I have always loved Tupac because, between our upbringings and our Gemini placements, we share a lot in common. I would watch him with pain and wonder because I understood what it is to be the biggest star dimmed by your surroundings and the people that claimed to love you just to betray you. It is why I still feel so bad for how young he died….he never got to take the journey I’m taking now: the one to peace.

I have always struggled with suicidal ideation, and tried twice. The first time was in senior year of college. I downed about as many red-bull vodkas you could in an hour and, legitimately, stopped my own heart. I was not a pill-taker and I did not want to bleed. Thus, finding ways to die that did not included such violence or Tylenol was hard. The second time I tried to hang myself, and even got a strong, thick heavily wired cord that would not break at my weight. Yet, after one minute, it snapped at the helm and ended up accidentally spanking me as it whipped back. I was ashamed. I could not get living right and, now, I could not get dying right. After two failed attempts, I was determined not to try again because of how much courage or rather sadness it takes to even attempt and how much sorrow you swim in, once you fail. Yet, my relationship with death has always been one of fascination and fear.

Growing in a family of both Santeros and Christians, both concluded that death was just the loss of a body, which is why they were obsessed with spirits, ancestors, and God/ gods. The body was our airplane flying around until, one day, we become the sky. It was a beautiful, yet anxiety inducing notion because, to them, death was not relief. It literally was just you losing your ability to distract from who you are by becoming only it: your soul. You could not retail therapy or binge-eat. Instead, you stayed in the core of your spirit, which is why some ghosts haunt. Even with that notion, I treated death like some sweet relief because lord knows no one ever loved my body, including me. Yet, I always pitied those that died young, despite trying to join them because I knew they did not leave with peace as much as plans.

When I look at Tupac’s life, I see that, for us, he is a symbol: an emblem of cosmic talent born into earthly odds or genius persevering in the face of a world obsessed with dimming it or calling it crazy. We love the death of youth as a symbol for why we should live now, but growing up with a spiritual family I understood that, in the after life, what the world makes you once you are gone does not matter. It is what you made of you what always did, which is why I feel an urgency to get my shit together and not end up like, Tupac,… preaching to a world that knows its sins, sharing my wealth in wisdom and talent to a world that, no matter what, will splice it, and living in the imbalance of great love for life and absolute rage against it.

Now, I am not saying I am Tupac, although I have reached a level of enough healing to admit I am talented, creative, and unique. Yet, we love these legends because they touch an aspect of our reality and our fantasy. He was a star born without a father and some rough circumstance that made the need for one felt. Sure, that may feel like the bold, apparent connection, but to me I see his sadness, the brazen attempt to come for anyone else that saw it too, and the desire to make it to a place where it no longer existed. Perhaps, in Heaven, he got to that deserved place, but I want it on earth.