by Young Dad
I was born on May 29th 2001 at Mercy General Hospital in downtown Sacramento, CA. I was born to a drug addicted mother who often chose drugs over taking care of me. At the time I was born we lived in North Highlands, CA. It was just me and my mom. She wasn’t working. She collected SSI due to being bi-polar, schizophrenic and having manic depression. We lived in a broke down apartment on A Street. My neighborhood, especially the block we lived on was infested with gangs, drugs and prostitution. We lived there until I was roughly around six months old. We then moved to Del Paso Heights, CA., where I lived off and on for a majority of my life.
When I turned one year old my mom had a boyfriend who later became my stepdad and my lil brother’s biological father. Both my mom and my stepdad used methamphetamine. They became abusive physically and verbally, especially my stepfather. When they would get high, I used to get smacked and spanked just for trying to get their attention. They were always fighting around me. It was a nightly thing. I would wake up to yelling and screaming and I would see my stepdad get in my mom’s face so I would try to protect her by getting in the middle and pushing my stepdad away. He would then get mad at me and throw me out of the way. I would get scared and call the cops but every time the cops came, my mom would deny everything and tell them she didn’t know why I called the police.
This went on almost every night until I was five years old. I then remember I had to go stay with my grandma for a little while. She would tell me they were having problems that they needed to focus on. I was at my grandma’s for about two weeks until CPS came and got me. I remember I didn’t want to go with them. I was kicking and screaming for my grandma, trying to get away from them, but the lady held on to my wrist tight. They took me to the receiving home and I remember when I walked in there was a little play kitchen, so I asked where the food was because I didn’t see any. She must have thought I was talking about the real food because she came back with a popsicle. I told her not that, the food that goes in the kitchen. She explained there wasn’t any because so many kids have taken them.
I remember crying wanting to go home, and being told I couldn’t, but later that night they woke me up and told me my aunt was coming to get me. I was happy I was going with someone I knew.
For the next month or two everything was good. I was in a good stable environment, eating three meals a day, and had clothes on my back. My mom and stepdad were going to court for custody of me and the day before the court date my stepdad got my mom really loaded on dope. So she showed up to court high the next day.
The judge seen my mom was unstable and unfit to care for me, so he granted my stepdad full custody of me. I went back to live with him and everything seemed fine for the first couple of months. My mom wasn’t around a lot, she went to go stay at the New Start Drug Rehab Facility in Del Paso Heights. I would go and visit her every now and then, but after a while we stopped going because my mom got kicked out due to her relapsing.
It was around that time my stepdad started getting abusive again. He would say things like “You’re gonna be just like your mom, another homeless tweeker” or he would tell me I’m a scared little bee. I would often argue with him and tell him he wasn’t my dad and I wished he would die. This went on until I was about seven or eight. By then he didn’t really want me around anymore, so he would drop me off at my mom’s apartment. She was living with her boyfriend who used drugs a lot and was a convicted child molester. I didn’t like being around him, but I always wanted to be around my mom. But more often than not I felt like she didn’t want me around neither. She would get high and she would be nice to me, but when she came down she would sleep for two or three days at a time. I would wake her up because I was hungry or just because I wanted to hang out with her. She would get really angry at me and yell at me and tell me to leave her alone.
So I would go outside and hang out with my cousin, Darian. He was older than me by two or three years and we would always run around doing things that often got me in trouble. We would throw rocks at the neighbor’s cars and break their windows. I also remember my cousin telling me he wanted to show me something. We went in the house and got a pillow case and my baseball bat and we went to the park down the street. There were a lot of stray dogs and cats in my neighborhood. He told me to go catch one of the cats so I did and brought it back to him. He put the cat in the pillow case, tied it shut and cut a hole under the knot. There was a ratchet hanging from one of the trees he put the hook part through the hole and hung the pillow case from the tree. He gave me the bat and told me to hit the pillow case like a piñata.
So I did. I remember hearing the cat start hissing and flipping out. The pillow case swinging wildly, he took the bat from me and started hitting the pillow case repeatedly really hard. After a couple of swings, the cat stopped moving. I remember the sound it made like a wet thud. My cousin just kept laughing and saying how stupid the cat was. I don’t remember feeling sad, I just felt confused. A red spot formed through the pillow case and it started dripping. We just left it there hanging and went back to the house. I ended up staying up all night just thinking about the cat and the sounds it made every time it was hit.
My cousin stayed the night that night so we woke up early and were playing games on my Nintendo 64. My favorite game was, ‘007 the Golden Gun’. We played until my mom woke up and asked us to go to the store for her to get her a candy bar. She gave me the food stamps card and we left. My cousin rode his bike. I rode my skateboard and we went to the Rite Aid up the street.
Inside the store I rode my skateboard around and they were yelling at me to stop riding it in the store. So I did. I went and got a soda and my mom’s candy bar. But then I stared riding the skate board around again with my cousin pushing me. I don’t know why but I stated knocking everything down off the shelves then I slipped and fell against the shelf and knocked it over. The manager then locked the doors so we couldn’t leave and called the police. They came took us to my house and I remember after they left my mom started smacking me, not because of what I did but because I made the cops come to the house.
After that everything was normal routine. I would go back to my stepdad’s for a while. We would fight and he would drop me off at my mom’s, she would be too high to care what I was doing so I would often get in trouble. This went on for a long time.
I remember on my twelfth birthday we were living on South Ave by Grant High School, My mom told me I was old enough to start helping out around the house and taking care of myself. So she introduced me to her dealer and told me to “hang out” with him for a while, that he’s been wanting to meet me. She left and he took me into his garage. There was a dope bong on the table and two big buckets filled with weed and a couple folding chairs. He told me to sit down. He took out a scale and started teaching me the different weights and how much they cost. I would leave early in the morning walk around all day on and off the light rails trying to sell the weed. I wouldn’t return home until late. After a while he taught me to start selling crystal. I remember having to hide my money in the stove because I didn’t have a room and my mom would always take my money and buy drugs with it.
My mom had a real problem with stealing. Her boyfriend smoked and sold crystal so there was always a lot of it around the house. I think my mom’s boyfriend liked fighting with my mom because he would leave his stuff on the table and wait for her to take it. Then he would beat her. I didn’t like being at home because my mom and her boyfriend were always high or always fighting. I would stay at friend’s house for a couple of days then come home, but after a while my mom started locking me out, not letting me in and I couldn’t stay at my friend’s house no more.
My mom’s friend seen me sleeping outside a church one night and said he had a place for me to sleep. We walked all the way to Northgate down the trails by the levy were there were a bunch of homeless people and a lot of camps. There was a tent with an air mattress that he said was his. The next day I had to go pay off the zips and re-up, I went to my mom’s dealers house, paid him the $100, he said I still owed him $120. I told him I didn’t, but he insisted I did. I told him I could pay him in a couple days and left but I never came back. I stayed under the bridge for a couple days with my mom’s friend, then I went home looking for my mom and trying to take a shower and get clean clothes. She wasn’t answering so I asked the neighbors where she was. They said they haven’t seen her.
So I hopped over the fence and tried to go in the back but it was locked so I went to go back to the camp but on the way my Aunt Felicia seen me and told me to get in the car. She said my mom abandoned the house and lives at her friend Sweet’s house now. It was by our old apartment by the Park. My aunt dropped me off, told me the apartment number and left. I went inside and as usual my mom was high. I told her I had nowhere to stay, she said she didn’t either, I asked if I could stay there with her, she said I wasn’t able to. I lived under the bridge for a couple more months only being able to eat once a day and wash my clothes twice a week. I had no money until the people under the bridge taught me to make pipes. My mom ended up getting the house back and let me come home.
My grandma heard how I was living and tried multiple times to come and get me. I didn’t want to leave my mom so she sent my uncle to come get me. We got in a fight and him and my cousins dragged me out of my mom’s house and brought me.
This happened multiple times but I would always leave and run back to my mom’s house. I didn’t want to live with my grandma, so I eventually compromised and went back with my stepdad. Everything was fine for the first couple of days.
I remember, I went dirt biking with my lil brother and stepdad and got in a crash and dislocated my shoulder. I was in a sling for about three weeks after that. One day I got in another fight with my step dad, he smacked me multiple times ‘til my mouth started bleeding. I ran up the stairs to get away. He chased me and tackled me in my room, sat on top of me and twisted my dislocated arm behind my back while calling me a bee and asking what I was goin’ to do. I told him to get off me and I’ll show him, he did and I ran to the bathroom locked the door and called my grandma. She called the police and came over to pick me up. She told them what happened but he said I started it by hitting him first which was a lie but it was our word again his. I went to go live with my grandma after that. At first I didn’t listen and I would always run. I wasn’t used to having rules and being told what to do. I wouldn’t go to school and around this time I got heavily involved with the gangs. I didn’t care about anybody else’s life and much.
When I wouldn’t go to school my grandma would call the cops. And if I did go to school I would ditch to go smoke weed and kick it with my friends. I started doing little petty things that later progressed to doing worse and worse things. I felt like I was more and more invincible each time I got away with something, I wasn’t scared of jail and I didn’t care if I died.
By the time I was sixteen I’d been incarcerated twelve times, shot at more times than I could remember. I’ve been jumped, people tried robbing me. I was known with my neighborhood due to the things I did, by my friends, rival gang members and gang task. I was angry at the whole world and I let everybody know it. I was hot tempered and quick to react long before I thought about the consequences.
I ended up going down for a gun for one of the older homies, I told him I would take it because he had two strikes already. I ended up doing only two months for it. But while I was locked up the homies acted like they were there for me, putting money on the phone, writing me, and letting me know they love me.
I got out on ankle monitor, I was only out for seven days before I cut my ankle monitor and went on the run. While I was on the run I almost got shot twice, in the face and in the back. I was moving around from hotel to hotel with my girlfriend, drinking, smoking weed, sipping syrup, and doing coke. While I was on the run I ended up getting locked up. I did three months then got released on ankle.
Four months after I got out my lil brother was shot and killed in his apartment. I was at my son’s mother’s house smoking, when she came out and told me. I didn’t believe her at first so I called his brother.
When he answered I didn’t even have to say anything he just started crying saying, “they shot him, they shot him!”
At that moment I didn’t know what to think. I was truly heart broken and felt I was to blame for his death. I was just with him the night before and we got in a fight. He was supposed to stay the night at my house but I told him to leave. And I thought, maybe if he would’ve stayed he would still be alive today.
A week later one of the older homies got shot in the back three times leaving a barber shop. And another got shot in the face. I almost lost two more people who were close to me.
A little bit after that I was blessed with my beautiful baby boy, on September 12, 2018 at 12:38 pm. He was seven-lbs., five oz. and twenty-one inches long. He lost oxygen for two minutes during birth which caused me to almost lose my son. I was scared, praying to God that He lets my son live. And I’m very thankful He did.
That following Sunday I went to church got baptized and started working on changing my life. I applied for multiple jobs, I was at home with my son all day every day. Had all A’s and B’s in school and was scheduled to graduate in December. I stopped going to the block and just focused on my son and what I needed to do to give him a better life than I had.
One month after my son was born, I was arrested at school and brought here after being taken to interrogation which is where I’m at today. Since then I’ve been doing everything I can to make sure I make it back to my son while bettering myself in the process.