All The Lives I Lived

California Love

1995 in West Hollywood, I was born. The same year Tupac was"out on bail fresh out of jail California dreaming " when he and Dr. Dre created the timeless classic California Love. That song would go on to be a California anthem for years to come, but my run in California was much shorter.

Basketball

By four, I was in Chicago and had a baby sister. By the time I'd left, I would also have a baby brother. Unlike California, Chicago would be my home for a much longer time. When people ask where I'm from, it's kind of a trick question because I've lived in so many places. However, more often than not, I will tell people that I'm from Chicago.

Chicago is the city that raised me in my formative years.

I had a fight in Holstein Park that ended in a lifetime friendship. On 78th & Ellis, I made a lifetime of family memories. When I was young and still finding out who I was and what I liked, Chicago's schools, roller rinks, and after-school programs were my guide. Back in those days, I knew two things for sure. Bow Wow was my favorite rapper, and I was going to be a basketball player.

I played basketball every day I could. I would get basketball lessons after school that taught me to pivot, always aim for the backboard, and use my non-dominant hand to guard my dribble. Through osmosis, I learned many trick moves and historical Basketball facts from NBA Street Vol 2. When I wasn't playing NBA Street 2 or learning about the game, I was playing basketball on my YMCA team, the Celtics. At night, I jammed to Bow Wow and had hoop dreams. Imagine how happy I was when Like Mike came out.

The Fresh Prince of Belair

In 2004, at the age of 9, I moved back out to California. It was like a parallel universe. Just like Will, I dealt with a culture shock and reconnected with my family in California. The suburban town of Temecula was nothing like the city of Chicago, and schools were totally different. My class was a 4th and 5th-grade classroom, the curriculum seemed very different, and we did class musicals. Christmas was a hot summer day, but I adjusted and grew to appreciate the wonders of California.

For one, I could go off on my own in the neighborhood. I had a group of friends in the neighborhood, and we often rode our bikes and played like we were in the Sand Lot. However, after some custody issues forced my family and I back to Chicago, much like Will, I learned that you can't go home again. That was true in California and in Chicago, where I learned that my teacher & classmates who had given me such a special send-off were not happy to see me return.

Just Lose It

When I came back to Chicago, things had changed. I went to California as a PlayStation guy and returned an Xbox man. So instead of trying to pretend that they hadn't, we adjusted. I changed schools for fifth grade, and despite the change, I made the honor roll and managed my ADHD better. 5th grade ended up being one the best school experiences of my life. 5th grade was also the year when I gained an eye for topics beyond my childhood horizon.

I'd always liked wrestling but, I was baptized as a WWE fan for life during the Ruthless Aggression Era. Eminem, not Bow Wow, was my favorite rapper. I started South Park, Family Guy, Cursing among my friends, and getting ridiculous advice from my friends on the birds and bees. I was no longer roaming the neighborhood with my friends, but after school, there was always a big game of two-hand touch in the concrete lot behind the school: tackle football if it was snowing. Late 2004 and early 2005 was an awesome time, but all good things must come to an end.

We Fly High (Ballin)

Our move to Pennsylvania in the fall of '05 was a mixed bag. When we arrived, we had already missed a month of school, and needless to say, my grades suffered early. However, our family suffered the loss of a close friend, and we were surrounded by the family of our family friend in Reading, Pennsylvania.

As a lifelong basketball fan, I was passively interested in football. I played Madden, NFL Street, and decided I was a Bears fan in '05 because I was from Chicago. '06 turned out to be a very good time to be a Bears fan because that was the year they won the Conference Championship and went to the Super Bowl. The Bears didn't get a Lombardi trophy, but they did get a new lifelong Bears fan.

Much like the Bears and my grades, I recovered from the shock of the move. As NFL players everywhere celebrated their touchdowns with the Balling taunt, I took my first snaps in football. I had decent height and a lot of speed, but I wasn't very big. However, when given a chance to pick my position, I chose middle linebacker because I wanted to be the next Brian Urlacher.

Pennsylvania was a turbulent time for me, but I still have a lot of good memories. However, I didn't fly high the entire time. My ADHD manifested in troublesome ways in school, and I had a detrimental experience outside of school. Unlike the early shocks of the move, this would take longer to bounce back from. Not everyone I came across in Pennslyvania was good, and unfortunately, one bad apple does spoil the bunch.

In Repair

In 2006, we moved to Virginia. Virginia was one of our strangest moves. We moved there when my mom got a promotion, and even though we had a house there and I went to the second semester of 6th grade there, it felt like we never really lived there. Once again, my grades suffered, and once again, I bounced back. However, in school, the social scene never felt familiar to me.

Looking back, Virginia was a healing place for us. We were in repair, much like the song on John Mayer's classic, and continually played album Continuum. Virginia wasn't meant to be our forever place. It was a holdover. Mom was at work more than she ever had been before, and we were never home. My siblings and I spent more time at the babysitter/childcare provider's house with her kids than we did at our own house.

Still, it was an excellent place to be. We spent our time playing lots of Monopoly and flag football and watching WWE with our childcare providers' kids. Our days were fulfilling and fun, but when it was time to go, everyone had an unspoken understanding that Virginia had given us everything it could give us, and we drove off into the night better than when we drove into Virginia.

3 Peat

In 2007, in my seventh-grade year, we moved to Georgia. We lived in the Alpharetta and Roswell area, and it was amazing. I went to a small, predominantly Muslim school, and it was one of the best school experiences I have ever had. The teachers at Amana had a nontraditional approach that involved a lot of projects and engaging ways of teaching that made school interesting. This time the move improved my grades, and I was again on the honor roll. The small class sizes meant I basically knew the whole school. I had recess for my 7th and 8th-grade year, where we played a lot of Throw 'em Up, Bust 'Em Up, which I brought with me from Pennslyvania. I even played basketball for Amana.

However, basketball was a hobby by now because I was ready to become a professional football player. Playing for the Roswell Hornets was one of the best experiences of my life. Our coach cared about us as individuals and ensured we operated as a family. He went the extra mile. To this day, he is the best coach I have ever had. I wanted to be the next Urlacher in Pennslyvania, but I learned I was far better off as a receiver in Georgia. I played safety because we were all two-way players on the Hornets, so I still got to scratch my defensive itch, but receiver is where I made my bones. I caught the ball so well that I gained the nickname Spiderman. While in Georgia, Lil Wayne had a breakout album called C3 that my family and I would listen to daily, but I also broke out. That year I scored sixteen touchdowns.

In addition to the stellar season, I came away with a bunch of good friends from the school and the team. Unlike Virginia, it was easy to see how we could be in Georgia until college. My sister had joined the cheer squad, and my brother was starting to play football. My brother and sister had even made best friends in Georgia as I had in Chicago and like I had here in Georgia. In a parallel universe, we never left Georgia. But of course, we did, or this story would be over.

Going Through Changes

I went to high school in Florida, where my mom was starting Law School, and Eminem released his classic album Recovery. Eminem post hiatus wasn't the only one going through changes. High school was an odd angsty time for me. I once again found my tribe, but I wasn't completely myself. Before we left Georgia, I was diagnosed with epilepsy. Epilepsy affected me in obvious ways, like epileptic seizures, but it also affected me in less obvious ways, like anxiety. It took me a couple of years to find an epilepsy medicine that worked for me, and because of my high metabolism, I had to take a very large dose.

In the meantime, I was unsure of myself and more in my head than ever. This affected me socially, but more importantly to me, it affected my game. I played football all four years of high school, but I was never able to get out of my head, which affected my performance.

Still, I never stopped trying, hoping that my hard work and dedication would just burst through one day and suddenly everything would be better. I was a huge fan of those movies where one self-actualizing moment in a person's high school experience changes their life and fixes their problems.

One thing I was able to get right athletically was track. I only joined the track team because that's what football players did in the spring to prepare for the season. However, maybe it's because I always thought of track as a hobby and didn't put as much pressure on myself, but I was good. I triple-jumped, ran the four hundred, and was on the travel team for my entire high school career. Track was great because every day, your coach would ask you to do something you didn't think you could do, and after practice, through hard work and persistence, you had achieved the impossible and gotten better.

Wonderland

In my senior year, I had a reading renaissance. I had always liked stories, but I didn't enjoy reading even the books I picked out. Maybe it was my ADHD that made it harder to sit through a book, or maybe it was just me. Whatever it was ended my senior year when I read The Goblet of Fire and then read the entire Harry Potter Series and kept reading anything and everything I could, from comic books to The Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl to my favorite series of all time, Beautiful Creatures. During my senior year, I really came into my own. Everything felt better than before. It was easily my best year in high school socially, and in school, I felt I had mastered the game. I started writing a lot, even making my own private book, and for some reason, Kesha's Warrior album was the theme to all of this. I played that album when I slept, in the car, during homework. The occasion didn't matter. It was on repeat, and it will always be synonymous with that year.

Juice

In 2013, I moved to Michigan to go to Michigan State. Chance's album Acid Rap exploded on the scene, and so did I. College was a wonderful time and that album is immortalized in my college experience. I saw Chance perform live at MSU. I gained friends that will last a lifetime. I started playing Quidditch now, Quadball, a game I played for the next eight years and still love it to this day. I met my current fiance and future wife. I studied abroad and traveled to London, Scotland, and France.

I gained a love for Religious Studies thanks to the best teacher I've had at any level, which influenced me to pursue a degree in it in addition to my Psychology degree. I started writing a real book at MSU that got me to my next move back to Chicago, where I played three more years of Quidditch with the amazing Columbia Renegades/Phoenix, players who I will never be able to forget. I honed my writing skills with a phenomenal cohort of writers and an ensemble of brilliant instructors at Columbia College Chicago, where I got my MFA in Fiction. Then, as the sun set on Chicago I sailed back to the light of my life in Michigan. Michigan is my last move...so far.