Urbanized.

Hip hop/rap music and culture influenced me, especially during the first half of my teenage years. I forgot about this. My friends and I were a bunch of almost-poor white kids acting, dressing, and talking, (in part) like the guys we saw in rap videos. Crime, the city, gangs, drugs, guns, dirty/ugly city streets – it seems so odd to me now. It was never me. I tried it on to blend in for a couple years, begging urbanity to take hold but never wanting to get deep – just deep enough to pass. Acting the part. Any attempt at actually being hardcore usually ended up in a disaster of some sort.

To  say the urban influences of being surrounded by near poverty, silent desperation masked behind townie pride, people of limited education, and addiction didn’t shape me is naive. This influence was apparent in the attitude I took, the language I used, the clothes I wore, and the music I listened to. I’m embarrassed to look back at my desperate attempts to fit in. People tell me things like “Just forget about it,” or “Dude that was so long ago, what does it matter? Just let it go.” I don’t want to let it go. I’m not done with it yet. I’m angry about it still. I felt violated by this city, still do, and I hate the fact that I grew up here. I hate it.

There was a time when my heart was purer, not marred by criminality, deviance, and wanton disregard for morality which amounts to the antithesis of what my parents and teachers challenged me to uphold. This bulwark of goodness was slammed – slammed - against by an increasingly destructive tide of undulating tide of teen rebellion, passion, anger and dark force. It cracked my resistance and seeped in. I allowed it in – it became a preferable choice than choosing otherwise.

Much more on this later.