12 Years a Service - YOU ARE FREE

Jacquez, listen to me. You will only hear this twice as I write to you. YOU ARE FREE.

I had this idea, granted a beautiful idea, contrarily, deterring away from that idea is what made the pen begin to move. I have heavily scribbled and scratched notebook pages scourging my psyche for what was right. I planned a certain structure, a certain path, a feeling to project, all the way down to the title. Time and time again, what I wanted would not “stick”. Fleeting thoughts. The one thing that I could not predict or plan is the timing of it all.

The expectation of creating a great piece about the last 12 years of service and everything that came with it was daunting, overwhelming, hell… it was stressful! But the stumbling is what I needed. Adversity is what I build from. By pure passion, love and sacrifice is how I have conquered it all. Here with this pen and paper, nothing else has ever mattered when I’m in this zone. 

The list is long – from surviving homelessness, not having a present father, witnessing domestic violence, undergoing racial prejudice, facing depression, the gang activity, the drug use – before I was 19 years old. I am 31 now. My longest commitment to anything besides living, is to this here, I have done it with having gone through all of that. There is still a certain pressure from it all, I can feel it, see it, hear it. I awake to it. But, the pressure comes from wanting to be nothing short of exceptional. It has been embraced. Benevolently.

 Twelve years, I celebrate today. But it was not about celebrating the 12 years of service. It is about celebrating the 12 years of freedom. The autonomy to think. The willingness to stay whole. The audacity to dream so wide and speak so loud, it wakes and stirs parts of my own soul. This entire journey has been about acceptance. To become enormously enamored with the beauty of self and enjoy every second of it. To accept silence and relish in the world, and the experience of being here.

It has been about love. To have it and to have searched for it. Freely expressing what it means from the heart and accepting that priceless gift from others. To detach from extrinsic values and practice loving the lives of those which we are given. To know that it does not leave, but only an energy that is transferred. 

It has consisted of divinity. Realizing the soul and mind are attachments of divinity: to be from God, a power much higher than self. To cherish that divinity and protect it. To not shy from the ills of ego and use that divinity to reverse its will of destruction. To be divine is to set us free from what has caused our pain and pressures and accept that we can love it for what it’s worth; release the free being in its entirety. It gives us life. It exposes our innate individual Godliness; our true divinity. YES. YOU ARE FREE. 

The past 12 years of service has taught me all of the aforementioned. The things that I hold dearly. Being whole, being here and both combined with being with you on this journey. That’s 12, here’s to 8 more and beyond.