Life is a Jukebox

I sat in a jukebox for all of 2024. A little figurine manuevering through a big machine. Every song imprinting on me, leaving dents, echoing through my speech. I laid in my doll bed thinking "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now." I literally was "looking for a job and then I found a job..." I'd roll out of my doll bed and into an toy Uber to Bruckner. The moment the car rolled to a stop, "Welcome to the Jungle" would pound in my chest. "You know where you are, you're in the jungle baby, you're gonna die." I worked at the "Hotel California" (Bruckner) for over 2 years. After my first day I knew I shouldn't be there. I could feel that it would emotionally decompose me, but I stayed. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave". Modern and polished on the outside, inviting even but unpredictability and devastation ran from the basement to the roof.

Flipping through the booklet of my Jukebox I recall that it wasn't all imprisonment. On February 4, I got furloughed back home to Crooklyn for the Spike Lee exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. It was a mixtape of "Fight the Power", "Harlem Blues", "Straight and Nappy", "Someday We'll All Be Free", "O-o-h Child", "These Three Words", "Get There". Life is not all one thing. It is an amalgamation of all things. Interjections of horror, beauty, and mundanity. When the rise of the tide is hovering, the sun can still peer through.

I returned to my cell as instructed but I was resolved to craft a permanent escape. Sadly every timeframe I set for myself was another figment of my imagination. After I support someone through this crisis or once I catch up with documentation were just pacifiers I recited to ease my restless nights. I felt and still feel like I let down people who mean a lot to me. The program participants and my co-workers I met at Bruckner are some of the most resilient, complex, and extraordinary people I have ever and will ever meet. They're really "Easy to Love".

In April, I was able to disguise myself as a referee and slither out of "The House of the Rising Sun" (Bruckner) to my first ever WrestleMania. I was on "Cloud Nine" floating above "Mount Everest". My childhood dream was more magical and electric than my mind could envision. I was caught trying to steal a customized WrestleMania chair, stripped of my championship belt, and sent back to Bruckner.

It must be stated that I am grateful for every reprieve I got and to all the people that made those moments of peace possible. I found my sanity in the trading of memes in group chats, the book club, the spades days, the Knicks games in quarter season ticket holder seats, the funny videos, the caregiver conferences, car karaoke, the Salsa con Fuego nights, the movie trips, the pop culture chats, cocktails on the beach, the impromptu Bachata class, the Broadway plays, and the train rides home. "There is the Light and it Never Goes out".

June 1, I escaped Bruckner in "All Black Everything" to Giants: The Dean Collection at the Brooklyn Museum. Spent hours devouring the "Black Effect", "Black Rage"(by Lauryn Hill- not on Spotify), "The Get Down Brothers vs Notorious 3". I could "Feel the Love" in every stroke of paint, every sculpture and every photo. It stuck with me.

I walked back to Bruckner but it was only a shell of a shell of a shell. The job had swallowed me and kept remnants of my soul, taxation. When I dragged my carcass out of Bruckner on June 14, 2024, I didn't realize I'd be tumbling into "Cementality". I re-entered society by means of a mental health leave. The same collectible in a new box. I was so "Mad". Mad at myself, mad at the company for allowing the petty bullshit that was happening in the office before I left. I was grieving the deaths that occurred in the building. Trying to say "Goodbye, Dear Friend" to the people who passed, those in the "Gangsta Lean". Grappling with the person I thought I was going to be a "Million Years Ago". Knowing it's not just me "who can't stand the reflection that they see". The conversations with myself got louder. I started saying "u" instead of I, screaming "loving you is complicated". After telling the Lord, "I'm Tired" I had an awakening. I was miserable at work and miserable at home. I wasn't appreciating the opportunity for a rebirth. The "Dog Days Are Over" had been on low volume from the day I sauntered home and I needed to figure out who I was when "No One's in the Room." When I'm not being of service to anyone, how am I of any use to myself.

I started to peak out. To carve a sharper, sturdier identity. Then July 22, 2024 everything halted and shifted. My dad was hospitalized. First surgery August 1st, second unexpected surgery August 9th. I was living at the hospital. The mental health leave switched to paid family leave. My siblings and mom were serenading each other to the tune of "Lean On Me". A month in the hospital, a month at a great rehab, and another month at a shitty one. God, Disney movies, and Wordle keeping my mom and I on late Uber rides home to the tune of "You've Got A Friend in Me".

I was being ping ponged from "Rock Bottom" to "My Life is in Your Hands". Boomeranging from "Shake it Out" to deafening silence. Catapulting to "Not Like Us".

(Because the only song of 2024 was "Not Like Us". It has to be stated that Kendrick beat BBL Drizzy. He deserves to be performing the Super Bowl halftime show. There is no Big Three only Big Him.) This was the climax of hip hop/pop culture of 2024 ipso facto it was a highlight in my Jukebox booklet.

Transmitting from "Free" to "Crazy". Shit "Anti-Hero" started to play on a loop here and there.

Went to a bar a few times, had conversations that were way too deep with men I've never seen again, "Like Real People Do". Still mumbled "Not Tonight" to my crush, whenever I saw him. I went to Luna Luna at The Shed and it was like "Cartoons and Cereal". I saw Smokey "Motherfucking" Robinson, Janet Jackson (Ms. Jackson if you're nasty), and Gambino (who is a mastermind) live.

Insert "Cruising", "Any Time, Any Place", and "Freaks and Geeks" here.

Special shoutout to my tv binging abilities and the shows that delivered super hot fire. Thank you to the Supernatural, the Vampires interviewed, the dragons housed, the powerful rings, the chefs I will never say no to, my sick boys. You are Them, a Supacell of entertainment. "My body tells me no but I won't quit cause I want more." Damn right, I've watched 12 episodes of an hour long show in a day and I'll do it again.

November 5, my dad was discharged from the shitty rehabilitation/nursing center and he could finally go "Home". It was also Election Day so Afroman came to save me by means of TBD cause I know this country very well.

There was static and then November 19th, he was back in the hospital. It "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards".

My mom got sick December 10. My dad was discharged December 13. "London" took us to Bed Stuy this time, which might seem strange but it's the sentiment that counts. (And Benjamin Clementine is life). I am "Insane in the Brain" caring for two parents. My siblings and I are "Unfuckwittable", plugging through.

It's 2025 and "I'm Here", "Defying Gravity"

Life is a Jukebox. We don't necessarily get to control which song is next, but how we move through the music is our choice. Music is "All We Got."