"Babygirl, uh..."
2003-08-26 - 11:09 a.m.
I turn on the radio yesterday after I get home from work. I hear, "At Your Best" playing. I'm thinking to myself, this particular station wouldn't play this song without reason. Then it dawns on me why August 25th sounds so familiar. The day Aaliyah died...
As I'm flipping through the music channels, I see her various videos playing. MTV2 even had a Blackground Behind The Scenes thing on. I really enjoyed her latest CD. So, to have my own little personal tribute, I get up to put the CD on. One major problem: It's nowhere to be found.
Such is the fate of hundreds of my damn CDs... (This is another reason why programs such as Kazaa are beneficial.)
My two favorite songs from Aaliyah: "One in a Million" and "Journey to the Past". I'll play "One in a Million" at my wedding. Might even do a dance to it - that is if I can still dance in my old age...
But I just love "Journey to the Past". I love the lyrics. I really do. It just makes me happy to sing along with that song.
I remember when she first came out. I was in middle school tellin' people that "A-lie (yes, as in liar) -ah" was about to be the next big thing. Nobody knew what I was talkin' 'bout at the time. But about a month or so later, everybody was doing the "Back & Forth" while we waited outside for the school to open up in the mornings.
And everytime I think of her death, I think of 9/11. Her death had a lot of people around me shook. But 9/11? We was just straight terrified. I can't imagine something like that happening again. I just don't wanna see it...
Not that I'm afraid of dying. I'm ready to go whenever the Good Lord decides he wants me up there because I know that this here is only temporary and what's up there is a peace no living being could ever imagine. I just don't want to see people suffer that way again. I don't want to know that kind of terror again. I wasn't even personally affected - didn't know nobody up in there, wasn't up there my damn self... Yet and still, it hurt me to my damn heart.
My "father" has two daughters located in Lagos, Nigeria. For the life of me, I can't bring myself to communicate back and forth with him. It's not that I don't forgive him. I do. It's his loss. It's just that it's hard for me to make people a part of my life just because. I have my family here. They are my family because they are who I was raised up around. They've been here for me, supported me, loved me. It's not just because we share some DNA.
So just because I share some DNA with my "father"... I just can't bring him into my life like that. He had his oldest daughter send me an e-mail. She called me "Aunty J". That bothered me so much. Why? I don't know. And I don't know what to reply to her. So far I have, "Don't call me Aunty. Just call me J." I can't get past that phrase. I just don't have anything else to say.
Maybe I'm afraid to get attached to them. Why? I don't know. I kinda feel like he's going to try to use the two girls as a way to get closer to me. Maybe I don't want that... I don't know. That whole situation has got me all mixed up.
All I know is that I've lived in the same city all of my life. At the same house with the same phone number for the first 15 years of my life and then the past 7 have been at the house I'm in now. My address and phone number were the same for 15 years. The same address and phone number for the house he repeatedly came to before I was born and even a little (and I do mean LITTLE) after. Maybe that's why it's so hard for me to send out birthday cards or call somebody other than my mother to tell Happy Birthday to now. I never had a birthday card sent to me from the person who should have if NOBODY else did... Never got a Happy Birthday phone call from him.
I just don't understand how you can so easily avoid someone that you helped to make. Then again, they do say, "Out of sight, out of mind."
Other than that though, life is pretty good these days. No worries, man, no worries. School starts Wednesday and I won't be there... I'ma just enjoy these next couple of months.