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    "Come So Far" Dear readers, As you know I have been so overwhelmed with emotion. Over the last month I have been on an interesting downward spiral after riding high and happy for the last 9 months. It's been beautiful year and I want to set aside my current feelings and open up about the journey that I have been on, rather than a part of my life that I can't speak out about, because this is simply not the right page and right time for me to expand that part of my story. I can't believe I have now shared 99 pages of my life. I can't believe I have documented these feelings that I have felt for the last 2 years. I can't believe 2018 is over. We are done. This is it. This is the last time I will write about this year as we step into a whole new set of 12 months. I always imagined I would write that it is bittersweet that this chapter and this year is coming to a close. For the last few weeks I held on tight trying to make sure that I wouldn't be able to let it go, because of the fear of the unknown that is ahead of me. The fact of the matter is, i'm now at the point where I am okay to say goodbye to 2018. I am content to say farewell to the year that actually treated me nice. I'm about to enter a limbo chapter because of an operation that will leave me in a limbo state. But after that, this story of mine is for the taking. I have learned so much over the last 2 years. I have been down, been out, cried too many tears, had more than a few experiences that I would rather not relive, I let people in and let them right out, I loved and I lost, I fell in love and lost myself in the process, I relearned to live, I got scared numerous amounts of times, I wore clothes I hated, i worked with people I loathed, I gained weight by putting myself in a corner of disbelief, I felt pain and I felt rage with the world that surrounds me, I felt love and felt uplifted by the little moments that only I can replay, I felt desperate and unsure of what I could do to work my way around this road, I ran away from problems when I should have ran towards them, I played little parts of a board game called life, I made it out another year. Now I head into an unknown territory without a map or a voice other than my own. Sure, i have my loved ones who will most definitely continue to be by my side, but they are not my heart and my mind, I am the one in charge of me. I have come so far but I sure as hell have so far to go. Looking back at the last 2 years, year one kind of blends into year 2 (this last year) mainly because it is a year I had a love/hate relationship with life. I buried myself within the notion that, oh, i'm gonna be able to do all this and make it look like it's right. When deep down in my soul, I know I was fooling myself. I made choices regarding my life, that affected my train of thought. You know when I wrote my first entry into this diary, my parents almost went off a cliff. The aftermath of that, truly traumatized all of us. For a good 5 months, it ruined my family. It ruined me. I never intended to start my first entry like that. But I had no choice. I had to be real and I had to be honest. Continuing that theme of honesty, I was broken and even through the very noticeable happiness that I have had this last year, I realize i'm still a little broken. The fact of the matter is, those feelings have still been at my core and with recent events in my life, I never got over it.. and it goes beyond that accident. I still say how the hell was I supposed navigate my story around that. There is no navigating my story around that. Instead I will allow myself to continue to find ways to confront those feelings moving forward. I let myself open my life to people who I thought would be here at the end of the day. Where are they now? Thank god they never came along physically, because it was never meant to be. I spilled my guts out only to be shoved into a corner, because, "sorry brother, i'm so busy with work and I got emails to reply to for brands and I just don't have that much time anymore, i'm so unhappy with my life, but I really want this for me, this is my dream and I want it so badly, but no one is giving me the time of day". This is something one of my old friends wrote to me in a text message earlier this year. I let this guy in and we became brothers from afar... Then as he became obsessed with trying to beat out others and become number one, he closed himself off and became that guy that sent that text message. For me, that was a turning point. Of course I spill my guts out to Courtney, Jenny, Dash, Pete and a few others, but I told this guy everything. I told him about my relationship with P, my personal problems, and I felt like my friendship with him was truly a brotherhood, but as soon as I started getting ghosted earlier this past year, I felt alone. I had people, but I felt alone, because besides P, I spoke to this dude everyday and felt a sense of dependency. It wasn't until I surrendered and starting opening up to people who would end up becoming some of my best friends and mentors that I confide in. I let T out of my life and let others like Sammy and Dan in. Sam, really guided me this past year. I don't know what I would do without him. I better start, because like I said earlier, nobody else but me, can make the best choices for my life. I give credit where credit is due though. Samuel Anthony, truly made me better. Sam pointed the way and showed me that I can be what I envision. What I put out into the world, let it be on my terms and from my heart. I feel that when I started writing down my thoughts, I always tried to build a world around them. Somewhere in those words, the world I was actually living in, got lost. I'm disappointed in that, but i'm proud that I was able to course correct the narrative over the last 9 months. Because the whole year before that, there was pictures of me, there was words, but it feels like it was written by a whole other person. When I see how I carried myself and things that I preached, I don't see any of that in me now. For gods sake, I was blonde when I wrote my first ever word in this diary. I became blonde, because I was still trying to live in the past. I was trying to get back the height of 17 year old Dom Baza's peak. I could not get over the fact that I was so hurt over the people who did me wrong when I got sick. You know, over the summer, I don't think I wrote about this in depth, but Dan got on my case and sent me this very straight forward and honestly from an outsiders point of view, a little rude, long thread of messages about the guy he saw me as. I had to correct him, because he was looking at the guy who started this story. By the time Dan really got what he had been wanting to say off his chest about me, I was already riding this ride without training wheels. He was right though. I kept trying to find ways around life to blame myself, blame everything on me and my illness, and even the people who did me wrong. There is no one to blame here. Life has a way of working out. This was always apart of the plan. That's where fear came into place. I think being scared really made things worst for me. I'm more out going now, but I do still get nervous, it makes us more human. As I type this, I think of just a few weeks ago when Xav was here. We went to a soccer field and had no ball to play with. He told me, why don't you go ask that family if we can borrow a ball to play. I honestly was so scared and did not even budge. I was like nope, so he did it. Little things like that make me wish I just jumped in and did it. A simple thing like asking for a ball.. I couldn't even do that. That is why when it came time for me to speak out earlier this month, in an even more scarier situation, I did. I was on bart on December 8th and I thought I was gonna die. This woman came in and she was mentally unstable. She came in yelling and calling everyone bitches... then she got up and attacked this innocent bystander who was just sitting in her seat, trying to get home with her husband and friend. The mentally unstable woman went up to this lady, dug her nails in her eyes and shoved her head against the window of the train. It was like watching a movie. I looked around and only saw one person willing to speak up and try to help. No one wanted to help this woman who was just attacked. So I stepped up to the plate. Yes, it was scary, considering the times we live in today, but I called 911 and they shut the train down. My phone call to 911, shut the bay area rapid transit down. No trains in, no trains out. I have never experienced anything like that. I wasn't about to let this woman with mental problems get away after attacking an innocent passenger. The world we live in, people are scared to speak up now, people are scared to say yes. I was scared just a few weeks ago to ask for a soccer ball. But when something like the attack on the train happened, I suddenly became brave. I was scared, but I lost that fear because I knew I had to use my voice for the greater good. I have always said and I have always preached, god gave me my voice for a reason. Just because it wasn't an event with music, does not mean I did not put it to work when I called 911. Nowadays people just spit out nonsense out of their mouths and don't think before they speak. I think if we took 5 more seconds to analyze what we are about to say, we might just make this world a better and more understanding place. If we lead by example, then the rest will follow. That night when Xav, who is not from America, went up to some random strangers and asked for a ball, something that small stuck with me. I guess I wasn't meant to go up to that family and ask for it myself. I needed to be thought a lesson, so when the time came around for me to speak up and ask for something, in a more dire time of need, I stepped up to the plate. I owe Xav a thank you for asking that family for the ball. Because after our adventure together, I feel like he pushed me over the edge, just a little more. Without that memory in the back of my mind, I would have been like everyone else on that train, scared and unwilling to speak up. I feel like over the last 2 years fear played a huge part of it. Even as I surrendered, there was this new sense of fear. There still is a sense of fear. I think no matter the incarnation, I will always have a bit of fear in me. Everyone get's scared, it's human. How we beat that fear, that is the true test of this life. As I re evaluated my thoughts from the pages before this, I am reminded how much of a pussy I was. I was scared to live a life because of an illness. I was scared because of a world that has constantly pushed me out and shoved me down. I was scared to step out of the box because of money and not even making a dime to my name. Hell, i'm still not making enough, but I want to be happy. I now realize I have new fears and i'm trying to figure out what they are and how I conquer them, like I have conquered my previous fears. I have enjoyed being happy this last year. It's like this other half of this diary that I have been writing in, it truly is the flip side of my story. I hope I can continue to do my best to be happy. Because I'm so proud of the growth I have seen in myself. Like I said, I owe a lot of that to that people that I have around me. From Blonde hair dom. to short hair dom, to medium hair dom, to my now long haired self. I use my hair as metaphor, because as it continues to grow, I grow. I have not only learned how to sike out my fears, but I have also learned to somehow forgive and take the steps to move on. I have learned that falling in love can hurt, hurt so bad. But making up is pretty good too. I have learned that the depth of the word love, means so much more than I love you. I have learned that things that scar us, can make us better than we used to be. I have learned new things about this beautiful city that has been the backdrop to this pop up storybook of mine. I am a pro at public transpiration in SF. I am also a pro at walking the streets. I know my around town. I learned that all in a year. I learned new flaws about people that I love and I learned new lessons about the way this career and this life of mine works. I can not stress how proud I am of myself. When i look into the mirror, I see someone who has and is still rising from the ashes, someone who still has demons to conquer. Every single day a new layer comes to the surface. Every single day i'm learning that there is new corners of my mind that I have yet to access. What I do with that, well, I can only imagine. The story continues in Part 2 on page 100. Come back December 30th for the conclusion and final page of chapter 9 as we celebrate 100 pages of my ongoing story. Wanna talk about it? Leave your comments on part 2. Photographer: Courtney Johnson What i'm wearing: Shirt - Forever 21, Jeans - H&M PRESS PLAY Every post I will include the song that inspired me to build a post around it's title Page 99
Stories From My Life - Chapter 9 Comments are closed.
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