The Past Few Months; Realisations, A Decision

Yeh, I know. Where you been, bxtch? I'm tardy. Apologies, GNOtaku. I really do GAF about you guys...I didn't forget you!

It has been a REALLY difficult past few months. I kinda fell into a depression. And there are a myriad of reasons for that.

For starters, my mami's sister, my Aunt Caroline, had been ailing for months, and I wasn't aware of the seriousness of it. Because of the stigma attached to me due to stuff that went on in my past-life (pre-rebirth), I had kept a bit of arm's length between me and most of my immediate families on both maternal and paternal sides. I had talked to my aunt at intervals--she would call me or I would call her on our birthday, August 24th, and shoot the shxt. Or she'd call just for no apparent reason. Which was okay. I just couldn't be sure...well, let's us just say I couldn't be sure what condition she'd be in when we talked.

She'd been diagnosed with cancer before, and had had surgery, and they got it, as far as I knew. But more recently, she'd fallen ill with some sort of bug that made it impossible for her to eat for at least a month. She was admitted to hospital. At some point she was in a coma and had stopped breathing. A surgeon was called in, but she refused to operate, because nothing could be done. From what I understand, the pictures of my aunt's stomach were a mess. She had a lot of internal bleeding. At one point, she did actually wake up (I'm sorry; I'm all over the place), and was talking, and basically freaked everyone out because a few days prior, she'd been intubated and wasn't allowed to talk. She was very weak and doing poorly. When she woke up and started talking and eating, we thought she was on the mend. But that didn't happen...

Soon after, she passed away. I was in the room when it happened. My cousins and my mami say she'd already gone, but...that just isn't true. She was still there. I could feel her...and then she was gone.

The funeral planning was a special kind of chaos, but I'm not going to go into that. I will say this, though: GET A FXCKING ADVANCE DIRECTIVE. Like, RIGHT NOW.

So, that was one thing. At the same time my aunt was in hospital, my father was also admitted to hospital. He'd fallen ill, couldn't keep anything down, got really dehydrated. He ended up staying, and it turned out he had a blood clot. Which wasn't good because my dad had a stroke back in 2007 and spent time in rehab due to it. (Just remembered: the same thing happened to my aunt around the same time. UGH.) I was genuinely worried and sooo very frightened. My baby brother flew home from GA to be here. And fortunately, he recovered. He's back home and doing great. In fact, the day he was released, we ended up recording that night, LOL.

My dad is pretty hardy. I'm so grateful he recovered because that could have been so much worse...

What else? Let's see...

So, the weekend we worked on the rough of a song that ended up being called "Thirsty", I went over to Darkroom to re-record some vocals. My eldest brother happened to be there with my dad's sister: my Aunt Joanie, and my grandmother. (She's pretty hardy herself, BTW. At 96, she's still getting around and everything.) When I got there, they were getting ready to leave. I knew I had to brace myself for being called the past-life name. I was ready for that, but not ready for what followed. This was my Facebook status about it:

"My 96-yrs old grandmother totally got me.
'You look good,' she said. 
'Thank you, Grandma,' I said.
"She reaches out and touches my waist. 'Maybe you'll lose some of this,' she sez. 
"In. Front. Of. EVERYBODY! My dad, two brothers, aunt, and stepmom.
"I'm all ::urk::
" 'Someday,' was all I could manage.
” 'Someday,' she repeats.
"Mor. Ti. Fied.
My stepmom, bless her, takes the spotlight off me by going, 'Join the group.'
::goes to apply cold water to burned area and then to a corner to die::"

OMGGGGGGGG what a fxcking nightmare. I love my grandmother but she totally set me up! Complemented me and then shot me right the hell down, LOL. But Sag people tend to say things like that: "Y'know, you look good in vertical stripes. They totally make your thighs look smaller." They call it Foot-In-Mouth Disorder. ::shakes head::

Anyways, this came in a month of people critcising me about my weight, saying stuff like, "Why make it harder on yourself" by having all this weight, and the like. Like I could just one day get up and suddenly go, "Extra poundage, begone! Poof! Ta-daaaaaah!"  All of it was somewhat hurtful.
Okay, all of it was VERY hurtful. It came behind me posting a Throwback Thursday picture of myself when I was 150--which people still considered obese.

It led me to a realisation that, no matter WTF I do, I am still going to be considered obese/fat/chubby to someone. Radical acceptance!

I have a lot of issues there. Growing up, I was called ”cow”, ”pig”, ”chubby”, ”pregnant”, ”side of beef”, ”slab of bacon”...you get the idea. I was always told to hold my stomach in, tuck my butt under. I would sit on chairs with my legs raised to make them look less big because I always got teased about my thighs by my family and classmates. Eventually--and unconsciously-- I developed an eating disorder. Then, I was criticised--and by some of the same family members--for being too skinny. It was like, "MAKE UP YOUR FXCKING MIND!"

Yet, I have always struggled with it. At every weight I have been, someone was always calling me fat. My weight has been up and down, for one reason or another. Medication, lack of activity; ephedra, inability to eat, more activity. I can't even count calories because it brings up all that shxt from before, and I might think, "Oh, it would be so much easier to start back on the ipecac syrup", but that is not what I want. I am at a weight right now that I do not like, and I'm trying to do something about it, but it seems to never be enough for my critics.

They don't realise that all their comments--however well-meaning they may be--do nothing but set me back and impede my progress. It negates all the work I've done on myself in my head. Why that is, I'm not sure. I just know that certain things get stuck in my head and they don't fuel me to do something--the fat-shaming and the naysaying-- they have the opposite effect: they just shut me down. That kind of stuff never worked with me. I guess that's one thing from the past-life I have carried over that I still need to work on. And I am.

I've been debating vlogging about what I'm about to say next. I believe in being transparent with you guys. I mean, not everything is always good at Tha Cat Lair. I tend to Facebook-status my venting about what's wrong more than blog or tweet on it.

A couple of years ago, 3 Miles and I got into an agreement with a distribution label and LSS, signed away the rights to GATA City for two years. Big. Mistake. I wish we had never done it, I wish I had listened to my intuition, and I wish I didn't sign the contract during Mercury Retrograde. Basically, we signed a contract to keep doing what we'd ALREADY been attempting to do on our own, except someone else owns the rights and/or makes money from it. Imagine having to ask for permission to post your own fxcking music! Imagine copyright claims being thrown at you from every platform your music was already posted on before you even signed the agreement! Uber frustrating. I cannot promote myself properly if I am being restricted. Can't enter comps or anything like that because, since I am signed to two small labels, essentially, it is usually against the rules. The label is suffering financial setbacks due to us being swindled not once, but several times by different people we thought we could trust, and due to that we couldn't promote effectively or frequently. It is a clusterfxck of immense proportions. And meanwhile, we still have this unnecessary contract hanging over us. I still have the masters, but I am powerless for now.

Between this, and learning that my brother's laptop had been stolen, and along with it, the instrumental and raw tracks for GATA City (which were on an external drive) it seemed like the writing was on the wall. I made the decision to just back off for now with promoting that project until the agreement expires. I think I have an idea of how Prince must have felt. I'm not changing my name to no symbol, though.

We don't have much longer in the contract, but the project just seems to have taken on a weight of its own; it seems like my boulder I have to push uphill just to have it tumble down again. It's disheartening.

Also, in the process of all this turbulence, it hit me one day that I am Chief Operating Officer of 3 Miles Entertainment, and have been for the last two years. I didn't realise it even when my father (who is CEO) validated me for a decision I made regarding yet another struggle with the other label. "You did the right thing as an executive for 3 Miles Entertainment," he'd said. It took an article I was reading at the time to bring me to that realisation. I think that if I had done sooner, I would have made a different decision, put my foot down a little harder, and we wouldn't be in this mess.

So, the only time I will be doing anything with GATA City is the occasional performance. Which, at this time, doesn't seem likely as I am currently searching for someone to replace 3D, and I need to get into fighting shape again. (As I said, I've been in a depression. Which, incidentally, is also something I've struggled with for years.)

For the most part, GATA City is to me like an estranged child that I am not allowed to see very often. It hurts that I am so limited, but I have to push the hurt aside and start fresh, move on until we can be together again properly.

So, yeh...it's been hard. I am currently bent on making something new and doing more of it my way. I am having to come from another place with my projects. I think the universe is telling me to back up and regroup. I have to start over...

I think I'll be fine. We'll be fine. Once everything is sorted, and we get more people who GAF about our vision in our corner instead of using us as stepping stones to further their careers, we'll be golden and our run will be salvaged.