Thursday Thoughts

The first time the world forgot me was the day those prison gates clanged shut behind my back. It felt like the earth took a deep breath and exhaled my name into nothing. The only echoes that came back were the laughs from certain family members—the ones who discovered joy in my downfall like it was entertainment. One uncle in particular. And that’s the part that stings like old metal, because when I was a teenager, I sat in the passenger seat for eight long hours while my mother drove through backroads and broken towns just to visit him while he did time for trying to kill one of our own blood.
But life is a mirror with a wicked sense of humor.
When it was my turn—five years, steel beds, concrete days, slow time—nobody came. Not him. Not the mother who drove me across the state to sit behind thick glass and see a man who didn’t even flinch at the idea of family pain. Not a soul. My name, my face, my existence… erased.
I remember telling myself during those silent years that if God ever let me walk free again, I would rebuild everything. Reinvent myself. Lift others. Stand with a circle of people who knew struggle in their bones and loyalty in their blood. I saw us as a powerhouse family—one of those rare tribes where everybody moves together because everybody remembers how it feels to stand alone.
But God… God has a way of editing dreams without warning.
From the day I walked out in 2011 to this moment in 2025—staring down the shadow of another long road—I keep replaying the reel. The missteps. The ceilings I couldn’t break. The prayers I folded neatly and slid into God’s hands, only to watch them return to me unopened.
And here’s the part people don’t talk about out loud:
If you’ve ever been stereotyped into a version of yourself you don’t recognize—trapped inside a costume somebody else stitched together because it benefits them to keep you small—then you’ve tasted a sip of my lifetime pain.
If you’ve ever stood in disbelief while someone twisted the system into a weapon they aimed at you—knowing damn well the truth doesn’t matter if the lie is louder—then you’ve walked a few steps in my shoes.
If you’ve ever applied for an apartment and been denied before the background check even loaded…
If you’ve ever stood there with $36,000 in cash for a full year’s rent—begging a gatekeeper to see your humanity instead of your history—and still heard the word no echo like judgment…
then you’ve felt a drop of what’s been poured on me for decades.
This isn’t a complaint.
This ink color is black power.
I was given this life for a reason. And if I don’t speak it out loud—if I don’t share the bruises and the brilliance, the scars and the survival—then I’ll never understand why I was chosen to carry it. Why God handed me a story that’s heavy enough to break a man, yet somehow keeps making me stronger.