity to get out of the house and hang out with him, so i was down. we walked into the clinic, and were immediately greeted by a black nurse. she welcomed us, told me to take a seat, and then took him a private room. i waited in the main area. after about 10 minutes, he came back out and motioned towards the exit. we then rushed out into the busy street awaiting us.

“you will beat this!” “they are working on a cure,” and “i am here for you,” were my replies.

on the way home, he abruptly disclosed that he had just tested HIV positive. at first, there was just silence. then i put all of the inspirational messaging i learned from watching my fair share of “on this very special episode of…” TV sitcoms to use. “you will beat this!” “they are working on a cure,” and “i am here for you,” were my replies. i meant every word but, chyle, i was 17 and doing my best to keep us both from panicking. and in 1994, inspiration and hope was pretty much the only thing that could be offered.

co-written by tasmin archer, “sleeping satellite” achieved international chart success reaching #1 on the UK singles chart and top 20 in several countries, including the US, in 1993. the same year, the song earned archer a BRIT award for best british breakthrough act.

we kept that day of the clinic a secret from our other friends for weeks. we young people holding a piece of the epidemic on our shoulders. he immediately told his family. they rallied around him as much as a family could in 1994. because they knew that i knew that i was welcomed into the fold. i spent many nights at their house, in his room – as he blasted “sleeping satellite.”

On season 5 of Gossip Girl and chyle s4 threw me for a loop!!!! Also I’m glad that I decided to watch Chair relationship for myself and not take everyone else’s opinion or think pieces as fact. Anyway I love a tragic love story (yes I know how it ends) but the tragedy of it is so entertaining lol. Anyway I’m glad Serena is choosing herself for a while!!! I love a resolution!!! Nate needs his and not in the form of old ass women! Dan is annoying as always and that’s my XOXO UPDATE

We didn’t grow up celebrating the holidays the way I saw on TV sitcoms. My mother didn’t bake cookies, and we didn’t drink coquito. We didn’t decorate a tree or put up colorful lights. Chyle, I didn’t even know what a Parranda was until I was well into my 20s. My mother, who was essentially estranged from her family, didn’t have any traditions to pass down. So Christmas and every damn holiday were like Tuesdays and Thursdays—we just got through them. The saving grace was that we got through them together.

But what was constant in our house was music, and by default, Christmas songs were in the background. Songs like Alexander O’Neal’s “My Gift To You,” RUN DMC’s “Christmas In Hollis” or New Edition’s “It’s Christmas (All Over the World.)”

Released in December 1985, “It’s Christmas (All Over the World)” was a cover of sorts. The song was originally written with Freddy Mercury in mind and recorded by Sheena Easton for the 1985 motion picture “Santa Claus: The Movie.” But it is New Edition’s rendition (that rhymes) of “It’s Christmas (All Over The World),” that became the seminal version.

As a parent and adult, I still struggle with holiday traditions. I decorate a tree, and by that, I mean I bring the one I purchased with lights back upstairs from the basement and just plug it in. I watch Hallmark Christmas movies and play the songs that remind me of my mother and brothers. I suppose that is the tradition my mother passed down. A tradition that I now share with my son.

chyle i want to slash my neighbor's tires with every fiber of my being and that will never change

The Personality of Godhead said: Under the supervision of the Supreme Lord and according to the result of his work, the living entity, the soul, is made to enter into the womb of a woman through the particle of male semen to assume a particular type of body. On the first night, the sperm and ovum mix, and on the fifth night the mixture ferments into a bubble. On the tenth night it develops into a form like a plum, and after that, it gradually turns into a lump of flesh or an egg, as the case may be. In the course of a month, a head is formed, and at the end of two months the hands, feet and other limbs take shape. By the end of three months, the nails, fingers, toes, body hair, bones and skin appear, as do the organ of generation and the other apertures in the body, namely the eyes, nostrils, ears, mouth and anus. Within four months from the date of conception, the seven essential ingredients of the body, namely chyle, blood, flesh, fat, bone, marrow and semen, come into existence. At the end of five months, hunger and thirst make themselves felt, and at the end of six months, the fetus, enclosed by the amnion, begins to move on the right side of the abdomen. Deriving its nutrition from the food and drink taken by the mother, the fetus grows and remains in that abominable residence of stools and urine, which is the breeding place of all kinds of worms. Bitten again and again all over the body by the hungry worms in the abdomen itself, the child suffers terrible agony because of his tenderness. He thus becomes unconscious moment after moment because of the terrible condition. Owing to the mother's eating bitter, pungent foodstuffs, or food which is too salty or too sour, the body of the child incessantly suffers pains which are almost intolerable. Placed within the amnion and covered outside by the intestines, the child remains lying on one side of the abdomen, his head turned towards his belly and his back and neck arched like a bow. The child thus remains just like a bird in a cage, without freedom of movement. At that time, if the child is fortunate, he can remember all the troubles of his past one hundred births, and he grieves wretchedly. What is the possibility of peace of mind in that condition? Thus endowed with the development of consciousness from the seventh month after his conception, the child is tossed downward by the airs that press the embryo during the weeks preceding delivery. Like the worms born of the same filthy abdominal cavity, he cannot remain in one place. The living entity in this frightful condition of life, bound by seven layers of material ingredients, prays with folded hands, appealing to the Lord, who has put him in that condition. The human soul says: I take shelter of the lotus feet of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who appears in His various eternal forms and walks on the surface of the world. I take shelter of Him only, because He can give me relief from all fear and from Him I have received this condition of life, which is just befitting my impious activities. Death and Birth I, the pure soul, appearing now bound by my activities, am lying in the womb of my mother by the arrangement of māyā. I offer my respectful obeisances unto Him who is also here with me but who is unaffected and changeless. He is unlimited, but He is perceived in the repentant heart. To Him I offer my respectful obeisances. I am separated from the Supreme Lord because of my being in this material body, which is made of five elements, and therefore my qualities and senses are being misused, although I am essentially spiritual. Because the Supreme Personality of Godhead is transcendental to material nature and the living entities, because He is devoid of such a material body, and because He is always glorious in His spiritual qualities, I offer my obeisances unto Him. The human soul further prays: The living entity is put under the influence of material nature and continues a hard struggle for existence on the path of repeated birth and death.

This conditional life is due to his forgetfulness of his relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Therefore, without the Lord's mercy, how can he again engage in the transcendental loving service of the Lord? No one other than the Supreme Personality of Godhead, as the localized Paramātmā, the partial representation of the Lord, is directing all inanimate and animate objects. He is present in the three phases of time-past, present and future. Therefore, the conditioned soul is engaged in different activities by His direction, and in order to get free from the threefold miseries of this conditional life, we have to surrender unto Him only. Fallen into a pool of blood, stool and urine within the abdomen of his mother, his own body scorched by the mother's gastric fire, the embodied soul, anxious to get out, counts his months and prays, "O my Lord, when shall I, a wretched soul, be released from this confinement?" My dear Lord, by Your causeless mercy I am awakened to consciousness, although I am only ten months old. For this causeless mercy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the friend of all fallen souls, there is no way to express my gratitude but to pray with folded hands. The living entity in another type of body sees only by instinct; he knows only the agreeable and disagreeable sense perceptions of that particular body. But I have a body in which I can control my senses and can understand my destination; therefore, I offer my respectful obeisances to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, by whom I have been blessed with this body and by whose grace I can see Him within and without. Therefore, my Lord, although I am living in a terrible condition, I do not wish to depart from my mother's abdomen to fall again into the blind well of materialistic life. Your external energy, called deva-māyā, at once captures the newly born child, and immediately false identification, which is the beginning of the cycle of continual birth and death, begins. Therefore, without being agitated any more, I shall deliver myself from the darkness of nescience with the help of my friend, clear consciousness. Simply by keeping the lotus feet of Lord Viṣṇu in my mind, I shall be saved from entering into the wombs of many mothers for repeated birth and death. Lord Kapila continued: The ten-month-old living entity has these desires even while in the womb. But while he thus extols the Lord, the wind that helps parturition propels him forth with his face turned downward so that he may be born. Pushed downward all of a sudden by the wind, the child comes out with great trouble, head downward, breathless and deprived of memory due to severe agony. The child thus falls on the ground, smeared with stool and blood, and plays just like a worm germinated from the stool. He loses his superior knowledge and cries under the spell of māyā. After coming out of the abdomen, the child is given to the care of persons who are unable to understand what he wants, and thus he is nursed by such persons. Unable to refuse whatever is given to him, he falls into undesirable circumstances. Laid down on a foul bed infested with sweat and germs, the poor child is incapable of scratching his body to get relief from his itching sensation to say nothing of sitting up, standing or even moving. In his helpless condition, gnats, mosquitoes, bugs and other germs bite the baby, whose skin is tender, just as smaller worms bite a big worm. The child, deprived of his wisdom, cries bitterly. In this way, the child passes through his childhood, suffering different kinds of distress, and attains boyhood. In boyhood also he suffers pain over desires to get things he can never achieve. And thus, due to ignorance, he becomes angry and sorry. With the growth of the body, the living entity, in order to vanquish his soul, increases his false prestige and anger and thereby creates enmity towards similarly lusty people. By such ignorance the living entity accepts the material body, which is made of five elements, as himself.

With this misunderstanding, he accepts nonpermanent things as his own and increases his ignorance in the darkest region. For the sake of the body, which is a source of constant trouble to him and which follows him because he is bound by ties of ignorance and fruitive activities, he performs various actions which cause him to be subjected to repeated birth and death. If, therefore, the living entity again associates with the path of unrighteousness, influenced by sensually minded people engaged in the pursuit of sexual enjoyment and the gratification of the palate, he again goes to hell as before. He becomes devoid of truthfulness, cleanliness, mercy, gravity, spiritual intelligence, shyness, austerity, fame, forgiveness, control of the mind, control of the senses, fortune and all such opportunities. One should not associate with a coarse fool who is bereft of the knowledge of self-realization and who is no more than a dancing dog in the hands of a woman. The infatuation and bondage which accrue to a man from attachment to any other object is not as complete as that resulting from attachment to a woman or to the fellowship of men who are fond of women. At the sight of his own daughter, Brahmā was bewildered by her charms and shamelessly ran up to her in the form of a stag when she took the form of a hind. Amongst all kinds of living entities begotten by Brahmā, namely men, demigods and animals, none but the sage Nārāyaṇa is immune to the attraction of māyā in the form of woman. Just try to understand the mighty strength of My māyā in the shape of woman, who by the mere movement of her eyebrows can keep even the greatest conquerors of the world under her grip. One who aspires to reach the culmination of yoga and has realized his self by rendering service unto Me should never associate with an attractive woman, for such a woman is declared in the scripture to be the gateway to hell for the advancing devotee. The woman, created by the Lord, is the representation of māyā, and one who associates with such māyā by accepting services must certainly know that this is the way of death, just like a blind well covered with grass. A living entity who, as a result of attachment to a woman in his previous life, has been endowed with the form of a woman, foolishly looks upon māyā in the form of a man, her husband, as the bestower of wealth, progeny, house and other material assets. A woman, therefore, should consider her husband, her house and her children to be the arrangement of the external energy of the Lord for her death, just as the sweet singing of the hunter is death for the deer. Due to his particular type of body, the materialistic living entity wanders from one planet to another, following fruitive activities. In this way, he involves himself in fruitive activities and enjoys the result incessantly. In this way the living entity gets a suitable body with a material mind and senses, according to his fruitive activities. When the reaction of his particular activity comes to an end, that end is called death, and when a particular type of reaction begins, that beginning is called birth. When the eyes lose their power to see color or form due to morbid affliction of the optic nerve, the sense of sight becomes deadened. The living entity, who is the seer of both the eyes and the sight, loses his power of vision. In the same way, when the physical body, the place where perception of objects occurs, is rendered incapable of perceiving, that is known as death. When one begins to view the physical body as one's very self, that is called birth. Therefore, one should not view death with horror, nor have recourse to defining the body as soul, nor give way to exaggeration in enjoying the bodily necessities of life. Realizing the true nature of the living entity, one should move about in the world free from attachment and steadfast in purpose. Endowed with right vision and strengthened by devotional

service and a pessimistic attitude towards material identity, one should relegate his body to this illusory world through his reason. Thus one can be unconcerned with this material world. Thus end the Bhaktivedanta purports of the Third Canto, Thirty-first Chapter, of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, entitled "Lord Kapila's Instructions on the Movements of the Living Entities."

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The way bakudeku and tododeku shippers won with this new episode but we TodoBakuDeku shippers won two times over plus a dessert on the side is just *chef’s kiss* 💋

virtual interview was going smoothly until oom coworkers walked in at the end and made me stutter severely 😟

my doordor: mommy, why do you hate today’s music so much?

me: because music isn’t what it used to be like back in my day

my dwa’ta: what was it like back then mommy?

me: enough questions Beyiana Perrymotta Caraj. it’s time for bed

‘the gallant frigate amphitrite’ is one of my favourites from the late 19th/early 20th century. it’s more of a ballad than a shanty and i’m proud to say i misheard roughly 30% of the words for months until i looked up the lyrics!

i met robert on the very first day of school of the seventh grade in september 1989. i knew as soon as i walked into the classroom and witnessed him commanding space with his beautiful spirit, that the semester was going to be different. i would no longer be the “only one” in the class room.

i sat near him and his crew waiting for an opportunity to connect. in an effort to get his attention and to really confirm that he was a raging queen like myself, i pulled out my “rhythm nation: 1814” cassette that i carried with me everywhere. “i love janet jackson!” robert said as he crossed his legs. i said “ooh honey chyle, me too! i know all her moves!” we were best friends from that moment.

robert and i walked home together today. we talked about how much we loved janet’s “miss you much” and “rhythm nation” music videos. both music videos were included in the “rhythm nation: 1814” long-form music video that has just premiered. we talked all things janet until we got closer robert’s house. “my mom’s on that shit,” he abruptly said. i knew exactly what he was talking about. i simply replied, “yeah, mine’s too.” before robert, i never openly talked about my mother’s addiction. it was not something i could hide but it was something that went upspoken.

my friendship with robert did not go unnoticed by other students and teachers. we were loud and would recite gay reads we learned from our mother’s friends –

“i will read you, write you

erase you and retrace you!”

or

“i will add you, subtract

and reduce you to your

lowest terms.”

being called “faggot” no longer sliced me open the way once had done. being with robert gave me a kind of adrenaline that i had never felt before. on some days we were bold enough to do the choreography in the lunchroom. of course, we had to do it without music so we just sang the songs while we danced. most students made fun of us but some others were quite impressed. we laughed at students who teased us because they didn’t know janet’s “miss you much” and “rhythm nation” choreography. we wondered, “what the hell are they doing with their lives if they aren’t mastering janet’s moves?” to us, they were the real freaks!

by the time the “escapade” music video was released in january of 1990, robert was sent away to a group home. i remember feeling a sense of loss and deflation. i loved being alive when i was with robert. with robert away, the lunchroom once again became the place where meals were served with a side of harassment. everything felt heavier. the world felt even lonelier. i found some reprieve from the teasing by spending my lunch period with miss wilson. during our afternoons together, i would tell her about my life, my mother’s addiction, and how robert and i were one day going to dance for janet. when i told her that i was without a radio to play my rhythm nation cassette, she surprised me with a new one the next day. to express my appreciation, i danced to “escapade” for her. also, i really just wanted to show off the choreography.

by spring 1990, i was sent to live with my aunt janet, one of the most stable of the aunts, after my mother found me crying uncontrollably in the corner. i seldom ever cried in front of her so i am sure the sight of me in tears frightened her. “what’s wrong?!,” she asked ready to be mad and kick someone’s ass. i didn’t know how to tell her that i had overheard her own mother and sisters describing us as dirty and ugly kinds. so i just replied, “i want to die.” so off to my aunt janet’s house, i went.

the living situation at my aunt’s house was a stark contrast to that of my mother’s. i slept on the living room couch. we ate dinner as a family. loud music was prohibited and i was expected to go to school…every day.

i hated my new school. in an effort to avoid any teasing, i tried to reinvent myself as “masc.” but of course, that lasted all but three minutes. my voice, my walk, and my incessant need to talk about janet jackson always outed me. so with no other option or school policies to protect my ass, i began to cut class. i would show up for first-period advisory and then walk out the nearest fucking exit. some days, i would kill time at a playground doing absolutely nothing, or on the days i felt courageous enough,  i’d sneak back into my aunt’s house and watch music videos while she and her husband were at work. i was missing robert. i didnt know how to say. “i miss my best friend” to adults who didn’t get the connection shared between two gay teens who loved janet jackson.

i soon got word robert stopped by my mother’s looking for me. i immediately rushed to his mother’s house only to be told that i had just stepped out. all of this would have been easier if we had phones, but in the 1990s, that was still a luxury for some. i waited on his mom’s steps for what seemed like hours before robert showed up. “i ran away!,” he told me. i didn’t care, i was just happy to see him. we spent the next few hours catching up talking about crushes, our dreams, and how he was never going back to the group home. when nighttime fell, i had to get back to my aunt’s house. i remember not wanting to leave for fear that he would disappear again.

the next morning, i skipped school to meet up with robert. it was sometime in the last spring so the weather was beautiful. we spent the day just walking around the city before we stopped by a save-a-lot supermarket. i had about $4 lunch money. it was just enough to buy a few sodas, a pack of cookies, and a bag of chips. we found a playground nearby and met a young girl about our age who was also cutting class. we all sat on the swings as we enjoyed our afternoon delights and laughed our heads off.

our reunion was short-lived. robert was sent back to the group home by court order just a couple of weeks later. no long after, i was sent back to live with my mother after i was caught cutting class. i walked to my mother’s with complete dread. i didn’t want to deal with her addiction but i was also exhausted with having to skip school to save my sanity. at least at my mother’s, i could blast my music.

robert and i would reunite several times over the following months. he made running away from the home a hobby! and every time he did, i’d attempt to hide him in my room. my mother, who was deathly afraid of child services because they were notorious for ripping kids from mothers who struggled with crack addiction, would demand that he return to the home. i would cry every time. eventually, i just told my mother that he had absolutely no other place to go. only then did she say, “then he will stay here with us.”

robert lived with us for years. in 1993, he and i, along with a few other friends competed in a local talent show sponsored by PBS. we were crowned the winners after our stunning performance of janet’s “that the way love goes/if” medley. robert was not only my best friend, but he was also my brother.

by 1996, life would take us in different directions. i was deep into my AIDS activism and spent less time at home. my mother and brothers moved to orlando, florida later that year, and robert joined them. i stayed behind in philadelphia. robert and mother went on to share the same kind of life-saving friendship and love until her death seven years ago that he and i shared during our teen years.

janet jackson was and remains an integral part of my friendship with robert. when we speak, we still talk about her music, her videos and her existence.  we were surviving so much with so little in 1990 and janet was our spaceship to planets where queer kids weren’t separated by the state. we were stars in our own universe and we always found each other. we still do. and i am sure, we always will.

for robert. love with never do without you.

me & robert still talking about janet in 2020

there i was in my bedroom in the summer of 1998 when a friend of mine says, “play this CD. i just bought it but i haven’t listened it to yet.” it was the “touch it” single. admittedly, i did not want to play it. i had associated monifah with mid-tempo songs, and i didn’t want to bring the tempo down, but i relented. BAYBEE! we were just 8 bars into the song when we looked at each other with eyes wide open 👀. we could not believe what we were hearing! miss monifah had gifted the gurls a track that was beyond fire!

“touch it,” which brilliantly samples laid back’s 1983 hit “white horse,” is a track that blends dance, pop, funk, and soul. chyle, as soon as you hear “jack knight and dakoda house, all we wanna do is make you bounce,” you are running to the dance floor. asthma where!? monifah’s seductive vocal, which recalls vanity 6’s 1982 classic “nasty girl,” had the power to make everyone a seductress on the dance floor. trust me, this is all true.

monifah emerged in 1996 and quickly established herself as a voice of both power and subtlety with gold-certified her debut album “mood… moments.” the album included the two heavy d. co-produced gold-selling singles, “i miss you (come back home),” and the moody pop top 40 hit “you.”

monifah was signed to uptown records during its last days. by the release of her 1998 sophomore effort, “mo’hogany,” the label had gone through radical changes, and monifah found herself having to champion the project with little support. so much so that when “touch it” was released as a single, it wasn’t even a priority for the label. it wasn’t until the song began to take off at pop radio that the label began to put some muscle behind it.

released in july 1998, “touch it” exploded across multiple formats in the US topping the rhythmic top 40 chart and peaking at #9 at both r&b and pop. it would reach top 30 in multiple countries throughout the world.

“touch it” went on to sell over a million copies in the US alone and propelled monifah’s sophomore album to gold status.

❪ 2 ❫ NEW UPDATE ! ≮ @GOLDIE.

●●● 𝙻𝙾𝙲𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽: Wilde West.

━━  𝚃𝙰𝙶𝙶𝙴𝙳: @𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐘𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆.

♡ LIKED BY @𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐑 AND 𝟐𝟑𝟒,𝟑𝟔𝟎 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐒.

@𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐈𝐄 ⌯ let me get my beyoncé on, chyle !

VIEW ALL 13,909 COMMENTS.

📌 @𝐉𝐄𝐍𝐀𝐃𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐒. ⌯ chill out !

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a toast to thirty times around the sun, a glass of wine for living to my fullest potential so far, and a shot of henny for surviving this thing called life. some of y’all know that i’ve been going strong on my own since age fourteen but these twenties.... yoooo, shot me down haaarrrd. so much thrown at me that i wasn’t sure how to manage, but i come from an immediate family that all we know is how to get through regardless of how long it takes.

let me just say, when you finally discover yourself and know exactly who you are, it literally changes everything.. all while allowing growth to still have its way. i literally had to separate myself from a lot of things within my life because i felt like everything just needed to be re-evaluated.... my family & black culture together, my friends, my religious belief, all the way down to my sexual preference.

i left florida at age twenty-one for so many reasons without even realizing them until about twenty-five. having to accept the fact that i’m a black gay male at age twenty-two. understanding that my only association to christianity is because i was born into it & recognizing that i’m more spiritual than being religious so physically being present in church was a waste of my time even though the music was my only connection. also understanding that being born and raised in a black family & black culture is a gift and curse itself. i truly love the fact that i am black but i refuse to live with the personal trauma that cycles in generations because in black families, saying “i love you” is more important than saying “i’m sorry”. we’re told depression isn’t a thing in the black community. i’ve experienced a deep depression twice without even realizing it, summer of 2015 and almost all of last year, and being told “maybe i’m just trippin”. and then friends..... ever since the lost of one of my closest friendships last year, i’ve been so careful & observant to those who come around and somewhat to those who have been around. learning to understand motives just from listening, every slick joke, every sense of shade... you really have to pay attention to who’s in your corner because sometimes, your worst enemy is standing right in front of you.

so thirty, whew chyle... this past decade has truly been the journey of an emotional rollercoaster. from extremely happy days to a couple of suicidal moments. yes, i’ve been there and never told. but i’m in such a good place today with all the wisdom and growth i’ve gained, as i am STILL learning & growing and continuously looking forward to daily education. i definitely want to shout out every single soul i’ve encountered these past ten years that have shaped me into who i am today.... every single friend, those who are still in the picture and those who have moved on, all the hoes i fucked and all the failed relationships that went left, and all of the random people who have enlightened me with their wisdom through random conversation that i only met once and may never see again in this lifetime. i remember all of them.

again, a toast to thirty times around the sun, a glass of wine for living to my fullest potential so far, and a shot of henny for surviving this thing called life.

happy 30th birthday self.