"I HATE You Jody!"

I tried to drink it away
I tried to put one in the air
I tried to dance it away
I tried to change it with my hair

I ran my credit card bill up
Thought a new dress would make it better
I tried to work it away
But that just made me even sadder
I tried to keep myself busy
I ran around circles
Think I made myself dizzy
I slept it away, I sexed it away
I read it away

I don’t know what Solange was going through when she wrote those gospel lyrics, but she swear she me! Like, if Beyonce is Beysus, Solanage is for sure The Soly Spirit.

Those words spoke so clearly to me. You can do everything in the world to rid yourself of something, but you're going to do what you want to do regardless. So, this brought me to the question, if you know better, do you actually do better?

We live in a world where right and wrong is fairly black and white, with few grey exceptions. From the time of birth, our parents usually drill traditional, religious and geographical rules and values into us. Unless of course, your Mother’s name is Draya Michelle.

I am sure there are going to be people that read this and say “Well actually, I had a cool mom”. That is amazing, I am sure your mom did an excellent job at teaching you about penetration, curse words and offering you cookies and condoms. However, at the bare minimum we are raised to look both ways before we cross the street. Taught not to steal or lie. I am also positive a high percentage of us were scolded if we didn’t recite “God is great, God is good, now we thank him for our food…” before taking that first bite of whatever-the-fuck.

My point being, we essentially DO know better. So why is it that so many of us do wrong? Yes, there are those that have legitimate excuses (bad upbringing, mental illness, not listening to Lil Kim’s Hardcore enough). But that still leaves a vast majority of people (myself included) who toss caution to the wind.

We know having unprotected sex can lead to unwanted pregnancies and even an incurable disease, yet we still out’chea #JasonWaterfalls. Common sense tells us that dating someone who has 9 children by 7 different women will inevitably lead to you being the 8th and nothing more (Congrats on the new addition, Ciara girl). AND we damn sure know that pissing on an underage girl in a video is nowhere near acceptable, but that ain’t stop Robert from Bumpin’ & Grindin.

As a people, we are so aware of the “right” thing to do, but “FUCK IT” has seem to be the mantra that we live by. And you know why? Because pleasure somehow erases all pain. Even though we recognize the consequences, that apple is just way too appealing not to take one bite, even if it’s just a little one. We are all Yvette from baby boy, and life is Jody. No matter how hard life hits us, somehow we allow it to stay because it gives us 10 minutes of some bomb mouf.

So again, if we DO know better, why in the hell am I out here looking like Floyd Mayweather attempting to read The Republic by Plato?

Even though we don’t want to feel those metal clouds, it appears we can’t manage to keep our heads out of them.