Eyes Wide Open, Pt. 1: "I Love You But I'm Over You"

(I'm making this a multi-part post because I have a lot I want to say but I know attention spans on the web aren't the best. See how much I love you?)

Now readers, I want you to brace yourself because I'm going to share a bit of shocking news with you. Ready? OKAY.

I went to church on Sunday.

And it wasn't like: Mami called and guilted and/or tricked me into going to church with her. I received an invite to attend church with Eb the Celeb... and accepted. Of my own free will. Could you just die?

Before you all decide to stage an Intervention (although if you did that'd be SO AWESOME 'cause you know that's my show!) let me add that I accepted the offer because I took this random, out-of-the-blue invite from Eb as a sign. An omen, if you will. And I interpreted it as such because I'd just finished reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a book suggested by another (former, honorary) NYC Blogger, DollFace, and it did something to me that I can't explain. On Twitter, I described my experience after reading the book as such:

Those of you who read my blog know that I've lost my faith, but this book... I feel like I know now how I can get it back.

And I'm tearing up just thinking about how great it will be to believe in something again. I should've known the answers were in a book...

Anyways the book, for those of you MTV, ADHD fools who can't sit still long enough to read a menu let alone a book, is about following your dreams and listening to your heart without fear; knowing that there is a "Personal Treasure" waiting to be uncovered by you. And in the book the character is often told to follow the omens that the world sends his way because they are leading him to his destiny. Why? Because "it is written."

YO- that shit right there fucked with my head so much! (PS- you can also thank this book for adding ANOTHER tattoo to the list of tattoos I need in my life: the Arabic symbol for maktub...)

So I've just read this book and I'm all moved by it and ready to buy multiple copies of it and study it like the info contained in those pages will be on the final, at the same time that I'm looking to get into some trouble. It was Saturday night after all.

(Here's the part of the story where you may blame Nina for not coming to NYC... had she been here none of this would have taken place. Then again, her not coming was like another omen... I can't ignore that shit!)

But instead of finding trouble, Eb suggests me & the babies trek up to Harlem, watch movies all night, sleep over and go to church with her in the morning. Random, right? No one, besides Mami, who'd love nothing more than for me to join Evangel Church, has ever dared to say to me, "Hey, Rocky, let's go to church tomorrow" so I took it as an omen. The Universe was trying to tell me something. I sent out an S.O.S. this summer and it was being answered via a book and an invite. How could I say no?

And here's the part where you get just as creeped out as I did. The sermon on Sunday? It was about following the path god made for you, being true to yourself, putting your life in order, HELL, LIVING YOUR LIFE w/out fear of what others were going to think. At one point he had the congregation turn to their neighbor and say, "Neighbor, I love you but I'm over you." How fitting...

Go ahead and die three hundred deaths because I surely did when I heard it.

Was I being punked? I honestly (and unbeknownst to Eb and her roommate, who was sitting right next to me) had to fight back tears because it was like he was speaking right to me and no one else. It was scary to swallow so much truth like that. The omens were right and I was right to follow them: I was supposed to be listening to this preacher speak these words right then and there.

-- to be continued --

*smooches...planning on reading EVERYTHING Coelho ever wrote*
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and y'all know I'm a semi-professional stalker... I follow his ass on Twitter AND have his blog bookmarked. I ain't playing w/Paulo...