I am an amateur at Life.
Put me in the game coach.
I’m tired of being on the sidelines;
I can’t go in.
What’s holding me back?
The lack of experience or trust
Which is it?
Perhaps I may not be good enough; don’t go hard enough in practice.
You comparing me to my Brother;
Who forged his path?
Who could be a well-known figure in his community?
I can’t be like my brother;
I can’t fulfill his tall shadow or shoes.
I can only step away from his shadow.
Maybe my ambitions are too big for this team.
Perhaps I may need to expand my horizons where my talents will be appreciated.
I am becoming who I suppose to be.
Good Day To You,
I hope you are doing well today. I will be doing something different this time around. I will go into depth with the negro man behind the camera. I didn’t write this with the intent of gaining sympathy or attention. I am writing this because maybe it can be some sort of therapy for other introverts out there. Perhaps I have to put this out there to let people know that I am here.
For the record, I blame no one for the outcome of my life. My parents, grandparents, brothers, aunts, and uncles did the best they could to raise me. That being said, I take full responsibility that I have to figure this out and get through the hurdle myself.
These next few entries could be a getaway from your world into my reality. Perhaps this is the dark point I had to plunge into to progress. After you’ve heard “No” so many times, and due to a lack of confidence, going out and finding a way to make things happen will cause years of pent-up frustrations to finally come out.
Please allow me to reintroduce myself. Some of you all may know me as Stewy. Some may know me as an invisible man that doesn’t exist. Others may know the name based on the pictures and a few may know that I can drop some great images (based on their opinions) but don’t see the man behind the camera. Those that do know me, know that I am humorous in an off-beat kind of way.
I am Stewy first.
I was born in Columbus Mississippi about an hour west of Tuscaloosa. I am an only child on my father’s side and my mother has two sons. My brothers were 8 and 10 years my senior respectively. They lived with my grandmother. My family spent the better part of 7 years bouncing back and forward between New Brunswick, New Jersey, Tuscaloosa, and Columbus MS.
During this time, we lived with our grandparents. My cousin Jermaine also stayed there. With Jermaine around, he was like a brother to me despite him being a high school senior. Although as soon as I was able to clutch on to a brother bond, death arrived. One April day in 1994, while spending some time with his girlfriend, they became distracted and another vehicle ran them off the road into a ditch. Neither my brother nor his girlfriend survived. They never found out who ran them off the road.
My Cousin Jermaine Weston Stewart’s grave.
Brothers: Jodie & Marcus
I wish someone explained the essence of life and death to me sooner because death was lurking in the corner again; I just couldn’t quite understand it. By late 1995, my parents finally settled in a small town my mother was raised in a town called Carrollton Alabama, a far cry from city life.
During this time, I was able to connect with my blood brothers: Marcus and Jodie. Albeit I was the youngest; Jodie was a sophomore and Marcus was a senior in high school respectfully. Once again by the time I was beginning to bond with both of my brothers, death said, “Hi I am here to collect.” From there, my life would begin to pass me by and I didn’t have any capabilities to document it properly.
On one late Thursday night in November, Marcus dropped a friend off. Unfortunately, his friend would be the last person to see him alive. Sometimes life shows us how many inches we can be away from death. Within less than a 1/2 mile away from the house, my brother fell asleep on the wheel and hit a tree. He died on impact.
Some of my problems were Marcus is not physically here.
This would become a time where I became scared deep down in my soul to connect with a lot of people. My parents and everyone else had siblings closer to their age to play or hang around. Stewy became a lone wolf who began to March to the beat of his drum. Losing two brothers early on is more than enough torment in one lifetime. I could never move on. I can play it forward and progress through life.
For the most part, growing up in the country had its benefits and disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage was not being exposed to life outside the south. I spent the better part of my time outside of school as a loner, mostly by choice. Because of that decision, I struggled for the longest time with being an introvert. It’s also why a lot of times I feel out of step with the outside world.
While I enjoyed my childhood, I felt somewhat like a latchkey kid. I began to realize there was something different about me. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but it was something that I felt like I was missing from becoming who I am today. I wish there was a way to document my quiet life.
My only escape from reality was acting in the comfort of my room. While I could recite movies or lines, I knew there wasn’t a real future in it for me based on what I was exposed to. Not to mention when you get teased for being dark skin, having buck teeth and without some type of dose of reality to truly navigate through those hard pains, the confidence in me became an insurmountable task to come back from.
The only thing I could do was just internalize it. However, when I looked for a positive, somewhere deep down at the time that I couldn’t understand was that those pains were making me a bit stronger mentally. It was the experience that toughens me up when it was just me to deal with those torments of being the butt of jokes.
Some of that would change in the summer of 2004. I was allowed to visit Southern California. Taking a trip to see relatives was a breath of fresh air from the small country town. Although, I didn’t take advantage of absorbing my new surroundings due to being somewhat a recluse. Maybe something was missing at the time.
There has to be more to life than operating like a robot.
When I returned to the country, it was more of the same. No signs of growth or exposure to new things. What was wrong was the schools I went to during those years lacked any diversity besides the typical courses required to graduate. Those days in high school, I didn’t put my all into it because maybe subconsciously I realized that school was a joke. Why would I waste my time in a Physics class knowing it’s not ultimately something I am invested in mentally especially when the instructor wasn’t teaching the class for us to get at least somewhat of an understanding of the material. I viewed school as a hang-out. Due to the limited circle, I was exposed to, I could care less for school. Living in that small town seemed like a dead end.
Things would pick up tremendously in the summer of 2006.
I will continue this connection to me in a later blog.