As I rose in the morning and started to prepare myself for the day, I began to wonder just what was in store for me. It was a cold winter day. There wasn't much snow out, but it was a lot colder than usual. The hot shower and pure silence of the early morning left abnormal thoughts floating through my mind. As I finished in the shower, I tried my hardest to get these images out of my mind. Eventually they left my mind, but I knew they were going to make a horrific return. So l finished getting ready and stepped out the front door, to embark on my next journey.

I almost knew that morning nothing good was in store for me, but what was there for me to do about it? In a city full of gang bangers, drug dealers, drug addicts, murderers and children that may or may not soon follow in these elder's footsteps, all you can do is keep to yourself and try to remain the person you are. You may be walking to the store and see a drug addict somewhere, the wrong thing to do would be to stare or ask questions. Maybe take a glance and keep walking. Survival is key.

At around 8:30 a.m., I began to set out to see what was in store for me. The streets looked at treacherous as usual, forcing a painful and never-ending knot in my stomach. Ever since I was little, I had always had dreams of moving to a better place, creating a better earth, but sooner or later I would have to face the fact that the world is what we made it. We made our bed, and now we must lay in it.

The gangbangers had always had a problem with me. I had a fascination for sneakers, and no matter what color they were, they were always seen as though they were enemy colors by another gang. If I had on red sneakers, the crips looked at me funny. If I had on blue sneakers, the bloods would look at me as though they wanted my head on a silver platter and so on and so forth. There was nothing to do about it except what I was already doing, stay as far away and pay no attention.

The drug dealers all had a fondness for me. Coming from a family of drug dealers, it almost seemed like that was my only hope for this world. It wasn't a sort of thing like when the teacher gives you a journal in grade school asking what you want to be when you grow up, you could never come straight out and says "my family is crawling with drug dealers, I think I might just follow suit". You had to just know deep down inside whom you were and what the future had in store for you; that was all there was to do.

I may be rambling on about the way the world was for me, but I'm trying to prepare my readers for what I went through. The world is tough out there, no matter where you live. Even for a 16-year-old like me.

Just because of the feelings I was getting that day, I wanted to just go home and sleep. The pain was becoming unbearable. These wild thoughts in my head were starting to ruin my judgment. I started becoming paranoid, like anything wrong that could possible happen was about to happen.

Over the course of those few hours, everyone I had seen had all given me a hint of fear. I thought everyone was out to get me. People I didn't get along with always give me a sense of awareness, cause the people that don't like you, probably are attempting to do something harmful to you, but the people that are actually the closest to you would have the most success. In my gut, I felt as though some of my closest acquaintances were getting together with me unaware of it, but I never had any way to prove it.

Eventually I just went home. There was no reason for me to be out in the world with these thieves, murderers, gang bangers and anyone affiliated with drugs usage. I had been exposed to it for long enough and quite frankly I was tired of it. So there I lay in my bed, pondering these thoughts and thinking to myself, "It’s almost 10 o'clock in the morning, no one is going to do anything to me at this time". I got up out of the bed, and left the house again.

I went to Seven-Eleven to get a few things that I would need to make it through the night. The cashier had this look on his face like there was something very evil after him and he had no way of getting away. He kept turning his head towards the door as if there was danger just 10 feet away that only he knew about. I noticed him doing it, but didn't acknowledge it. Maybe the better thing for me to do was to ask him if he was okay or not, but instead I just continued with my night believing I was untouchable and nothing could do harm to me. As I went outside to get back in the car, I stopped for a moment with the driver door wide open, staring off into the night sky thinking about a lot of things in my life. Thinking about how the only people that are actually there for me are my immediate family. Thinking of how my future will end up and what I’ll be in life. Thinking about how I grew up in a rough neighborhood without a father, making me the man I am today.

After another few seconds of pondering the past, I heard a loud boom that sounded very familiar to me. I had heard that sound many times growing up in a neighborhood riddled with gang bangers and killers filled with the sounds of loud guns and screeching tires almost every day and night. At that moment, it was the most pure of all the gun shots I’d ever come to hear in my entire life, but it wasn’t just a sound, I had actually felt this one. An unbelievable pain that I had never felt before came to take over my body, and it almost put me at peace with myself. After that sound, there was a split second of recognition of all of my faults and accomplishments in life. Then after a few moments, I collapsed and everything went solid black, as though I was drifting into and endless sleep.


And just like that, my closest friend, who at the time was a gang banger, had pulled out a .44 caliber magnum, aimed at me from across the parking lot, and pulled the trigger all because he was a member of the bloods and I had on a blue outfit, and thought it was the end for my existence on this planet. But it wasn't... I'd be back sooner or later, with a vengeance.