I Know What It Is...

I am a thinking and singular black man living in America.

I am independent and function, or at least I thought I was.

I am emotionally driven. I'm supposed to be. We are the only creatures on this planet that express emotion in such a dominant form.

I am also irresponsible. Why else did I eat that pork, smoke and drink my liver down to the size of an overused piece of soap back in the day?

I am responsible for killing my own kind (military shit - unless you've taken someone else's life and got paid and rewarded for it you have no opinion of us that have in Iraq, Vietnam or other places we've been sent to 'keep us free') We are the only species that does this out of spite.

We smote.
I smite, you smite, we all smite... We smote.

My emotions govern me. It is my spiritual destiny to be here and share with you now, ya dig?

Until the other day, my self image was based on pure reason. True reason. Logic. Bullshit.

I now see me... Emotionally.

The other day I was sleeping peacefully when I came out of slumber at about 2:30 in the AM. I was dreaming lucidly and I was the young, sexier and dreaded version of Quincy, MD. I was a coroner. I was working just doing my thing when a junior cat attempted to stop me from seeing the new batch of bodies that came into the morgue. I went about my business and uncovered body number one...

It was my ex.
My first love.

Now, I wasn't mad at her being dead or shocked to see her on the slab. It was just... She was just as beautiful as she is in the flesh. That woman is drop dead gorgeous. Shit. I didn't deserve her and we had issues that we never brought up in damn near a decade and almost a half. I cannot tell you how she died because her body was intact. She looked at peace sans the normal color non dead folk have. One thing.

I could not perform the autopsy.
I could not cut her body open.
I would not.

I even moved her body to another table so I could observe her in better light. When I picked her up it 'felt' like she still had a pulse. To everyone she was without life but this woman to me was still alive. I wanted to use make up to make it look like I did my job, but I knew that her family would notice something. There is a reason bodies are embalmed, nuff said.

I woke up and my stomach hurt badly.

I need to share what happened next.

I vomited all of my stomach's contents for about 45 minutes. 12 times over the toilet. I was shocked that I had that much in me, including the dry heaves. I then sat down on the bowl and completely emptied my bowel's contents. I mean I could not stop eliminating my innards and that lasted damn near an hour. Yes, it felt and smelled out of the ordinary, and I did take a look at my stool. There was stuff that had been inside of me for quite some time. I cried, sweated, got paranoid all in a few minutes. I was hungry and my stomach quivered right after I managed to get myself off the damn toilet.

I took a shower and could not warm up. I shook, cried again and then I had one thought.

Most of my problems stem from a lack of faith in myself because I lack direction. I lack faith because I built up all of these false images of who I thought I was. If my images were false then the thoughts were too.

I am not Hassan, and that hurt me to know that I am only what I thought other things defined me as. I built myself based on images of the external, you know the material. How can I ever know my attributes, my strengths or my intuitive creative ability if I only examine my external conditions and believe only what has been told to me about who I'm supposed to be by other folk and me being a product of my environment?

I didn't know exactly who I was or what I was supposed to do because as an former girlfriend put it 'I did not understand myself'. I can't move forward until I know me and feel good about knowing me and accepting what I'm supposed to do.

I know the first thing I need to do... I gotta remove myself from this place.

I'm leaving Chicago for good this time. I do not belong here. There is no purpose emotionally and spiritually for the man called Hassan to be in this place right now or in the future. I came back and got safe in denial in who I am and slid further down the slope of not knowing or understanding myself.

Fuck that.

I know now who I am. That moment of sickness was symbolic of draining out the physical. I need to purge the mental, emotional and the spiritual and that means that I need to put new things inside of me in order to deal with those that deserve to be loved by me and that is all of y'all.

Ya dig?