Dear Pharaoh #5 - Maybe, no maybes, you can’t break a broken heart you see...
You are defined by how you respond to your pain… Gain.
Dear Pharaoh,
I move through life so disconnected from everything but at the same time, I feel connected to everything. Like I feel all the hurt, pain, suffocation and struggling of the world so much, that I need to detach my lightning bolt cable from its core to merely operate and survive.
I FEEL.. when I was 13-14 years old, I used to have trouble sleeping like I would be awake for days… Your grandmother, my mother would be working hard away. I was at ‘home’ by myself but was allowed to govern myself without prior warning… I went from being a part of a unit with 3 older brothers, guest appearances from my sisters and tons and tons of cousins, to just me.
I guess being ripped from one reality to another reality is a part of my DNA. Being thrust into new environments and told to swim, just became the norm for me.
I would walk the streets, 3-4 am in the morning in the quiet neighbourhood of Hertfordshire, around the lakes, I would walk in the middle of the streets.. maybe I was searching for the same thing or energy you were searching for when your mother died - you pointing for me to take you to each and every room in the house to show you that she was no longer here - before you settled yourself to sleep.
Maybe that’s why we have this bond because I understood what you felt far before you were born?
Maybe… Just maybe…
Maybe, I am the problem…
Maybe my disconnected ways allow me to see the world from a new position, new lenses with deeper zooming. Whilst my friends were getting tucked in at night, having dinner nights and family time. I, on the other hand, was doing whatever the hell I want. By the time I was 16 I was living like a 21-year-old and talking to women at that age range - don’t try this at home lol.
I found a lot of solitude in the feminine energy, but that slowly turned to ego and pride.
By the time I was 18, at the core, I was really 24-25.
I grew tired. I say I was weak because once a month, I would schedule in an evening I would just cry. I let it all out. I would play DMX - Let Me Fly, lay back in this dark house and just soar the skies and cried. Then it was back to the grind. I couldn’t look a homeless person in the eyes, I felt too much… and the soul, the soul sits swinging its feet on the window sills of one’s eyes.
I would drop change, knowing that it was not ‘change’, I would say “hope you have a good day” and went back to my ‘life’.
I flashed back to age 13, with your uncle’s hands wrapped around my throat telling me to “die.. you are the devil, I know it, yousss a demon”. As I stare back at him eye to eye, I noticed with my depleted lungs, that nobody was there… This Tupac looking like, handsome ass, fly ass, workout in a schedule, sexy flexy, ladies man of a lyrical genius was not home. All darkness no lights. I kick the bottom of the top bunk bed and got out of his grip and he came back to life, looked at me and just… left… (that’s the story lol)
Guess who stopped sleeping properly ever since? Guess who has to hold his breath and relax when seeing you interact with him and not let my pain, interfere with the love you and your uncle created? Mum tells me he reads you stories when he comes to visit. Funny… I used to read his lyric book, borderline his mind and that got your dear old dad into rhyming.
“Badman… represent his crew from Lan-Dan//
Beat man on the street man, defeat man,
Cant run, if you don’t have feet man”
Turned in to…
“Born and raised in the cage of life, set free, now I engage the mic, grasp my rage whilst my flames ignite, it’s not a game but I’ll play tonight, fierce on tracks, I’ll pierce any trains in sight, my name I write in Braille because my pain in blind, I gain knowledge from the skies, I brainstorm my mind, I was blessed with a curse to control the time, now I invest in a verse to grasp and bind, my inner youth is endless I can’t meet demise, hear my breath breathe cold whilst I slowly rhyme, a transformed brainstorm made in God’s design, a hellspawn born in death’s dawn covered in grime, I’m not the average guy because my mind’s sublime and if I was speechless I’ll still rhyme with signed, the equivalent of greatness with finesse combined within the great interest I’ll progress through life”
The lyrics became my escapism…
Maybe I’m insane… Maybe I skate on such a foundation of pain that I just ripped away my flesh, muscles, nerves and became just a heart, walking in a frame.
Maybe just only having this heart led to me not wanting anyone else in this life to feel the loneliness I felt, the hurt, the pain that I spent every single living day around people making them laugh until their legs gave way.
Maybe, I am so connected but disconnected… I did this when I found ‘home’ in you and poured all the love I borderline denied your mother because I feared she would hurt me too.
It was something that I was used to.. loved ones came, loved ones left… I learnt to just enjoy them whilst they were here because I knew that Love inevitably ends in heartbreak.
Maybe all I want to do is help people? Like I do selfishly write these blog posts so you can feel my essence, in retrospect, to the man you see. A man standing in front of you strong, with no signs of weak.
You will never find me asleep, even though I sleep peacefully next to you, I’m up before you and down after you, you will find a superhero in me.
Maybe, I just ‘maybe’ too much and get lost amongst the dreams, maybe the family of you, your mother and I was destroyed because God disliked Vanity? - Beautiful couple, with a beautiful child and a beautiful life… all that beautiful must have formed some form of Hera’s rage inside.
Maybe, no more maybes, it’s just you and I, maybe I just may be in the right place, doing the right things, all at the right time?
As much as love, loyalty and relationships make you, hurt, love and rage reshape you. You chose how you use the fuel but never compare your journey to another man’s that would create a lesser man in you.
Love dad x