Last year, in my African American Studies class I read "Mama Day", by Gloria Naylor. This is "mos def" my favorite book for two reasons. The first reason is because I absolutly love the way it's written. For me, the mos tinteresting types of books are those that start out in the present and then recount how people got there. It makes it all the more interesting and meaningful when at the end you are back to where you started. The second reason I love this book is because it taught me a lesson that helped me get over 2 year depression about leaving Maryland.
It is not possible to go back and revisit a particular place in time. It is possible to revisit a specific physical place, but once time intervienes... it is literally impossible to return to what was. People change, settings change. This piece of knowledge let me know that even if I went back to Maryland, it wouldn't be like it was my freshman year. So I started accepting where I was and quickly got out of my depression and started excelling in academics and track... doing me basically. LOL. So yeah, I owe a lot to this book because if I had not read that one sentance when I did, there's no telling where I'd be. No no no. I wouldn't be a crack ho or anything... but I probably wouldnt have ended up with my ending GPA or on the top 10 all-time list in 4 events at my school. I mean seriously.
SO the point of this is to say that I am ready to go back to DC/VA/MD finally. I mean before, I wasn't ready. I mean I was, but not mentally. I think before, I just wanted to go back to freshman year, when I knew who I was, when I had the most fun that I had ever had in my entire life, to go back to when people liked me FOR ME and I didn't have to pretend. Now, 95 percent of my friends from freshman year are out of college like me and not around that area anymore. I genuinly did like the area and I am ready to go back and make a new life for myself there.
Plus, there are so many things that I missed out doing while I was there out of fear. Now most people would think... fear of comming out of my shell and stuff of that nature. No I mean fear of being shot (DC Sniper was like 5 miles away from campus), fear of getting bombed (always helicopters and sirens in DC right after Sept. 11... not a settling feeling). I feel stupid now, cuz I only went to one museum and that was because I had to.
This post came up because I was downloading some music... and for some reason, I started downloading all kinds of dance hall from like 2002/2003. I mean seriously, the feelings that rushed back to me were feelings that I never felt after leaving MD. They don't play that kind of music out here. They don't have the same clubs. It is just a lot. And it is not necessarily a place in time that I want to return to, but a physical place. A place where I can like what I like and other people like it too. A place where they play what I like to hear on the radio. A place where people don't judge you as much as they do over here. I cannot wait.
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