In a house full of addicts, you don’t just raise yourself—you protect yourself.
Before I was seven years old, I was a feral kid dumping flour on the counters while strangers used drugs in the next room. I didn’t have a mentor; I had a dog. I was so unsupervised that I’d mimic the dog—pooping on the carpet because that’s what I saw. I was a child screaming to be seen in a house where everyone was blind.
But it wasn’t just neglect; it was a war. I spent my childhood forced to watch my stepfather hit my mother, feeling the crushing weight of being a little boy who couldn’t stop a grown man’s hands. I was the ‘other’ son. When I played with my brothers and they got hurt—even if it was their own fault—I was the one who got hit for it. I was the scapegoat for a family that didn’t know how to love.
When the system finally busted my parents and tore us apart, I was scattered to families who didn’t want me. I carried my baby brother’s bottle with me for two years. The milk inside went sour and black, but I wouldn’t let it go. It was the only piece of my family I had left.
I didn’t choose the streets because I wanted to be a criminal. I chose them because, by the time I was a teenager, I already knew the world wasn’t fair. I had already learned that if I wanted to survive, I had to be harder than the life I was given.
My past is a map of scars, but today, those scars lead the way home.
I learned early that life isn’t fair, but I also learned how to survive it. If you’re in the middle of a struggle right now, drop a ‘💯’ or a comment. You don’t have to walk the hard road alone
