Entry Log: 19
Date: Saturday, May 19, 2012
Place: Kitchen table
Was walking home from the grocery store. I mean, something completely normal, dressed in jeans and a loose hoodie, nothing out of the ordinary . . . and then, shit my hand is shaking so badly. Crazy to think that a flashback to my old life will get me so hard, like a punch in the gut I wasn't expecting.
I was taking a shortcut through to my apartment from the grocery store when a few gang bangers jumped me. Or tried to. I may not be going through the grueling Air Force training every day, but I'm still in shape. Guess they thought I was some easy target, and they almost got to me. But it wasn't the fists. It was those eyes . . . damn, it was like looking in a mirror.
Dark eyes. Scared, so scared, but filled with the kind of survival spirit that comes from somebody long used to always getting the shit end of things from society and everybody around him. Eyes looking for a way out, eyes searching for someone to reach out and help him, instead of pushing him back down in the ground and spitting on him. Eyes filled with pain and hopelessness.
He was just a kid, no older than 15. No older than I was when I got through initiation and got my first tat. He was the one to throw the first punch, ready to prove himself in order to finally be accepted somewhere. I saw the blow coming and didn't even move. I don't even remember feeling the punch, but I remember dropping my grocery bags. All I could see, all I could think of, was all the people I met with a similar punch. All the people I'd beat up in order to fit in with the gang.
I'd already mentioned I was a fighter at school. Didn't take long for the neighborhood gang to take notice of me and start coming around after school. After Ma gave some members a piece of her mind, they stayed away from the house, but they'd appear outside of school. Each day I'd stay with them a bit longer until I no longer came home. Until they became my new home.
Pa had been gone for several years then and even Ma couldn't keep me in line, though bless her heart she tried. I think she knew that I wasn't really given a chance. What's a black kid supposed to do? Either you're in a gang or you're dead. She never gave up praying for me, and I sometimes think that was the only thing that got me out. That and a cop who was actually trying to make a difference rather than use his gun to solve the world's problems. He arrested me after a corner store robbery went bad and a night in that shitty, dirty cell as I almost froze to death finally gave me some perspective.
A few blocked punches and my famous cold-faced death glare was enough to make the punks have second thoughts and slowly back off. I slowly gathered my spilled groceries and continued on my way. But the whole time those eyes were staring at me. Wondering if there was hope for him as well. Wondering if there was a life outside of the drug-riddled back alleys that had become his home.
I asked myself those same questions that cold-ass night in a jail cell, beside a couple of drunks that stank worse than the prison. I didn't have the answer back then, sometimes I feel like I still don't, but hell, I was determined to find them then, and I still am today.