my how time has passed in the last month. i wrote so many blogs in my mind unfortunately none of them made it to my fingertips to reach the keyboard and get to you my loyal readers. for that i apologize…the most important thing that i must mention is that my god son has been born. i have been spending so much time with him in between work and going to cali that i didn’t have time to brag and tell the world how proud he has made me and how blessed i am to have him in my world.

being blessed…good place to start this blog. in 1999 i met someone that would change my life forever. atari felton came into my life and refused to leave it. it didn’t matter how many ways i ignored or dissed him he just wouldn’t go away and i need to thank him profusely for his diligence. by 2000, i realized that i could love this boy that i couldn’t even fully understand. he was my rose in the concrete. on paper he was a nightmare…someone i should run and hide from yet looking into his eyes…being in his arms…that was a completely different story. he was an intelligent thug, a lost boy, a product of his environment and any of them other labels that people place on others that they just don’t understand. he was also the sweetest, loyalist, most protective, loving, innocent man i’ve ever had the privilege of meeting.
by the end of 2001, i was planning our life together. where would we live, how would it work, what sacrifices would we each be willing to make? how much of who we were would have to be left behind to find out who we were to become? early 2002? that would be when i buried him. right in the middle of writing my senior thesis, getting ready for graduation and planning what our apartment would look like i got to put on my red and black and sit in a funeral home with his friends and family and say goodbye.
i refuse to get all sad and sorrowful here because this is a day to rejoice…i’m a believer that the day isn’t over until you fall asleep and since i just got home from work its still november 9th in my world. november 9th is atari’s birthday. we should’ve been out celebrating tonight. instead i’m just getting in from work to spend the night alone in brooklyn to wake up in a world i never would have known had he lived to see another birthday. one thing that haunts me every day is a promise atari made to me a few months before he was killed. he promised me i would never have to go back to my block. he promised me that when i finished school i would be going to a new neighborhood and wouldn’t have to worry about none of the nonsense that came from our hood. at the time it was a promise of what was to come. a promise of the beginning of our life together.
it haunts me because the promise was kept. i never returned to the building in which we had lived a few floors apart. i moved back into my mom’s when i graduated but by then she had moved out of the old neighborhood.
i was starting a new life…just not the one i had planned for. everyday i wake up and count my blessings for the beautiful life that has been bestowed upon me. it just hits me sometimes how different my life would have been had atari and i still been together. there are times when i wonder if we would have made it together or if at some point we would have realized that our lifestyles were too different and we no longer wished to compromise and sacrifice…part of me sees that possibility and another part remembers how he refused to give up on me when we met and gets me to believe that we both would have been too stubborn to walk away.
either way after 5 years i’m done playing the what if game…that’s the problem games are never real so it doesn’t matter what i come up with because i’ll just never know…what i do know though is that he lives in my heart and my memory. i know that atari is my guardian angel, keeping me safe at all times and directing people into my life that need to be there. he showed me unconditional love in life and has shown me unconditional love in death by giving me the ability to love again without guilt…
love has no limits and i will always love you atari…no matter what…
happy birthday baby

til next time besos babe…