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Chapter 12: New Phone, Who Dis?

Dear Permission to be Powerful Reader,

A brown paper bag filled with weed sits beside you.

Brown rolling papers are scattered all over the floor. Scissors. You’ve become incredibly talented at rolling joints. That’s what happens when you’re smoking weed five times a day.

You spark your lighter with a freshly rolled joint and puff. And then, you think…

About the night when you moved to this new apartment.

Without telling anyone.

Without letting anyone know where you lived.

You’re no longer answering their calls.

Your grandmother texted you, saying,

“You will regret this.”

You deleted the text and blocked everybody.

`New phone, who dis?`

Life has become much quieter and more serene. Yet, you’re more depressed than ever. Around that time, you watch a horrible movie called Christine. It’s dull and sad, and she blows her brains out on live television at the end. You feel bothered by that movie for months. It’s terrible, tragic, depressing—and yet so relatable.

You know you need to pull yourself out of this mess, or it might not end well. So, you start meditating. You fall in love with a spiritual teacher: Anthony “Moo” Young, also known as Mooji.

Mooji is this Jamaican spiritual teacher. It’s like Bob Marley and the Buddha had a baby. The fact that you get wisdom packaged in a hilarious Jamaican grandpa’s jokes kills you. You guess you’ve found a cult you like. You’re so fake, but you don’t care.

Mooji is giving you glimpses of beauty and serenity in the darkness. He brightens your day like an enchanting perfume. He’s awakened a new faith and hope about the bigger picture. You’re sure there’s more to this world than meets the eye.

“He’s a fraud,” Erika says.

Now, your headphones are always on when you follow his guided meditations.

First of all, being Jamaican, he’s hilarious. And he’s profoundly eloquent. The poet Rumi was known for his ability to teach profound spiritual lessons with epic poems that could have won the Nobel Prize in literature if he were alive today. They were that good. And they sounded even better in his native Persian. And, well, you think Mooji has a similar quality.

Mooji has some insight that other people don’t. His good vibes are contagious. You are not your mind. Your mind is far more clever, and it makes you unhappy. You are that which is beyond the mind. There are layers to this. And the mind corrupts perception. Awareness comes before the mind. And there’s something that comes before even that. This is where bliss resides.

Suppose the mind is fighting to go unnoticed to continue running the show. Mooji has the right wit and charm to catch the mind off guard and help you see that you are not your mind. You are not the story of your life. You’ve had glimpses of the transcendent peace you experienced years before, but nothing like that first time. It’s enough to believe you should keep going.

You’re not here to convince anyone. All you can say is the man touched your soul and continues to do so. True peace is accessible in this very world.

Being so isolated has its benefits. You start drawing and painting more. You’re very good at it, and your art from this time is some of the best you’ve done in a long while.

You read SO MANY BOOKS. The books you read during this phase set the tone for the rest of your life.

You can see the difference between Erika’s output and yours. You’re determined to close that gap. At one point, you try to learn speed reading. Eventually, you figure out that you have dyslexia.

And all the haters always ask:

“Were you diagnosed? How do you know?”

It’s as if you’re challenging Einstein’s theory of relativity or something—arrogant bastards. Well… you know that 50% of people with ADHD have dyslexia from other books you’ve read.

Looking back, there were many years when you complained to your mother about your inability to keep up with your reading at school. They made you sit another test to get into your boarding school, which changed your life.

Once your parents made you understand that you had a shot at leaving St. Lucia—not someday, but in just one year—you were on. You read morning, noon, and night. You didn’t care. You’d wake up at 5 a.m. Reading books you’d never have touched in St. Lucia.

Like Ernest Hemingway. Maya Angelou. Mary Shelley. Instead of reading one or two books per year, you start reading one or two weekly. It was slow. It was painful. But you did it. Today, when you work or write, everything goes through a text-to-speech reader.

You’ve learned a compensatory skill that turned a weakness into a superpower. Now, you can read faster, with far less mental energy, and understand the material better.

This second-person perspective keeps the narrative’s original structure and depth while immersing the reader in the experience.

You remember: you had a formidable rival in your partner. It was excellent motivation to step up your game.

You become so knowledgeable, just like Erika. You know everything there is to learn about a variety of topics. There are many psychology books, marketing books, spiritual books, books about money, history books, and biographies. But what’s conspicuously lacking is fiction. Saving for a special edition Dragon Ball Z manga, there’s no fiction in sight. (Every male in St. Lucia under 50 loves Dragon Ball Z. That—and The Fast and The Furious. Go figure.) And a few French books—Le Petit Prince, La Gloire de Mon Pere. You have stacks of books in your office, on your desk, in boxes. Eventually, you get a Kindle.

You read Can’t Hurt Me for the first time in that apartment. It’s still your favorite book of all time. David Goggins changed your life several times over. You would be remiss if you didn’t praise Eckhart Tolle, whose books you love. Your two favorites are Stillness Speaks and the kid’s book he wrote—The Guardians of Being. They’re fantastic

There are several books you read that people may not have heard about.

The first is Nonviolent Communication.

This one teaches you how to communicate nonviolently. It’s mighty. Your relationships become oriented towards harmony, adding a layer of safety to your connections. It’s still powerful if only one person learns it, so the other person doesn’t necessarily need to. This book teaches practical tools to create a healthier relationship. It makes you more empathetic. You’ve made people cry because you looked into their very soul.

Another book you highly recommend is Profit First.

One crucial piece missing from your business is knowing how to manage your money. You didn’t understand that poor money management kept you in a vicious cycle. Now, you have a simple, practical system that guarantees you make a profit upfront. This book was a game-changer. Your income tripled the following year, and you had more money than you knew what to do with.

Another is Happy Money.

This book healed much of your anxiety about money, although you still have work to do here. (Actually, there are two books called Happy Money, both excellent. But you’re referring to Happy Money: The Japanese Art of Making Peace with Your Money here.)

Another is Atomic Habits, which is mandatory reading for developing solid habits. Later in your life, when you revolutionize your habits, this book becomes the foundation for much of that.

Another is Feeling Good by Burns. It’s mandatory reading if you are depressed or have high anxiety.

You’re still very overweight at the time, but you teach yourself to swim—not just paddle around in the water, but do laps in the swimming pool. It’s excellent. You swim in the morning before work several times a week. Eventually, you swim a whole mile. Being unable to swim made you feel like a deflated balloon, which was a massive victory.

You take another puff of your joint. It’s late afternoon. You have an excellent view of the golden sunset from your porch. You sit on the bare floor. The tiles are dusty and ashy, but you love the coldness of the tiles under your body. Two mabooyahs are glued to the ceiling in a corner. They crackle and bark, sounding way bigger than they are. The cat’s food dispenser goes off. One cat, sleeping beside you, bolts back inside the house before the others can eat all her food.

You love this new apartment.

The main bedroom has a bathroom, and there are two balconies. You love having two balconies because there’s usually shade on at least one of the most hours of the day. You smoke all day, every day.

Your family has no idea how close you are. You can see your mom’s house ever so slightly from your balcony. You guess you’re calling that a happy coincidence.

The first thing you love about your house is the quiet. A haven. A silent refuge.

After you leave your family, Erika never wants to look back. Not once. It’s as if you’re in a Witness Protection Program, living in isolation from everyone but her.

After meeting Erika’s family, you get on board with it because you start to feel like a wilting flower about your own. Her family feels like a “better” version of what you thought yours should be. There’s a warmth in her family you hadn’t experienced in yours. A sense of cohesion and unity that makes you yearn for something you’ve never had.

So, you accept this isolated life with Erika, your only constant, as you prepare to move to the U.S. together and start a new chapter. It feels easier to shut everyone else out, to create your little world where you don’t have to answer to anyone.

It’s your father who drives you past the point of no return. But unfortunately for you, you have the arduous task of trying not to demonize him too much. He most certainly has his moments.

Hands down, most of your best memories with your father happen while you’re on bikes.

Only he could have delivered so many spectacular adventures.

One time, you go for a Sunday ride. Your father brings along a bunch of his friends and their kids. It’s a whole gang of you riding off-road on your mountain bikes. You have lots of fun. One driver isn’t on a motorcycle but tries to follow you in her Chevy Blazer. Big mistake.

Her car gets stuck in the mud. That ends your bike ride because you must get the car out of the mud. Your father, the famous man he is, finds a guy he knows not far away who brings his truck to get the Chevy out of the mud.

After it’s all done, you’re ready to pack it in and call it a day. You throw your bikes into the back of your dad’s friend’s truck. You hop in the back of the car with another kid. The adults drive ahead in the Chevy.

Out of the blue, a random man you’ve never seen jumps into the back of the truck. Another Rastafarian. Very dark-skinned. Gaunt. Perhaps not even 18.

He starts bragging to you boys that he’d just robbed somebody. But the police will NEVER catch him.

You drive down this rough dirt road for less than a minute before passing a small convenience store on the side of the road. The owner stands outside, looking angry and holding a large two-by-four.

Your friend’s face changes from confusion to terror as he looks past you. He jumps out of the moving vehicle and tumbles onto the dirt road. Remember? You look behind you and see the store owner charging toward the truck. He has a murderous look in his eyes and is gripping that giant two-by-four like he’s ready to swing.

This Rasta stowed away in a truck that brought him right back to the scene of his crime. Thankfully, the guy didn’t pull out a gun or a knife. No, he hurled rocks at the shop owner. He jumped out of the truck and started sprinting down the hill. The store owner chased after him.

You and your friend laugh about it all the way home.

The next day, you get beaten with a belt for leaving the water heater on. Things change that fast. You don’t bother telling your dad you left it on because you got electrocuted. He wouldn’t care to ask. Violence is always the answer to everything.

You spend so much time wishing and hoping your father will change that you grow old. Now, you watch this pattern in your life. You’ve started brand-new relationships and expect the person to change.

If there’s one thing Erika teaches you, you can’t change people—not ever. People only change when they WANT to change… and it’s rare to find someone who truly wants that. Ninety-five percent of people say they want change, but nothing could be further from the truth. Understand this: There are some people—a lot of people—who would rather die than change.

And because your father refuses to change, you have to change. You have to become a very wild and savage person to contend with the likes of him. It would be best if you became Mike Tyson to stand up to him—an apex predator.

You take another puff. And then another. And then another.

You’ve had a hard day.

The sun is setting rapidly now. Crickets are taking over. Mosquitos bite. You won’t last outside much longer, but you don’t want to go inside. You smell marijuana smoke coming through the window above your head. You hear the spark of a lighter. The flicker of a flame. A puff.

That’s Erika in your bedroom. She’s in bed just on the other side of that wall. She’s smoking her joint. Silently. She types away. You fought earlier, and you aren’t talking to her.

There’s another reason you left your family. It’s because you were a coward. You couldn’t face what was going on with your sister. There are just no words to describe your sense of grief at seeing what she has become—what she was becoming at the time. You were too scared to face it. As her twin, it was just too much.

But there are unintended consequences to this isolation.

Over time, Erika becomes the center of your universe, holding all the power. You live in her world, and you both get used to that for a long time. In hindsight, it isn’t normal. You become her puppet, slipping further into her grasp like the proverbial frog in boiling water, not realizing the control she has until it’s too late.

With your mother gone, your career floundering, and no one else in your corner, you sink into a depression—a state of mind you can’t shake for three years. Three long years of waking up daily, down in the dumps, with no relief. Things get ugly because you’re a lot less fun to be around.

Frankly, the weed helps. At least, that’s what you tell yourself.

Those are challenging times. For 40 days in 2018, you don’t collect a single check—two rent cycles without money. You have to figure out how to survive. You’re experiencing a metamorphosis but can’t see what’s happening at ground zero.

Weed is dirt cheap in St. Lucia, and your dealer, Maralyn, always has a fresh supply ready. She’s a Rasta—about 50. She and Erika’s mother were classmates in school. But, even though Joanne managed to climb out of poverty and create a middle-class life with Phil, Maralyn isn’t so lucky. Seeing her broken life feels like looking at a shattered mirror. I want to reach out and cradle her broken wing.

Sometimes, you pay her extra. If you have any money to spare, you share it with her. She lives in government housing, but she and her neighbors are in a vast land dispute. Most of them haven’t paid rent in years, and even though the whole point of government housing is to support the poor, your government wants to evict all of them and turn the entire ghetto into rubble—a new lot for a shopping center or something like that.

There’s lots of resistance. The government stopped doing repairs to the properties, so they fell apart. When their electricity stops working, Mama Zion’s son tries to fix the problem himself.

He gets electrocuted to death.

You and Erika had given him one of your kittens just two weeks before.

Mama Zion is a fighter who symbolizes the people’s resistance to the government. She even made the news several times to the people in those government houses. She always has her dreadlocks wrapped in a beautifully colored scarf that stands on her head like Marge Simpson’s hair. She’s skinny and malnourished, but she’s always so kind. You often go there to buy weed and return with a whole pantry of fruits and vegetables she wants to share with you out of gratitude.

Eventually, the government successfully evicts her and the other residents, and she moves into a large tent in the forest in the mountains.

This is the most profound decision of your life—to walk away from your family. It’s a plot twist that absolutely nobody sees coming.

In those years, you’re a doormat. Everyone seems to take advantage of you. It’s such a problem that you know you have to face whatever’s going on that’s causing this problem. You’re in a one-sided relationship with EVERYONE in your life. It’s so exhausting.

You become a helper, a yes-man who can’t stand up for himself. And Erika has no patience when hearing the word “no.” If you ever push back, you feel guilty, as if asserting yourself is wrong.

Looking back, you realize just how codependent you were.

You fed off each other’s insecurities, creating a world around her.

But it isn’t just about you and Erika. Your need for validation and approval sets you on this path long before you meet her. She’s the latest person you’ve been trying to resolve your unfinished business from childhood with. You want people to like you, feel important, and prove you matter. That search for validation is a hunger you can’t satisfy. No matter how many people admire you or how much you achieve, there’s still a gaping hole in your heart.

But core beliefs are tough walnuts to crack. After all, you’ve spent your whole life building them up. They’re so ingrained that, even then, you don’t fully grasp the magnitude of what it will take to change them. They will have to change before you see your family again. Before you can convince Erika to see them again. She has no interest.

But there’s one time after that when you get Erika to see your family. That time, she had no choice. It’s the only time you won’t take no for an answer.

That’s when you have your family reunion in Barbados.

Until next time,

Dancer, Writer, Buddhist