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Chapter Two - Hell of A Life
I'm sitting at the bus stop which has my back facing the restaurant, my headphones on and my phone in hand, applying for a job at McDonalds.
I couldn't stay here. I was feeling like a stranger in a place that I was supposed to feel belonged. I wasn't going to continue to be somewhere where I wasn't obviously welcomed.
The new plan was to get a job, make enough to get me my own apartment and work on my music on the side so I can make bigger moves. If I was going to have to do that alone, then so be it.
When I got to the "Emergency Contact" information, there was a painful pang in my heart when I realized I had no one to put down. Not my parents. Not my aunt or uncles. Not even cousins that still kept in contact with me.
That's when I actually realized I was going to truly be on my own.
Family isn't forever like everyone wants you to believe it is. I never get to say "oh I'm about to go hang out with my cousins" or "I'm about to go see my grandma". I don't even remember the last time I got a call from any of my family members. They made it clear they wanted nothing to do with me. It was really just me and my pops at one point until he kicked me out for dropping out of school.
As I sit at the bus stop, I notice a father walking hand in hand with his young son. They both have ice cream cones, and the boy's face is lit up with joy. The father tells his son not to tell his mother that they are ruining their dinner, enticing little giggles and an enthusiastic nod.
That little boy is lucky.
My attention is given to my notebook, where I've been working on a song. I'm trying to pour my heart into it, trying to capture the emotions that I'm feeling.
I just really have me, myself, and I. I write. But what happens when ME and MYSELF is not going well with I?
Who can I go to?
Music has a way of transporting me to a whole new world, where you can feel any emotion you want based on what song you're listening to. It's like the lyrics and the melodies are speaking directly to my soul, and I can't help but get lost in the music.
Whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed or sad, I just put on my headphones and let the music take me away. It's like a temporary escape from reality, where I can just be myself and let the music I wash over me.
After a beat, I instinctively opened up TikTok, navigating to the page my brothers and I shared.
As a determined singing group, we were serious in our goal to expand our fanbase. Our posts ranged from harmonizing covers to doing TikTok challenges with a singing twist, encompassing our core theme.
Though we got a respectable following of a few hundred thousand, it still fell short of our aspirations. It was mainly just a community of people that were happy we were bringing the soulful R&B sound back.
