I’m choked up right now. My lil homie bff forever that’s my nucca right there don hit the Jackie Robinson 42. There is nothing more beautiful than the way @iamcynthiaray and @sociologistray have opened up their family to me, blessing me with the one thing I thought I had lost forever. When you intervene in someone’s life the way that Rashawn has intervened in mine, there’s no post/pre-them. It was destiny from the beginning. It just happened to be that 17 years and 6 months ago, the universe said, let me show you your destiny right now. I could have never imagined what a single recruitment call could do. Teach me how to talk and walk, shake a hand and act right, absolutely not. Teach me that my awkward strangeness wasn’t my barrier to a happy life but its very avenue, not possible. Teach me how to trust again, yeah right. Show me that someone could actually love you unconditionally, almost definitely not. Show me how healthy familial and friend relationships look, definitely not. Show me that health is wealth and that my most assured way to health is just to sit down and write, please tell me how. Change my life, prove me wrong. And, Rashawn, you did just that. I met you in the darkest hours of my life. And literally, and emblematically so, you rolled up quick to the curb one day as I was fleeing from hell and yelled, “Get In! It’s time to go!!!” That’s the story of our friendship, we let go, breaking down every stereotype of social life and its inequities that was always to have been thrown at us. We been side-stepping and swaying, ripping and running, ducking and dodging. We both, in our own ways, hit that Magical Homerun. So it is my sincerest pleasure to say, Rashawn, Happy 42nd. I am so happy and blessed that I was able to share with Cynthia, you, my adopted family, a fabulous pool and awesome t-shirts (I got like 4 of em, Be The Change), Uncle Earnest, and the best turkey burgers ever, this most fortunate weekend. Bettin we gon do it again, the universe had already decided it was always gone be on our side. Glasses up! Welcome to the Mountaintop. See how limitless the rainbow actually is! #happybirthday #bff #destiny (at Mitchellville, Maryland) https://www.instagram.com/p/Chj7PEOAUqR/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=