The Wine Doesn't Rush Its Aging

50 years around the sun. The wine doesn't rush it's aging.

I had a milestone birthday this week, and I woke up crying.

Not the pretty kind of tears that come during toasts and speeches. The ugly kind—the kind that shake your chest and make your face hot. The kind that come from somewhere deep, where memory lives like a wound that never quite heals but teaches you how to carry it with grace.

I thought about the little boy from the Homewood area of Pittsburgh. The hood. The little Black boy who was queer before he had language for it, who loved to sing and dance before the world told him that boys like him don't get to take up space with joy.

I thought about the times I was jumped. The beatings. The strength it took to be different in a place that punished difference like it was contagious. I thought about the boys from my hood who had fallen—the ones who didn't make it to milestone birthdays, whose names I still carry like prayers I whisper when no one's listening.

I thought about how, statistically, I shouldn't be alive.

So I praised God. And I cried harder.

Because I made it. I am still here. Still dreaming with the audacity of that little boy who refused to stop dancing even when the world kept trying to break his rhythm. Still breathing when so many like me have been exhaled from this earth too soon. Still blessed and still grateful, even when gratitude feels like work.

I am still standing—giving my heart to a world that still tries to reject me for my Blackness and my queerness, for being too much of both and never quite enough of either.

The Dream Deferred

But I also cried because I thought about still being single. No partner. No adopted kid. That part wasn't supposed to happen in my head—not at this age, not after all this work, not after becoming the kind of man who deserves that kind of love.

Then I remembered: it's God's timing. I am where I am supposed to be.

Hard pill to swallow. Tastes like faith mixed with disappointment, like patience flavored with longing.

But I swallowed it anyway.

I had a fantastic day, supported by friends and family who showed up like they always do—my chosen family, my blood family, my ride-or-dies who've seen me at my worst and loved me anyway.

I'm excited for the next chapter of my life. Ready for the spotlight I deserve after years of blood, sweat, and tears that could fill an ocean if I collected them. All this hard work has to pay off. It can't have been in vain. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't going to happen—if I wasn't going to change the world.

I believe this. Have to believe it. Because the alternative is unbearable.

So much to say and do still living in my belly, waiting to be born. I am not too old, no matter what the negative voice in my head tries to tell me daily—that liar, that thief of joy, that echo of everyone who ever underestimated me.

I am the moment. And I will continue to pray, to praise, to put in the work to reach these goals.

Happy Birthday to me.

Scorpio Rising

They say I'm a Scorpio. Dark, mysterious, sexy—the kind of energy that makes people nervous and intrigued in equal measure. Will fight for his friends and his loved ones because loyalty runs through me like blood.

And speaking of blood—

The ancestors. I feel their presence on this birthday like I feel the sun on my skin. I am not where I want to be, but I feel them watching, guiding, whispering instructions in a language I don't speak but somehow understand.

I feel all the blood that was given so I could stand here on this milestone birthday. All the prayers said over children who looked like me, all the risks taken so I could have choices they never did, all the dreams deferred so mine could breathe.

Sometimes I lean into my Blackness—most times, really. But today I thought about the white ancestors too. How they enslaved me—not me personally, but the me that lives in history, the me that carries their violence in my DNA. How they made me into the man I am today through cruelty I can't forget even if I tried.

That's twisted, isn't it? The way trauma shapes us into something stronger than we were supposed to be?

Do they watch over me too, on this day? Their blood runs through me, whether I want it to or not. Do they see what their violence created? A Black queer man who refuses to be broken, who turned their worst intentions into his greatest strength?

I think about my Puerto Rican ancestors—the Taíno, the natives of that island whose blood also courses through my veins. Although I wasn't raised by them, are they still guiding my footsteps? Still protecting me from dangers I can't see?

I feel powerful with all this mix embodied in my one body. Most connected to my Blackness, always—as that is how I identify, how I move through the world, how the world sees me before I open my mouth. Raised by a Black mother and Black stepfather, surrounded by Black AF family who loved me into existence. How could I be anything else?

But I am. And I acknowledge it. The complexity of me. The contradiction of me. The impossibility of me existing at all, and yet—here I stand.

Zaddy Energy

Another year around the sun. Officially a zaddy now. Officially aging like fine wine—getting better with time, more refined, more myself than I've ever been.

My soul leaps with the possibility of starting this chapter anew. Of having a chance to really begin on my terms, with years of knowledge under my belt. Mistakes that taught me what not to do. Traumas that showed me how strong I actually am. Wins that proved I was never crazy for believing. Losses that made room for something better.

The Inheritance

Because here's what I know now, at this milestone: I am not just one thing. I am a convergence—a meeting place of bloods that were never supposed to mix, of ancestors who would've hated each other but somehow came together to create me.

I am the little Black boy from Homewood who survived when statistics said he shouldn't. I am the queer man who learned to love himself in a world that taught him self-hatred. I am the dreamer who refused to let go even when the dream kept slipping through his fingers like water.

I am the wine that almost spoiled but instead fermented into something rare. I am the orbit that keeps circling the sun, faithful as the seasons, returning to the light no matter how dark the winter gets.

I am blood and prayer and music and fight. I am my Black mother's son and my white ancestor's reckoning. I am Taíno resilience and African survival and queer resistance all wrapped up in one body that refuses to break.

I am the answer to prayers spoken in languages I'll never speak, by people I'll never meet, who bled so I could breathe.

And on this milestone birthday, as I cry and praise and dream and grieve and celebrate all at once—I understand that I am not behind. I am not late. I am not running out of time.

I am right on time.

The wine doesn't rush its aging. The sun doesn't apologize for its orbit. And I—complex, contradictory, impossible, inevitable me—I don't have to either.

Another year around the sun. Another chapter beginning. Another chance to become who I've always been underneath all the noise.

Happy Birthday to me, boo. The best is yet to come. And this time, I'm not just believing it.

I'm ready for it.