7 Mile

Closing chapter

I felt like the whole world around me was closing in. I hadn't spoke to nobody for a week or two since loosing the final battle at the Rap Olympics. I'd never felt so fucking hopeless. I was fucking pissed that I'd lost in the last round again. In Detroit I was undefeated. It was too fucking hard to process a loss from Juice. When I'd choked for the very first time, and then to choke again on somebody who wasn't anywhere near Juice's caliber at the Rap Olympics... When it was all over all I kept thinking was, what the fuck am I going to do? The first prize was a Rolex and $500. I didn't known whether the Rolex was real, but I needed money, and that $500 was real. But i was at a loss, I was having to go home with nothing. We didn't even have a home, we got evicted the night before the Rap Olympics and I had to break into my own place and sleep on the floor before leaving for L.A. We went completely fucking broke and Kim was having to live with her parents while i sofa surfed for the moment. All of this just so that I could get to LA for this one shot at taking my career to the next fucking level, but it was stolen from me, so fucking close yet it was just ripped from my fucking fingers. This was the only thing I was good at, I gave myself to hiphop, I gave my fucking all to it, to the game. This was all I ever wanted, not just for me but for Kim and Hailie too, to give us all a better life, a safer life, we couldn't afford to live anywhere nice, we was now living in my moms mobile home. She moved out and left it for us cause we couldn't afford to live in the shit houses we were living in.
Now we didn't even have a real home at all.
What the fuck was I supposed to do. What was I supposed to do now? I needed to fucking bounce back from this, man I just didn't know how. I didn't even know if I could face another fucking stage with a mic, but I didn't want to be pigeonholed into no regular job neither, the job I was at now working in the factory cleaning the machinery with mineral spirits was cutting my hands up, the shit was crazy toxic, I'd just lost my second job too, fired from Gilbert's Lodge for the final time. Holding Hailie was easy because my arms were so strong from all the different jobs I were doing.
Even though we had some help from Kim's family, which was a beautiful thing, we were still trying to work out how we was gon' get from one day to the next. We was grinding harder than ever just to make ends meet.

After putting Hailie to bed Proof was soon knocking at my door, the door to a home we was soon to be evicted from, again...

"Man, you look gaunt dog, how's it goin'?" We hugged it out,

"Uh... man, I don't even know where to fuckin' start yo" I collapsed hopelessly back onto the couch,

"So you gonna explain what happened? It's been a week and no fuckers heard nothing from you. I tried calling the Bass brothers but all they told me was to call you dog"

"Yea I... my bad Proof. I ain't... really felt like talkin'"

"I know. But you know, it'll do you some good. And I thought we was homeboys? I need to keep up on what's goin' on wit' you? I ain't even know how you got in to the competition"

"Don't take it personally, only Mark, Jeff, Kim and a couple others knew about it. I kept it close to my chest in case, you know, something like this happened"

"I feel. So come on... Confide in a brother"

"Aight uh... well. You know after we pressed up The Slim Shady EP and it took off?"

"Yea..."

"Well Wendy Day called me and said "I want you to be on the battle team. I got you a ticket to the Rap Olympics in LA. Aight, so I went to the Olympics, got all the way to the end, and then lost to the last guy. The guy who won was Otherwize, from LA. It was a local thing. They had a bunch of crowd support there. When I rapped, he went and hid behind a video screen. He walked away while I was rapping. I didn't have anyone to battle! I'd never been in a situation like that before. I went through a lot of people to get through to the end, and then he walked away while I was rapping. I'm like, "What the fuck do I do?" I was devastated. So anyways, I come off stage. I'm like, that's it. It's over for me. Then this Dean kid tried bullshitting me, said he was from Interscope, walks over to me and I kind of just chucked my tape at him and took off"