MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Throughout my childhood, as with most children, I couldn’t thoroughly understand the conditions in which I lived. However, notwithstanding a child’s inability to completely comprehend his, or her circumstances they instinctively know whether, or not these conditions are favorable, or unfavorable.
With hindsight, I can now see that life [pre]-deals out cards to children to play when they get older. The problem: life is irrespective of [when] that time comes!
The time for me to play in a Man’s game, life, came when I was only 11 years old. At that point in my life I knew what I had, and what I didn’t have. I looked at my cards, and saw I had a Mother, a older Brother, a younger Sister, but I didn’t have a Father. I saw we had a one bedroom apartment, but I didn’t have a bed. I saw we had a refrigerator, but we didn’t have food.
These conditions of lack induced me to seek out those things I didn’t have. For a Father figure I looked up to guys 3x older than I was who accepted me in exchange for loyalty to a small neighborhood gang. I use to dread sleeping on the floor, regardless of how many layers of covers I would lay, a floor is a floor just knowing that’s your bed can lower your self-esteem to its level, so every chance I had to sleep on the couch, or extra mat that belonged to one of these guys I took it not returning home for days on end.
Now, just because they would accommodate me with a place to lay my head, didn’t mean that they would not grow tired of feeding me, so they taught me the ways and means by which they made money.
I still remember the first sell I did. Inwardly, I knew it was wrong because of the nervousness I felt when I did it, but the overriding feeling of hunger in my stomach impelled me to go through with the transaction. At the point of sale, I looked into my hand, saw the money, and just like a movie scene that forwards 5 to 10+ years in the future, that’s how I lived.
