F*CK THESE PEOPLE!

ANOTHER Mass Shooting

Well Hello Again

 Hey young world! Happy 2023! Geez, it's been THAT long?

Its been 8 years since I blogged last. 5 months and 3 days after my mother's death to be specific, and I couldn't play it off like my life wasn't affected.

Still is.

A HELL of a lot has happened since June 8, 2015:

My girlfriend at the time mother died in hospice 4 days after my last post and approximately 1 week after my mother's death.

We somehow, yet miserably stayed together in 2015. We grieved that entire year. Together. Bad.

My divorce was finalized.

I've lost visual acuity in my left eye.

I need a kidney.

I've worked for THREE sports franchises and earned a championship ring.

I joined a church AND started ministerial training.

I've broken both feet, both legs, all 6 ribs on my right side, punctured my right lun AND right kidney in the same accident.

I bought a car during the pandemic, started driving nd then had to sell the car late 2021 due to glaucoma.

I caught COVID.

I survived COVID.

I lost 2 of my closest friends, one to heart disease, the other to kidney failure.

I had 12 more surgeries.

I lived in Greensboro, NC, Tulsa, OK and bounced between Las Vegas and Chicago.

I briefly managed a professional boxer who won his first fight (thus the back and forth to Vegas) as a substitute for an injured fighter, took the purse, fired my stankin' ass and moved to Big Bear to be a part of a training combine.

I don't know how that worked out for him. Greedy fucker.

I was in a 5 year relationship.

I'm single again.

I cut my locs.

I currently weigh 180 pounds.

Oh, I lost more than 180 pounds.

I dye my beard.

I gave up beef and pork.

I worked for Google.

I am now a licensed sports agent.

I have ONE client which sucks ASS.

NFL Hall Of Famer Shawne 'Lights Out' Merriman is a business partner in an IMO (if you know, you know).

I own 3 Shopify stores.

My first book, about NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) and HBCUs will be published next month (thanks Coach Prime!)

I finally got 700+ credit.

Okay, that's all I can think of for now.  Nice talk! we should do this again. Like anyone will read this anyway, Maybe I should have Tik-Tok'd this.

The Criminalization Of Black Youth And Behavior

This won't be a long post.

Can you now see how America, along with the help of mainstream media has criminalized Black youth as well as what can be considered 'Black behavior'?

From non-violent demonstrations to attending a graduation pool party, it seems that certain folk see the gathering of Black youth as a criminal element participating in criminal behavior, so it has to be policed accordingly.

My sister works in McKinney, TX and lives a stone's throw from where this incident took place. My nieces are 5 and 8 and my nephew is 12. This shit just got personal.

All those Black folk LIVE in that neighborhood, so no one 'didn't belong'.

I play chess, not checkers...

You fucks with mine... Anticipate what the next move will be.

Why Am I Still Here?

My name is Hassan and I am barely here.

I mean that.

I'm trying to currently understand WHY I am still here, because for about a year and a half now I have literally and figuratively had one foot in the grave.

In my lifetime, I  have (in no particular order)

Broken my left foot and a few bones in my hands

Ruptured my left Achilles tendon

Had my right knee rebuilt

Had 2 lumbar procedures

Slipped into a diabetic coma

Had 2 hernia repairs w/plastic surgery supported by pelvic mesh

More than 5 service-related and sports concussions

Been in a major car wreck with internal injuries/head trauma

Had 36 stitches to close  a head wound (my Mom threw an unwashed Pyrex bowl at me when I was a kid - she connected)

Had my nose broken in a fight

Cracked a front tooth down the middle in another fight

Fractured my skull and suffered a subdural hemotoma (brain swelling) and detached retina - workplace injury

My eyes imploded Dec 27, 2011 on I-65 driving thru Louisville

Have had 24 surgical procedures to have both eyes rebuilt, losing more than 75% of my vision, also losing the ability to distinguish day from night as well as eye alignment. Subsequent surgeries and implants have caused me to have cataract surgery in both eyes, glaucoma and diplopia (double vision)

Suffered a myocardial infarction (heart attack)

The past 18 months suffering from End Stage Renal Failure, I desperately need a kidney transplant to live.


All of these things... There have been times, especially in the last year or so where I knew I was out of here. Plenty of touch an go moments in the last 4 years where I wasn't expected to recover and last summer had to have the "death talk' with first my doctors, and then my Mom and Ex as to my final wishes and body disposal and care.

Expectations of life expectancy and the real and unreal possibilities of a transplant had been explained to me. I then researched it, accepted it and planned accordingly. I set things up financially leaving my Mother as the sole beneficiary, took a final traveling vacation to various cities and then started an independent, turnkey business as to contribute to a family trust so my parents, nieces and nephews could be cared for.

My siblings, God love then never completed setting up the family trust. I had to stop working at my new company last summer because my symptoms worsened, causing me to be hospitalized various times making me unable to go back to work.

Contact with my family began to wane. When I made the announcement of my kidney fagilure at the beginning of 2014, my family rallied around me and we had all of these grandiose plans to make sure I had support throughout my ordeal and that my death if it happened, would not be in vain. Hell, I wanted to take out a million dollar policy out on myself but only ended up taking $250k to give to my Mom because that's all I could afford. Not that I wanted to suffer or was looking to die, I just wanted to pay off their mortgage.

When I stopped working, I lost the additional income I needed to pay for new medication I still desperately need to survive.  I asked for help and initially got it, but then...

**crickets**

I won't go into detail, but I got faked out so bad that I almost died waiting for help that was said to be on the way.

I didn't bother to contact anyone because no one reached out to me and explained or apologized... This went on for weeks until

This past Tuesday morning, my voicemail is loaded with calls from my siblings and best friend.

My Mother had suddenly died.


All of that planning and action/inaction

All of the death scares I've encountered

Why is she gone and not I?


What is the reason that I'm still here?

Someone please explain this shit.

1,825 Days... Plus Leap Year

It was five years ago today that we last spoke.

The two things that have stuck with me since that conversation was that you had to take your oxygen mask off to properly articulate and enunciate the fact that you needed a transplant in order to live beyond beyond the 72 or so hours you had left on this plane of existence.

The other thing was that you were surely going to die, and you simply wanted to have a regular, normal phone call, and you just wanted me to tell you about my day.

I had gone to this shopping mall near Red Rock and also drove down The Strip and had taken and was sending you pictures of the activity to show you that living in Las Vegas was about as regular as it was in Atlanta, which I had left months before. Seeing as you put me out of Atlanta and instructed me to both work on my marriage and gave me the option to tell Terry whatever I wanted at this point about your condition pointed out the fact that this was indeed the point of no return.

Hell, I was already telling Terry about every conversation, every instant message... Every report that Alesia was giving me from her hospital and home visits, seeing as you banned my ass from entering Emory because you didn't want me to see you after all of the extreme weight loss.

Whatever, Chica... I still loved you anyway and we spoke every damn day until this last conversation August 27th.

So much had happened from the time I left Atlanta until this particular conversation. Although there were times that you didn't have enough strength to speak, we spoke anyway. It hurt me as much as it made me feel important. You wanted to have conversations about everything and nothing at all... As long as it had nothing to do with medication, treatment, odd diagnoses and disease.

I understood that you wanted to be treated like a regular, normal human being. You underscored to me that although the picture mail was cool as hell, texting and instant messaging could never get the job done when it came to just being human. Those mostly short, sometime long and awkwardly paused silence, gotta make an adjustment and breathe infused conversations were my everything.

And now that I need a transplant in order to live beyond a date that I can clearly see on my calender... And am suffering through a somewhat painful, but moderately slow decline



i remember speaking with you and you having to calm me down when it was you suffering through the pain, the lack of oxygen, the poking and prodding or medical personnel, the medication adjustments and the difficulty of being back in your room at home.

You assured me that everything was going to be fine even though you knew...

and in these moments. I don't have a single solitary soul to speak with on a human level as I can clearly see for myself both my fate and mortality just as you saw for yourself

!

Seems like it was just yesterday. I wish that it was... I'd cherish the time more than I did then.

This Ain't Goodbye... But I'm Waiving Anyway

Hassan Ntimbanjayo
Chicago, IL


January 14, 2014


Dear Friends and Family,

If you're reading this, that means that I have checked into a local hospice program and am near the time that The Creator calls us home to the essence.

For the record, I'm cool and have come to terms with my health/life situation.

I am writing this open letter, this appeal to you, Dear Reader because I may not have many chances to speak to you if my associate has posted this. I have chronicled some of what has been going on with me health wise, but of course, I am more introvert than extrovert, so there are a lot of things I am still not willing to share, even in this moment.

Normally, I would appeal to what I believe is your common sense, but I know most of you,, and the few that I haven't gotten a chance to meet, I know that most are stuck in their opinionated ways, so I will spare you any appeal to prevent what is happening to me and just give you this advice:

Enjoy the ride!

Don't let anger, angst, opinion and false hop and so-called religion hold you to the point where you miss out on living life. So many of you are so embedded and entrenched in falsehoods that it prevents you from enjoying everything life has to offer. I see so many of you living in pain and wasting your time with and around folk who don't give a very clear fuck about what happens to you, your happiness and your soul that it had done nothing but hurt me to the point where I don't want to even communicate with you anymore.

There are some, and they know who they are whom I admire and still communicate with between all of the doctor's visits and rest periods I need to conserve my energies. I love you guys and I wish you nothing but heaven for coming to my bedside in this, my most trying moments.

For those of you who I've spoke with recently, I will do what I can to get to spend time with you before I get shipped off to the May Clinic. Because I have waived all my 'rights' for medicinal assistance, I hope that I get the time and energy to see you.

To the rest of you, I love you and hope the nest for you. For those whom I haven't reserved any issue with (Mora S,. Kristine T., Tammie S., Sheletha M and Herchell W.), I'm sure 'te flames of hell' will tickle my trifling ass. I hope that will bring you the satisfaction you need to put a close to having to deal with me in the flesh. I am sorry if I caused you any pain and I also wish you heaven as well.

I don't have anything else to leave you with but a 'So long'...

I don't do good-byes. If by some chance holistic treatment and various transplant procedures come into play and afford me an extension of time in this, my twisted and diseased meat-sack, then we will pick up where we left off sometime in the distant future.

And for those that care to know, Anika's spirit speaks to me every day. I'm using her handbook from 2009 and doing kind of the opposite, where April, Aswad, Candice, Alesia and myself were the only ones to know.

Looks like I'm going to best you there, Terry, lol!

I close with the immortal words of Fred G. Sanford, period: "Love Somebody!!!"



Best Regards,


Hassan Olumoroti Ntimbanjayo