Stories II

So I hand-copied the list of comic-book colleges from Wizard magazine, and tucked them away somewhere, always for me to refer back to, you know, to keep my dreams in check. Even though my series of comics I made were trashed, I wasn't defeated yet.

I drew super powered people and conceived characters all the time. Most of them girls/women, most of them fragments of the friends I had (yet never trusted with family issues). All of them had at least one character that resembled me. The rest were predominantly white, if not all white. I guess it was because I lived in places where there were pretty much all white people except a few faces. Classroom make-up also mostly white. I never thought back then to make minorities the majority, but I, or someone in my likeness was almost always the central character.

Then, came a moment of truth. My dad saw me looking at the Wizard magazine again, that same issue. I guess I was obsessed. He made conversation that sounded like he was genuinely interested in my endeavors. "So, what do you want to do when you grow up?" He asked me as a pre-teen.

When I was a kid and people asked me, I always said the usual things: doctor, fireman, things that just came to mind without any real thought.  Eventually this matured to football player (but that's another story/thought for another day), until puberty hit (but it was on my mind until high school at least).

This particular evening though, I had enough information to make up my mind. "I want to be a comic-book artist" I said, sure of my self.  I don't remember verbatim what happened afterward, I just recall the negativity. The spoutings of such a career being impossible to take on, being too competitive, not being representative of the black community, or something that was needed by the black community. It was just pessimism all around about my inability to go this route.

The lack of support added with the stinging insults of these words, without so much as a suggestion as to what my strengths could be contributed towards (I don't think he even knew my strengths), sent me way back into that down-trodden feeling I would later realize was depression (never diagnosed, of course). My dreams were crushed by his lack of consent. Yet I recall still receiving things from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Those catalogs built my resentment. Gave me hope.

By the time I was in high school, things only got better in one window of time, but otherwise got worse for my psyche and internal well-being. I had to draw and write again. Imagine in efforts to capture some sense of sanity within myself.

To be continued.