Life at 36

 Been low key killing the girl I used to be and becoming the leading lady I wanna be.  This is me at 36.  I come here for reflection, it is all within a years time, but today I write an open letter to my future self.  Age aint nuttin but a number is a song I fell asleep too in childhood.  I’ve always loved Aaliyah, may she rest in eternal paradise.  I had a dream about her once.  It was when I lived in Hollywood.  I was so surreal it felt like I was awake.  I recall her voice mostly and her smile.  It was as if she was a cloud that had a face but it mostly looked like air, or something floating in the air.  I remember her saying, “they are trying to steal your voice baby girl.” The media, her circle, and her fans referred to A as babygirl.  She’s always been an angel to me personally.  When her plane went down, I was in Trinidad and Tobago, for the summer.  I went every Summer religiously.  Trinidad is my first real “home” then comes California, mostly Hollywood.  My apartment in Koreatown faced toward Griffith Park observatory, known more famously as the HOLLYWOOD SIGN.  Was Aaliyah my sign to enter into artistic abilities? Maybe.  It was maybe a handful of weeks before my first mental health breakdown.  They call it psychosis.  I was 30 years old at the time.  

Since that faith-filled encounter, I have struggled to make sense of what it all means.  Am I being watched over? Why me? My aunt’s boyfriend of like 20 plus years, Colin, whose the pianist on my song DARING TO SURVIVE, always told me that I should be less worried about the whys and pay attention to the why nots.  Why not you, Tahyira? Are you weak? God only directs the strongest of soldiers into war.  Are we at war? Possibly.  As a humanitarian, I cannot escape the current events, even though I have tried.  I have tried to be unlike myself.  I end up hurting myself that way.  It’s important to trust who you are and continue to grow as you are.  Dear Diary, maybe I am fucking crazy.  The need to spill my guts at times feels egotistical.  I’ve told myself mid-Instagram jot, you just wanna be “right”.  Or is it that my brain gets signals, from the likes of Aaliyah’s so you feel ordained to share your knowledge.  I accidentally overheard my Grandma and Aunty chatting, about me a few weeks ago.  My grandmother was explaining that she feels confident in my spiritual upbringing but that “Tahyira is very very spiritual, she’s be tellin me tings, an ah I like, where dis child get to learn all these tings, and she does be spot on ent?” I was about to bust through the bathroom door like, ummm I can hear you talking about me lady! But I stayed eavesdropping.  My aunt didn’t say much, she was probably just focused on my grandma not falling out of the tub, her daily struggle at 88.  

I got up and put my phone down…. I noticed a smile on my face.  For years, I tried my hardest to let my family members know that I would be okay, despite surviving child abuse by my real parents.  I have made the decision to remove them as people in my life this last January.  It was a week before my 36th birthday.  I have never spent a year more free than I have in 2023.  This is not me gloating about the fact that parental dysfunction exists, it's more like learning to trust your inner child, in a matter of function.  Adults, as you may or may not know, do not really exist.  We are children who grow up.  Turning 17, in American society, essentially means that you legally can be viewed as mature.  They tell teens who get convicted of murder, that they will be treated as adults.  That’s how we know there isn’t a physical stamp on adulthood, it's based on behaviors.

I feel like I’ve passed go, and now I get two hundred dollars.  Maturity is essential to our growth and it should not be based upon age groups.  If we study the current babies, their rate of emotional intelligence surpasses that of their egg and sperm donors.  How else do we account for young minds being emotionally sounder than let us say, the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.  They were out for blood.  This newer generation is out for hugs.  They just want to see the World brighter.  As an elementary school teacher, my last six months have turned my mind, we really have to protect the youth.  There’s this uptick in the need for Black educators.  From the ground level, I assume it's all these new DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) quotas that the grant recipients need to fill.  Now being “diverse” gets you more closed deals.  Weird right? But Juneteenth is still a new idea to many.  Focusing on the lack of Black leadership in education creates a budget for me to be paid in the shade.  We do not make the rules.  We just take profits off the changing World around us.  I will always be Tee Slaves, an educator, an activist, an outspoken daughter-of-a-bitch.  Or bitches, if we being truthful.  The Trinis have never been silent about wokeness.

First-generation American.  A title I have recently been using as the visionary officer at my brand TREMG, News In Progress, an entertainment and historical research site.  How come someone like me, has so many dreams here? I many times compare my reality to those of my peers, 2nd generation, 3rd generation Black Americans.  Why are you all not louder than ME? My family are immigrants, yours can be traced back to a legit slave owner.  Why are you not Tee Slaves? It’s like a blank stare.  Like when you look at someone who is on drugs or alcohol and they are not in their eyes.  It’s just empty.  Like a lost soul.  It breaks my heart.  Is it because I went to study Criminal Justice at an all-white uni? Is it that I worked for the DA, saw them throw the book at countless Black families, and preserve white ones? Is it because of the way I was raised? In Trinidad, there aren’t white populations that are greater than Black and Indian ones.  The White people are minorities.  Is it that? 

My music is my way in.  My consciousness is my way out.  Everything feels real and fragile.  Like that Oscar-winning film title, Everything Everywhere All At Once.  Like Mary Trump’s narcissist manifesto, Too Much and Never Enough.  It feels like we are constantly running out of breathable air yet suffocation has not happened.  Are we dead? Maybe this is what living and surviving feel like as humans.  I mean, suicide is still very much an epidemic.  This is what staying feels like.  There’s a caveat.  Life is still what we make it.  Our power as humans to change our entire World is cunning.  We are not beast.  We are free to think and to create.  I have hit a new plane, consciously.  Maybe Aaliyah helped me to see beyond the physical, and to attach conscientiousness to my dreams, to turn that into physical magic.  On a flight from Wisconsin, my seatmate told me that she felt my energy was so strong, and that it saved her.  “Did anyone ever tell you that you were magical?” I literally thought she was on opioids.  She was not.  I always try to snake away when I feel ordained energy reading my aura.  The universe also made me humble.  Let’s not make a big deal about it Jenn, I told her.  She continued, “But, it is a big deal, I feel like I have to tell you more…” Please don’t.  We were 36,000 plus miles over America, and I kind of just wanted to take a nap.  We clearly spoke the entire flight, exchanged cell numbers, and made a double date with our people.  Some souls are just too special to nap on. 

That experience left me emotionally drained.  I knew it was magical.  It’s like that scene in Wakanda when they go to the Ancestral plane, there’s like a transport time, and your body needs to recoup.  I told her that I would feature her in my next post.  Which is this.  You are not a mistake.  You are guided.  You are special.  You are magic.  The World seems broken, sad, and helpless.  Since 2020, creating has given me a clear and pristine focus.  So much has happened in these last three years.  My job has been steady, live your truth,  be the truth, seek the truth, and speak the truth.  

The conversation is where we all want to be.  Let’s get there, together.  I will continue to use my voice and power for the greater good.   It's who God, and clearly Aaliyah, wants me to be.  Tahyira is a powerful Muslim name.  I was also born in Brooklyn.  I’ve learned to minimize the why me and focus on why not me.  The future is fucking bright.

Forever & Always

Tahyira