Define Functional

Chapter Two: Girls Girls Girls

I’m not sure if I ever said it to her out loud but in my head, I called her Jewlz. Her name was Julie and we met during a freshman summer program at Marquette University. It was a program for students with high test scores but lower than expected grade point averages. I was again amongst a group with which I should fit. We all shared the same disease, we could but we didn’t. The program was our chance to prove ourselves and show we were capable of performing at a collegiate level. It was highly structured requiring us to take one 3 credit course and spend the rest of the day in orientation classes and mandatory study hours. I don’t remember exactly how many of us there were but we all stayed in the same dormitory with men and women on different floors. I landed on that campus, 800 miles away from home, after an eventful senior year during which I created my own half-day schedule by skipping half my classes every day. To make things fair I would alternate leaving or arriving after lunch during the week. I didn’t feel that bad about it because to make up for my freshman failure I had two periods of gym every day. I had a grade point average of 1.1 entering the year and really shouldn’t have been promoted to the twelfth grade. I remember a friend who resented my flippant attitude toward school calling me, the summer before the twelfth grade, to inform me that I had failed two classes and wouldn’t be a senior in the fall. Having grown in arrogance, due to the magic doors administrators would open to allow me to dodge consequences, I confidently replied “Well see”. And as I expected, we shared most of the same classes that next year, on the days I bothered to show up for them. When the year ended, I shouldn’t have graduated but to fit the pattern that had been established in my life my English teacher mercifully decided not to fail me stating that she didn’t want to “Hold me back” because “the world needed me”. No pressure right? But despite all the lessons I didn’t learn that year JROTC had put me in a position to go to college. A counselor that worked with our cadets was a Marquette Alumni and found this program for me. JROTC had also netted me a girlfriend and by the time I was leaving for college, we were still in the throes of passion following our mutually lost virginity. Before I left for school that summer, I bought a micro recorder to use during lectures but tested it out first recording her moans during one of our love-making sessions. I and that tape would make our way to a majority white Jesuit campus, with me nervous about leaving its star, nervous about the new world I was in, nervous about meeting the standards of college life, and unknowingly one floor beneath Jewlz.

Julie was something new to me. She was half Korean and German. I can’t say I remember many more details about her other than that. Don’t ask me the color of her eyes, how she dressed, even what first made me curious about her. She was just Jewlz. I can’t for that matter remember how or when we first spoke she just appears in my memories in the way only someone truly that matters does. Her name evokes feelings of both happiness and regret simultaneously.

I’m guessing we first linked up when the minority attendees of the summer program found each other. We were all like immigrants in a new country trying to find a semblance of home and safety. There were about seven of us in total. Four girls and 3 guys my roommate included. Most of the girls were probably interested in him and he is very important to my story but we’ll get to that later. Julie was the party girl of the group. I had never indulged in the party scene in school. On the few occasions I was invited to one I lived so far away that it wasn’t worth the trip. I did however sporadically step out with a crowd of friends in high school to smoke weed during classes. We’d add some MD 20/20 to the mix every once in a while but it was usually way too many people splitting a dime bag and a pint to really get buzzed or high. Once me and Fatz, my high school buddy, ended up with about fifty dollars worth of weed to ourselves and the result was him falling off a wall and me spending the afternoon nervously staring up at high rise windows wondering which one the ex of a girl I was dating was staring back from planning his attack. Basically, I was pretty sheltered and very inexperienced when it came to intoxicants. Julie however seemed acquainted with the college party scene, and at some point, a rumor was spread that someone we knew tried to take advantage of her while she was still inebriated from a night on frat row. I’m not sure if I saw myself as chivalrous, saving a damsel in distress, just curious about the parties, or just really into Julie, but I pledged to attend parties with her from that point on to make sure she stayed safe. My roommate pledged as well and it wasn’t long before our oaths were tested.

I must’ve at least believed my motives were pure because I called my girl back home confident that when I explained my plan to escort Jewlz to future shindigs, she would understand what I was doing and why I had to do it. She didn’t, but she also didn’t put up much of a fight once stood by my noble intentions and once that first weekend arrived, I sprang to action ready to defend Jewlz against the predators of the night. I adapted to the party life pretty quickly and was pleasantly surprised to learn that minority pledges were prized by white fraternities. I was routinely given free admission to parties and guided tours of the houses whenever we showed up at events. At the parties where we didn’t pay to get in but instead for a cup so we could pour our own beers from the keg, I learned the pretty disgusting trick of using the oil from around your nose to dissipate the foam from our piss poor pours. Looking back I’m not sure if this was an actual practice that most students participated in or just an attempt to see if they could get me to do it. Regardless, the challenge on most nights was to see how many parties we could sneak that same cup into and stretch our five-buck initial investment into all the beers we could drink. The “parties'' themselves were pretty mundane. They usually consisted of a keg or trash can full of off-brand beers, music I didn’t know, beer pong, neon lights, and people standing around drinking or wandering around looking for a quiet place to “talk”. My nights with Julie regularly included four or five parties, a shit ton of beer, rescuing Julie from a fight, and then stealthily getting back to our dorms on what was supposed to be a dry campus. The campus police weren’t much of a threat, they were more worried about keeping us safe than punishing us for underage drinking. It was getting past the front desk of the dorms and explaining why Jewlz needed to be helped to her room where boys weren’t allowed after hours.

On one particular night, we were out, on the row, searching for our next beer heist. We hopped on a campus van to speed up the process a bit and, after a few stops, a couple of frat brothers hopped on. One of them had a cast on his leg and my roommate and I decided to nicely give up our seats and awkwardly sit/stand in a space not big enough for either so he could sit with his leg up. Drunk and overly grateful they decided we were the coolest freshman ever and invited us to hit the next party with them. We got off the bus at what I remember as a row house with 3 floors in full rave mode. Lights, blaring unidentifiable music, smoke of various origins, alcohol, and students everywhere. Tonight, we were guests of honor and given carte blanche. The party it turns out was a wap party, germaphobes skip ahead, which as I understand it meant they served a punch made of any and all liquor available especially Everclear mixed with “kool-aid” and randomly jagged misshapen chunks of fruit. This was all mixed in a bathtub and you basically dipped your cup, hand and all, into it to collect as much as you could. This ironically was a huge step up from the beer we got at other places so we were having a great time scooping up chunky bathtub juice. Jewlz and I stepped out into the backyard to actually talk and get some air. The backyard full of strands of Christmas lights, I remember them being mostly blue with a few other colors sprinkled in and it made for a trippy background for our drunk conversation. As we talked something among the lights moved and caught my eye I don’t know if you’re like me but my eyes are naturally attracted to movement. Instinctively I glanced over to follow the movement but turned back immediately in mid-sentence only to notice Julie was gone. I only turned away for a split second, where did she go? Panic hit me. I was heartbroken. To me, it seemed as if I must have just ruined my chance to get closer to her by being boring, or maybe the interest had never been mutual, maybe she found a more interesting upperclassman to talk to. A million hypotheticals crossed my mind and none of them played out in my favor so feeling sorry for myself I hung my head in defeat and there she was passed out on the ground. It didn’t take long for someone else to notice and help me get her up. It was then made clear it was time for us to go. Unconscious teenage girls are definitely contraband at frat houses. I found my roommate and we made our way through the crowd holding up our fallen comrade, heading as quickly as possible for the door. Jelwz wasn’t down for the count though, and she jerked back to life after hearing a comment from one of the onlookers. She was still spry enough to toss her shoe across the room making our escape even more urgent. When got outside and she went a few more rounds punching a tree before finally succumbing to the spiked kool-aid.

Now here’s the scene. I’m in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on a majority white Jesuit campus. It’s the a.m. side of the night, and two black men are standing over a Korean German girl trying to figure out their next move. We’ve got to her home and then somehow back to our own dorms as quickly as possible without causing a scene. With no other options, I grabbed her legs and he secured her upper body and we started moving toward the main campus. We had a couple of blocks to go so we were moving fast when out of nowhere we started to take notice of something following us. I knew I’d had a fair amount of punch so I couldn’t decide if what was following us was real or just an embodiment of my fear of getting caught. With my impaired logic, I decided that if I didn’t act like I thought what I was doing was wrong then a normal person would just assume everything was on the up and up. The shadow was still approaching though. I was trying my best not to look at it praying it would just go away if we ignored it, but whatever it was it was now moving alongside us slowing down to match our pace. We continued on sticking to the idea that until we’re caught we haven’t been caught. I then became aware that it was talking to us. It was trying to get our attention, flag us down. It didn’t sound authoritative though. My fear, paranoia and need to know what’s lurking in the shadows finally got the best of me and I turned to address the threat. What I saw when I turned, was a four-foot-something black dude walking a bike that looked way too big for him alongside us gesturing to get a word with us. He had been flagging us down for a while now hoping to buy his way into whatever we had planned for the woman we’d captured. This date rape elf was offering weed, coke, even a place we could take her in return for a piece of the action. No matter how much we ignored or assured him that he’d read the situation wrong he wasn’t willing to believe that our predicament had been born of good intentions and that we had nothing but our friend’s best interest at heart. He followed until we reached the end of his domain and retreated back into the darkness like a troll in a fucked up fairy tale. He walked away angry, feeling slighted, he just couldn’t accept nothing was going on as the truth, and for that matter neither could my girlfriend.

After all that, THIS is where the story gets strange, I mean like soap opera strange. So strange that if someone tried to tell me this story I’d give them the side-eye for trying to pass off such obvious fiction as fact. So strange that I still wonder if I even know the whole truth. Little did I know, but during that summer program, the universe had juxtaposed itself into just the right alignment to place me, a kid from the DMV (DC Metropolitan area, I’ll explain later) who’s only travel away from the East Coast had been a JROTC trip to Colorado Springs, and whose girlfriend was also from the DMV and to his knowledge had spent some time in California but nowhere near Milwaukee, in the same dorm room with Robert, the son of an NBA player and Milwaukee native who surprisingly had more in common with me than ethnicity and low GPAs. His parents were friends with a family in DC and he had dated their daughter for a while. We had ties to the same girl and it wasn’t Jewlz. His ex was my current and everybody knew but me.

Ignorance was bliss in this case and I was euphoric. I thought I was managing college life expertly. I’d made it through the summer program earning an A in English Composition 101, I even managed a perfect score on my first paper which I wrote the morning before class. That reassured me that I didn’t have to change any of my lackadaisical study habits to survive at this level. Jewlz and I were good, not in a relationship but neither of us was seeking it...yet. We were really good friends like the type that checked on each other when they were sick and spent hours in the afternoons talking and getting to know one another. As far as I knew, I was in good standing with my girlfriend. I had to tell some pretty egregious lies about how needy Julie was and that I was hanging out with her so much out of pity but they all seemed to work. The fall semester had begun and I now had a white roommate, Matt, that grew up in Milwaukee and we got along swimmingly. Basically, he left every weekend to spend time with family and I had the room to myself. And even though I slept under the light of a glowing red neon cross, reminding me that “Jesus Saves” mounted on the mission located across the street from my window, my partying was at an all-time high. I had engineered my schedule so that most days I didn’t have classes until noon which gave me plenty of time to sleep it off and just enough time to get complacent enough not to go. I found a hairstylist that could cut my hair the way I liked and my girlfriend and family would send me money occasionally to make an appointment. She only had one chair in the shop and did the whole wash and scissor cut thing which felt baller to kid used to corner barbershops. A predatory credit card company had approved me for a line of credit knowing I was a broke freshman with no income, I used it to buy pizzas when I was hungry and even learned how to reheat slices on my iron. I was pretty content in my new world with the routine I had established, but a storm was brewing beneath the surface.

Besides Jelwz, my favorite thing from my time in college was my radio show. Joseph, a friend I’d made during the summer, and I signed up as hosts for the campus radio and had a show from 8-10 on Wednesday nights. We split the two-hour window in half, me DJing the first half gearing the show towards hip-hop and him turning the last half into our version of the “Quiet Storm”. This was my chance to share the music I loved and my innermost thoughts with a campus I felt never really knew me. Being a disembodied voice gave me a freedom of expression I hadn’t had before. I also got the added benefit of being able to dig through crates of vinyl making me feel more connected with the world and culture of hip-hop that I longed to be a contributing member of. The show was broadcast through the campus public access cable station so I’m sure we had 0 listeners. I doubt even Julie tuned in. Still, somehow I felt like I was finally being heard. Maybe it was just the joy of finally speaking. Joe was a friend but someone I’ll admit I didn’t have much respect for. I’d regularly talk shit about him on the phone to my girlfriend to help her feel secure in her position as my best friend. Bad move.

I haven’t mentioned her name as of yet but my girlfriend back home I’ll refer to from now on as Turks and Caicos. T&C was my first serious girlfriend. I dated girls before her but dating had only meant making out in inappropriate places at school and talking on the telephone when possible. I always was too far away to really hang out with anyone outside of school and that had become such a norm for me that socializing during my “off hours” never even crossed my mind. It was in the realm of possibility. T&C was also my first sexual partner and for a 130 lb nerd dating what some would have considered a popular girl she was a status symbol. My mother hated her from the outset. To mom, she came across as pushy and controlling. She saw her as the succubus corrupting her otherwise innocent baby boy. T&C took a lot of the blame for my misbehavior in high school but I was going to rebel one way or another. She just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I often compare the initial courtship between T&C and me to the movie Norbit with Eddie Murphy. Basically one day she asked me if I had a girlfriend and in retrospect, I don’t think my answer mattered. She instructed me to call her that night and when I didn’t, trying to be faithful to the girl I was with at the time, it became clear that resistance was futile. She had decided to claim me and that was that. She opened Pandora's box for me. A world where I finally became aware that there were females attracted to me and this newly discovered flirtatious nature of mine led to the end of my current relationship and the beginning of her reign.

I loved her in the way I understood love at that point. I didn’t want to lose her. With her, I felt more normal than I had ever felt before. She was the gateway to a realm of new possibilities for me. We went on dates. Actual dates that required me to leave the house. They weren’t elaborate, sometimes it was just riding back and forth on the subway for hours talking and making out when the cars were empty. We’d stay on the train so long that our fare cards would expire and we’d have to explain our way out of the station at the end of the night. She was a year ahead of me in school so she had already graduated when I was a senior. She had a car and a job. She took me to my first Jay-Z concert. Another time we snuck away to a concert in Philly but ended up never leaving the hotel. I’d sneak her into the house whenever I could. Skipping school and spending the day together. I even faked being sick to get out of going on a trip to South Carolina for my grandmother's funeral so we could have a weekend to ourselves. The addiction was bad. So we were both worried about me leaving to go to school. How would I get along without her? Was she willing to wait it out? She on the other hand knew I would be surrounded by temptations there and I would be too far off the leash to control.

After T&C recognized Julie had become an issue she hatched a plan. She couldn’t be there to physically keep me on the hook but she could get to me mentally, isolate me, and I’d need her again. She could create a situation where she’d be all I had and have me right where she wanted me. By the time the fall semester started, I was already firmly in her trap. Unaware I had already been an accomplice in the construction of my own cage. Not before nor anytime since have I encountered this level of cunning. I was a puppet on a string, freely giving her all of the information she needed to collapse my world around me. When we would talk, I’d tell her stories about time spent with my friends, giving her names and events for her later use. She would use the campus directory and translate names into numbers. Everyone I mentioned she would reach out to behind my back. The stories I shared gave her what she needed to validate who she was and her connection to me as well that fact she had the information they might be interested in. She could tell them about conversations I had with them just the day before and now she had their interest peaked. It was at this point where she would play her ace. She knew a secret, not so much a secret about them but the secret about me I hid from everyone that felt they knew me. Once she had them listening she would reveal to them the truth… I hated them. To clarify, I pretty much hated everyone but in order to make sure she didn’t think I was getting too attached to my new friends and straying from her I would let her in on my real feelings about the people I pretended to socialize with, often embellishing a bit for effect. She gave this to them and then offered them what she knew they would want, a chance to get revenge for all the deceit and fake smiles. All they had to do in return was to keep an eye on me and report back. Then begin to make themselves scarce and let her finish me off. While recruiting her double agents she was also weaving a separate plotline between her and me. For weeks she had been spinning a tale over the phone about her new life at the local community college. There was an impressively large cast of characters, sets, and locations, and the writing and dialogue rivaled that of any of the popular teem dramas of the time. It was the black Dawson’s creek with her as the lead fending off advances from the school pretty boy Keith. I had all the time in the world now, with my friends distancing themselves from me, to obsess over the events unfolding in her daytime drama between phone calls. I remember hearing about the two of them in a clock tower or something. Him taking something from her and placing it in his pocket. She playfully went to retrieve it only to notice after a few moments a stain form on the front of his pants. I was infuriated but couldn’t show too much anger or risk pushing her into his arms. The plot twist kept me on edge, so of course, when she called I eagerly answered glad that she was talking to me and not with him. Don’t think the hypocrisy of my attitude was lost on me. I saw myself for what I was and was absolutely ashamed even at times feeling deserving of whatever shenanigans T&C might have been getting into while I was away. At the same time, I felt compelled to try to find a new equilibrium and regain the contentment I had earlier in the semester. I knew It had to be possible to regain control over this situation, operating under the delusion that I ever was.

One night while T&C was catching me up on the latest developments in her ongoing campus dramedy, the topic of Julie came up, she hadn’t heard anything about her in a while. Trying to get back to the cliffhanger she had left off on, I aggressively downplayed the nature of our relationship making clear how insignificant she was to me and how I only befriended her to be kind. In reality, at that point, Jelwz and I were closer than ever. She was my only remaining friend and we did everything together. Shopping trips to Target or strolling the malls. Sharing music and talking about everything. I tried my hand at one point but she was reluctant saying she didn’t want to hurt me. That slowed things down a bit, but then there was the time she remembered a shirt I showed interest in at the mall. She sent it to me wrapped in a box with the lyrics to my favorite song at the time enclosed within. There was no quicker way to my heart! But over the phone, I was busy ladling down a thick layer of her irrelevance in my life. It was at that point I heard a sniffle.

It caught me by surprise though it shouldn’t have. T&C was a pro at the 3 way calling trick. If you’re unfamiliar with that concept, ask your parents. I felt naked and exposed. Julie could see what I really was, what I never wanted her to see. What I never want to see. I truly cared for her but cared more about not returning to the world of loneliness I had been in, so much that I couldn’t let go of one relationship before feeling securely planted in the next. I made everyone a victim of my fear and now I would pay. All I remember happening next was Julie calling me a piece of shit and hanging up. I’m pretty sure I hung up the phone right after. I was in shock watching the facade of my deceit fall away. It was then that I saw my life for it had really become. I was flunking out of college, I had lost all control, and I was completely alone. I had no idea what to do next. The path forward was unknown and I no longer felt the comfort of the invisible safety net that had always coddled me in the past. This was the real world. I mulled around for a few weeks, contemplating my next move, I even tried going back to class and burying myself in studies but the damage was too severe. Jewlz eventually came to my dorm room to pick up some things she had left there and to inform me that she’d thought it over and come to the conclusion that she never wanted to speak to me again. I ran into her later with a group of friends on campus but when they saw me approach they quickly dispersed. I was stuck in the cold of Milwaukee, isolated and with a glowing red reminder of the virtues I lacked to comfort me at night. T&C would offer me a lifeline. She knew she had me and that I would gratefully accept her rescue from solitude. She came to visit, and we spent the majority of the visit in her hotel room, but later back in my dorm room, she pulled back the curtain on all her string-pulling full well knowing I was in no position to be upset. She was there and she was the medicine I needed to get back on my feet. I had to watch her leave knowing the nothing that was waiting for me back on that campus.

I fumbled my way through finals, and while I didn’t fail everything I came very close. I earned myself a spot on academic probation right before heading home for winter break. Home was waiting for me and surely I could find refuge in the familiar. It took a thirty-hour train ride to make it back to DC. Thirty hours in the pre everyone had a cell phone and tablet era. Nothing but time to reflect and wonder. I remember finally seeing the monument from the train window and feeling the childlike excitement of getting back to the creature comforts of home after a long camping trip in the wilderness. Excitement was quickly followed by an awareness of my surroundings. Time to tuck my chain in and put my money in my socks, I’m home! I wasn’t home long before the cloud of chaos that had been parked above me for the past few months in Milwaukee tracked me down. Once again T&C was involved in the drama but this time she wouldn’t be the culprit rather the savior. I don’t quite recall much of what led up to the incident. I haven’t mentioned it yet but I have a real anger issue. Honestly, my problem is I’m extremely emotional but anger is usually the one others get to see. My wife would later describe my episodes of anger as me “hulking out”. My mother seemed to think my anger is only directed towards women in positions of authority and growing up fighting in a house with my mother and older sister I could see how you could reach that conclusion. I personally think you have to be someone I care deeply about to hurt me enough to trigger that level of anger and so far women have been the only ones to occupy that significance in my life. Regardless, if someone would have asked me about my emotional state at this point in my life I would reply I was numb, growing cold as a defense mechanism, and trying to be as emotionless as possible. This was me doing my best Bruce Banner impression, withdrawing from the world to protect it from the beast within. There have been times in my life that I was so enraged that I would actually calm down in the middle of one of my Hulk moments but felt it would be too embarrassing to shrink back to my normal form so I kept going just to keep up appearances if that makes sense.

Anger must run in the family. Anytime my mother sister and I are in close proximity a conflict is bound to arise and we fight passionately with aggressive and vicious tactics. You would think our relationships would be irreparable after the things said and the histrionics displayed but it’s just our way. It’s very difficult for other people to experience it without feeling uncomfortable unless they're just entertained by it. So this started as just a typical night in the Flannagan house. T&C was the topic of discussion between my mother and I and the fuse was lit. The thing I remember as the spark was mom trying to explain to me again how “that girl” wasn’t allowed to park in front of her house. “That girl” at the time was all I thought I had and it pained me that just like JROTC my family would have nothing to do with the thing I loved. Unfortunately, I was in the frame of mind to express that sentiment that succinctly. I went from pleading with my mother to put her love for me before her feelings about her, to demanding she recognize she had a name and letting it be known I wouldn’t stand for any further disrespect. I don’t know if my stance became threatening or my tone was too much, or my words finally crossed a line but mom all of the sudden felt the need to grab a knife. She wasn’t the type to feel threatened, she was quick to make sure you understood if you chose to engage her in a fight you would not leave unscathed. The night is s a blur of anger and yelling for me now. My shirt came off at some point. I don't remember if she was trying to grab me and only came away with it or I took it off as a response to her wielding the knife. Me, with no shirt, was not a threat though. I had been described as looking like a starving Ethiopian as a child and she outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds. Strangely enough, somehow my mother got a hold of the shirt and took it outside, and stabbed it. Not me...the shirt. For all of the posturing, this fight would see no bloodshed, no blows thrown, there was a level of love and respect that prevented either of us from taking it there. There was just a lot of anger and false pride on my part. I had lost all awareness of the reality of the situation. I was 18. If I didn’t like it I could leave, and if she didn’t want me there I had to leave. The police I called on my mother were very quick to remind me of these facts and for the second time in my life, I got kicked out of the house. I didn’t have a place to go, so I called the only person I knew to depend on, the person whose honor I felt I was defending, to come and save me.

My bag was pretty much still packed so I grabbed it and she whisked me off to her parent's house where she was still living. I slept on a cot in the basement with her parent's permission and in the morning she would wake with me an escape from regrets of the night before. I won’t go into detail but it was a first for us and one I was very grateful to receive. I couldn’t stay at her parent's house though. They couldn’t get involved in this family dispute and I’m sure they worried about what having her boyfriend in the house would lead to. I spent the rest of the break moving to my cousin's house over in the Howard University area. I was 18 close to a college campus full of freshman fun but I spent the time at my cousin's house staying in drinking the beer or two my cousin would leave in the fridge and sneaking my girlfriend over. Heineken was way too hoppy for my taste back then and it gave me a headache but it was all I had to feel grown and not like a kid who had nothing and couldn’t buy the toilet paper he wiped his ass with. Later on, I went to stay with my Aunt in the mountains of West Virginia, a place where I’d spent a lot of time as a kid. Being in that room reminded me of who I was Jare Bear, just a kid who had nothing, and with the way things were going, appeared headed toward being nothing. Desperate I remember walking out to the middle of the road on the night of New Year's eve. My aunt lived far enough away from the city that all you could see looking up were treetops and stars. As if I thought I could recreate a scene from some 80’s teen comedy I looked up at the stars and begged God to reveal himself or at least his plan for me. I literally heard crickets.

I left that road feeling helpless but eventually found my second wind. I could still fix it. I had to. I made it back to Marquette and I stepped back on campus after the break having not repaired things with my mom but on a mission to show I was more than what I’d been. I was ready to focus on school, knock these four years out, get my bio-med degree and wave it in the face on everybody that lost faith in and doubted me. As sincerely as I thought my promise to never perform for anyone but myself had been, I was motivated to perform now for the purpose of spiting them. I had to show them they hadn’t hurt me, hadn’t broken me. I would prove them wrong when I was only proving these invisible enemies had been in control the whole time. First things first though. I had to register for classes. With the course catalog and a spiral notebook, I sat in the computer lab ready to meticulously sculpt the perfect schedule with time for the radio show and the work-study job I had skipped the previous semester. I picked out my first class, found the best times, and went to lock it in but for some reason, it didn’t work. No real error message just seemed registration wasn’t available at that time. I checked with my roommate and it was working for him because he used the phone system. I gave the phone a chance but got the same result. Undeterred I decided to visit the registrar. This was the new me. Old me would’ve lazily given up or used this as an excuse to veg out and be a victim. I had a new resolve so I charged in ready to put the work into getting this resolved so I could get on my grind and turn this ship around. When I got to the registrar’s office they explained the issue. The person I’ve mentioned the least so far at this point was the one that mattered the most. As a kid, I’d always lived outside of DC in the surrounding county in Maryland. As I stated before I’m from the DMV. DC Metropolitan Area. I say this because even though I was born in the city (DC), went to school in the city, and bought my first home in the city, I didn't’ technically grow up there. That is a big point of contention when claiming to be a native. To attend the schools I went to I had to prove residency so back then I would use my maternal grandmother's address. When she moved back to South Carolina I switched to using my paternal grandmother’s address on anything school-related including my application for financial aid. Adding to this was the fact that due to my late birthday I graduated at 17 and wasn’t able to sign my promissory notes for my grants entering my first semester. The promissory notes were mailed to my parents at the address on my application for signatures. I didn’t realize this until it was said out loud to me and the realization of what happened washed over me. So now I owed more than 8 thousand dollars of last semester’s tuition to replace grant money I never received. My time at Marquette had come to an end. What was plan b.

I didn’t have a plan b. This was the final nail in the coffin for me. I would be returning to no home a failure. The people that bet against me would come to collect. The world didn’t need me, if it had something would’ve prevented the plug from being pulled like Dozer in the first matrix.

At that moment I made my decision. I walked back to my dorm room with a peace I’d never experienced. I was giddy, skipping, and clicking my heels. I had a grinch with a plan-hatching smile oozing across my face. I was the happiest man on campus. I could see the future. When I got to my room I noticed my roommate wasn’t there but his stereo was. I proceeded to give my floor an education on the finer points of hip-hop. Those who hadn’t tuned into my radio show would hear me now. I would teach them all about me through music. I turned it to ten blatantly disregarding the noise policy and let Pharaohe Monch tell everyone at Marquette to “Shut da Fuck Up!” Next up was Mos Def with Fear not of Man. I put that one on repeat but still didn’t feel my message was clear yet. I remembered a while back that Jewlz had, for reasons I can’t recall, given me a single bullet. I had the perfect use for it. I didn’t have a gun, never fired a gun, I couldn’t even tell you the caliber of the bullet I was way too sheltered but whatever the caliber it was small enough for me to fit between my teeth. Bullet in my teeth Bruce Leroy style I walked through the halls of the dorm smiling at anyone I passed. Satisfied, I went back to my bunk, removed the bullet, and replaced it with every pill in the room I could find. I laid on my pillow waiting to drift off and meet the nothingness I was yearning for. My escape from tomorrow.

When I woke up I was nauseous and had to run to the bathroom and throw up all the pills whole. Failure had become a way of life so much for me that it denied me even death.

This was the first time I attempted suicide…