Best Advice I Ever Received.

May be coincidental to your life.

The best advice I ever received was from my ex-boyfriend. It wasn’t really advice you receive from talking. It was more just how he moved and lived.

I was a dancer in Chicago and Indiana. He was a Vice Lord in the streets. I was young. I had a baby. I was on my own entirely, but I still knew myself. More importantly, I knew the Game. Perhaps most importantly, I knew my value.

Looking back today, as a legit working mom at the ripe old age of 34 with a thriving, growing child in school, I still don’t have much free time. But the time I have is slower and less of a pressure cooker. Things have calmed down. My back is not constantly against the wall. But in my time on earth so far, I’ve learned that will likely happen again (things falling apart). My family is largely made up of a Disinherited Kingdom. My community, rather entirely so. And while the privileges I am afforded to are good, I would be naive to believe they aren’t conditional. Like my ex said when we first got together; “It looks like you’re adopted.”

It looks that way.

Back then, when we were together, things felt sometimes a little like we were living in the Wild Wild West, however quietly or subtly so. We never moved like we were hustlers. Shit, for the first three months I worked at that little box of a club on the far south side, I never even saw my ex there. But he saw me. He had a name kind of like how they named Ghost on Power, and I can…