by Z
One morning in the 2nd grade, instead of walking into school how I usually did, I convinced my friend to ditch school with me and go to the arcades. But we had no money. My solution: Knock door to door, telling people we were hungry and homeless, asking specifically for quarters please. And some people actually gave us money. But one lady and her daughter, they grabbed my friend. They called the cops. The cops thought it was funny when they came and took us away. We were scared. Me more so of losing the pocketful of change I had acquired. They told us juvenile hall was fun, that all we did there was eat good food and play video games, and from the backseat we began to plead with the cops to please take us to jail, instead of what I knew awaited us. They took us to school, where yet AGAIN I was in trouble. My friend’s dad whipped him with a belt and forced him to stand up all day. Me, my step dad got a leather belt and ripped my pants off and whipped my legs for a few minutes until they were nice and red like stretched tomatoes. When my mom got home, she got an extension cord and unleashed her fury on my stinging legs. No amount of crying or begging eased the rage that tore into my flesh for that blistering moment. For days it hurt to walk. And for a while I didn’t ditch school, but I did get better at not getting caught.
At school I didn’t stand for the singing of the anthem, and so I got held in for recess time. When they turned the lights off for nap time, I kept my head up until the teacher came to push my head down over the desk. At a local pond I took my shoes off, rolled my pants up, and went in to collect the coins people threw in there, even though college students stared at me and told me I shouldn’t be doing that. I cursed at home and got smacked, so I made sure to only curse outside and out of mom’s earshot. I asked my mom and aunts to teach me how to cook and they kicked me out of the kitchen and told me it is a place for women only. When I would try to cry, mom told me that I am a man, and men don’t cry, and so I didn’t cry. I got into fights often, I was a hyper rascal at school and at home, but no matter how many whoopings I got or how much school punished me, I just couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble no matter how hard I tried. People told me I was bad, and I began to believe it, and I just accepted it and began to act that way— Bad.
At 12 I joined a gang. I didn’t know what it meant to be a gangster, but I did know that people didn’t like gangs and looked down on them. I already felt looked down on, like I wasn’t accepted by society, so I didn’t mind that I was hanging out with other ‘’bad’’ people. I felt glad to be accepted by them, and I bonded with them, became loyal to them, and turned my back on society the way I felt society had done to me. Again, I went to school, street school, and this time I paid attention because my survival depended on it. The gang molded me into what it wanted from me—a cold, violent, outlaw member so loyal that all my actions were committed in the interest of the gang. I looked the part, talked the part, acted the part, listened to gangsta rap, morphing into the monster society said I was. I followed street rules and began to enforce them myself. I absorbed the labels ‘’criminal,’’ ‘’gangbanger,’’ but this time I wore my badge of being ‘’bad’’ with pride and anger. Juvie only made me worse, inside myself I felt I was not a good person if they have me in this horrible place. And I became even more violent and more criminal, falling deeper into the only world that accepted me.
For the first few years in prison I ate with guilt because I didn’t feel like I deserved food. I would wonder why girls wanted to talk to me still, because I just felt disgusted with myself and believed I was ugly both inside and out. Society had gotten rid of me, deemed me to be so useless and worthless that I was sentenced to Life, and I internalized what the world thought of me. People thought I was crazy and violent, prison treated me like a wild animal, and that’s how I acted. My own family walked out on me years ago.
Now I still struggle, but I have learned to break free from most societal labels, and I am trying to be the person I really am inside, not the person society has tried to label me as or mold me into, nor the animal that prison treats me as. Not CRIMINAL, nor INMATE, nor good nor bad, but just me. A human. With feelings, hopes, loves, dreams, struggles, likes, and I’ve become strong enough to stand on my own, to be the individual I am, and reject what my peers, prison, and society try to label me as or mold me into. I label myself, mold myself.
There are many reasons for the causes of crime that we don’t have much control over. And once you have fallen into the dark cycle, it is hard to pull yourself out of it and save yourself before you lose years of life to it. Understanding the causes of crime and why you fell into it, is a good way to begin to liberate yourself. Recognizing what you do have power over, and acting on it. Getting rid of those labels, of those behaviors the streets and gangs have programmed into you, and becoming your own person, becoming YOU. Listening to your own instincts, your feelings, your hopes and dreams. Accepting yourself, instead of acting certain ways to be accepted by others. Since childhood, the world around you is shaping you into what it wants you to be. But as you grow and mature, you start to shape yourself into who YOU want to be. It takes bravery, my friend, for a demon to pull away from Satan, and say that he wants out of hell. But a demon, after all, is just a fallen angel. Who can rise again.