Beautiful Darkness - Maurice Mitchell (best inspirational books txt) 📗

eventually a person’s true colors will always show, and when someone shows you who they really are you should believe them. I was going through life getting lesson after lesson, just to came to the conclusion that at the end of the day nine out of ten people are full of sh*t. Eventually the truth comes to the surface and in most cases, the truth makes everything else you know seem like a lie. I had trouble coping with that realization and because of that I had trouble trusting people. I set out to be an honest person simply because I felt it was the only commendable way to live. Therefore I was never comfortable in a lie nor did I ever want to find that I was in one. I did however remain friends with the frat member, Alex and I found a new friend in my white boy roommate. His name was Case, he was a real tall white boy, with crazy hair and a distinctive swag. I only mention the fact that he was white because he ended up being like no other white boy I’d ever met. He opened my eyes to a lot of different things I was previously ignorant to. It was amazing how we’d come from such complete different walks of life but had so many things in common. He held me down throughout our entire stay at OLDU and I appreciated that. What I also appreciated was that he helped me rebuild my love for music unknowingly. Between the passing of Tay and being away from Kev I wasn’t as passionate about music as I once was. He had a real passion for hip hop that I’d never seen and introduced me to a rapper named J Biden. Case and J would both inspire me more then ever and I ended up becoming a better artist then I ever thought I could be. I started to get my mind right and get back on a better path slowly but surely through my music. I was starting to get back on the right track, but as he’d done so many times in the past, the devil would crash my party right on time.

Chapter 21(Life And Death)

It was at this point in my life I started having the near death experiences I’d spoken about previously. I’m not exactly sure why they all seemed to happen around the same time, but it definitely made me believe it was for a reason. All those visions I was getting earlier started to make a lot more sense then they did in the past. In the summers when I went home I started to spend more and more time with Dolla and his brother Raymond. Tay was gone and Kev had two kids so they became the brothers I felt I no longer had. We became a hell of a lot closer then I’d ever imagined, I thought I would never trust another soul again. That was until I was placed into a situation where I was forced to, and each time I was glad that soul happened to be Raymond’s. See when Ray came home I think he was searching for something or somebody real. He had just as much trouble trusting people as I did, except for him it may have even been magnified because of the time he spent in prison. He’d lost a lot of friends and family in his time of being incarcerated and found that most dudes didn’t really have what it took to be around him. I’m not sure what he saw in me, but whatever it was he liked it, and he believed in it. See to me Ray was somebody who was real, and raw. He’d been through more then me and dealt with things I couldn’t imagine, but we were cut from the same cloth. So we clicked, and just started running the streets together. I remember one time these two dudes were going to jump me in the parking lot for talking to one of their girlfriends. I had no idea she was taken but once again my luck showed up right on time. Before I could even react Ray punched both of them, it was clear, he was my kind of guy. I got back to my old ways and Ray, Kev, Dolla and I begin running the streets again. While I was in school, they kept hustling and getting money by whatever means necessary. Between that and all the numerous amounts of fights we got into, we quickly developed a reputation. We used to shut parties down, get kicked out of every club and find some type of trouble wherever we went. All the drug dealers that I thought was tough in school, I saw Ray slap around. Cops raided the apartment a few times and we were constantly getting arrested. Turns out I was real lucky to be around Ray for more reasons then safety, every time the cops realized who he was, they let me go. Ray spent months on the run and was constantly going back to prison. Nothing stopped us though, we were living, with an incredible amount of trust and a minimal amount of fear. We were always searching for respect, but eventually it got to the point where we were feared. The feeling didn’t feel too bad, but when your feared, eventually it catches up to you, and It caught up to us quick.

One night Ray decided to bring me back to his old hood for a night out. He’d built a pretty impressive list of enemies over the years but I don’t think he felt it would be a problem. I never thought anything of it, I was just happy to be away from OLDU. We ended up going to this bar around his old way, I can tell we were in the hood. The feel was different, the people were different. The bar was pretty big, it was kind of separated by two different sides. One side was more like a strip club, with tables and a stage with a pole. The other side was more like a bar with tables and a bar filled with drinks. It was pretty dark, and there seemed to be a lot more guys then girls in there. For awhile it was a regular night, we had a few drinks and we were talking and laughing about everyday things. Eventually the conversation would take a turn and Ray’s swagger quickly changed. We were sitting at the bar and he was sitting with his head down, because it appeared he couldn’t look at me in my face. I kept asking him what was wrong but he just kept saying nothing. Once it got to the point where he could no longer deny it, he looked at me with tears in his eyes and expressed that we were in danger. He finally found the strength to talk and basically told me that he was sorry for putting me in this position and he never intended for this to happen. He told me to turn and look at the guys that were standing behind us. I did, there were a lot of them. There were quite a few Spanish guys who were all standing against the wall and seemed to be mostly dressed in black. They appeared to be angry, and a little concerned. He said he had a long going beef with these dudes and they’d been trying to kill each other for years. He said they had quite a few shootouts and he even threw cocktails at their house at one point. At the end of the day he wanted to make it clear that the beef was real, it was present and they were definitely going to try to kill us. I saw the remorse in Ray’s face and I heard the pain in his voice. I could see he was genuinely upset that he put me in that position and I knew he’d be willing to do anything to get me out. I don’t think he knew what to expect from me, honestly I didn’t know what to expect from myself. My thoughts were all over the place and I was simply trying to come up with some type of plan that would guarantee us a safe exit. I sat for a second and pondered in what could have been the last moments of my life. I told Ray I’d be right back and made my way to the bathroom. I reached the bathroom, took a deep breath, collected my thoughts called Kev to explain the situation. I asked him to deliver specific messages to everybody in my family. I wanted everybody to know exactly what happened and exactly how I felt in my last moments. He was screaming on the phone trying to figure out exactly where I was so he could come, but I told him it was no use, we didn’t have the time. I had to leave him hanging, I hung up the phone, stepped out the bathroom and prepared to meet my fate. When I walked back out Ray was still sitting on the stool, I told him I was with whatever and he had no reason to be sorry. I made my peace with who I felt was important and whatever was going to happen from that point on was going happen. It wouldn’t be long before we were approached by a few guys from the click. They came up to us and basically let it be known that they knew we were there and that we wouldn’t be leaving. One showed a weapon and another one just kept barking. They were ready to set it. Ray tried to let them know that the drama had nothing to do with me, but before he could finish something came over me. To this day I don’t know what it was, but It completely took over my body, it was like an out of body experience. I saw pictures of my family in my head and simply decided it wasn’t my time, but if it was I was going out swinging. I stood up and took out the only weapon I had on me, a knife. I basically looked at them all in the eyes and told them lets get it poppin, why wait. I was ready to do whatever needed to be done to walk out that place the same place I came in, alive. There seem to be a shift of momentum after I stood up and spoke my piece, there was some form of retreat. To this day I don’t know why those dudes didn’t decide to go through with putting it to us right there. It must have been something in my eyes, whatever it was it worked. They backed down for the moment and decided to try to give it to us when we got outside. That may have seemed like just as bad a situation but that gave us all the breathing room we needed to sneak out of the bar shortly after. By the time they got around to trying to shoot at us we were gone. Final score, me one, the Devil, zero. You’d be amazed what you can do when you life’s on the line, especially when you think it’s a possibility you will never see your family again. Accepting the fact that your life could end shortly is no picnic, that was a life changing experience. If nothing else, that was when Ray really started to respect me. He would later tell his brother from prison that he felt I saved his life that night and he would forever be grateful, I was pretty grateful myself. The bible says there’s no greater love then the love that would make a man lay down his life for his friends.