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I love reading this story about how OL’ DIRTY was visiting a little girl in the hospital whom he rescued after she was injured in a car accident. DIRTY came to see her on a daily basis because his recording studio was across the street. Eventually people began to recognize him and he had to discontinue his visits. Combine this story with some of the personal accounts of his character from members of the Wu-Tang clan and what emerges is the portrait of a highly intelligent and complex individual. He deftly walked the tightope of uncontrollable Negro madness that so many Black men have to negotiate in their lives. It involves the game of being invisible sometimes just to maintain a peace of mind and remove suspicion from your motives.

I hate the fact that you can’t tell your peeps that you might be a little 7-thirty sometimes. Nothing that they should be afraid to have you around their children, it’s just that sometimes you get a tick in your neck or you talk to yourself, frequently. The biggest taboo in the African American community is the stigma attached to being mentally imbalanced. Even more so than being a gay. If you are a gay crazy motherfucker then mos def no one is fucking with you.

Crazy is considered the worst because it carries the connotation of vulnerable and weak. For a Black male in America who has been disenfranchised to the Nth, the only thing he may have left might be his sense of hyper-masculinity. The need to agressively confront someone who might be looking at them questionably is a by-product of this condition. There are other anti-social mannerisms that are equally self-destructive, but not as blatant. Some of these things could be resolved if we allowed Black men to receive pyschiatric counseling.

Unfortunately for us, supremacy has stigmatized Black men receiving medical treatment for mental illness. I say unfortunately because with proper medical treatment Black men might be able to find a mitigation and acceptance for supremacy. Instead, we self medicate using any available and accessible narcotic. These treatments only exacerbate the mental disease in the long term. I fought a hard fight to remove myself from cocaine addiction, but don’t think it’s not in the back of my mind everytime I find myself in a valley of depression and self-doubt. Picking up again is as easy as visiting some old friends in the old neighborhood. I’ve had some moments, but thankfully I haven’t fallen that far behind.

I take people very seriously when they say to me that they “are losing their mind.” I know what that feels like and sounds like. A million voices yelling at you in your head, screaming for your attention. I don’t like that feeling and I don’t like not being in control of my actions so I gave a call to my therapist. We met last week after about over a year or so. Right after my dad passed away I had a couple of sessions and I suspended the treatment because I thought that I had broken through prior to my dad’s death. I hadn’t been using my tools for coping so I was just setting myself up for failure again. Blogging has been a major plus in my life, but I needed to exercise more and lay off the alcohol. Even though I was writing my azz off in my apartment I was also drinking a 750ml bottle of Belvedere. To the face.

I appreciate everyone lining up and showing me mad love last week. If I left this site alone I would only be hurting myself. I hope you guys will ultimately forgive my schizoid embolism moment. I have once again swallowed the “red” pill and I am fearlessly entering the rabbit hole armed with the knowledge that you good people are holding the rope that can pull me back out to freedom.