“Mom, can I switch schools? All of my teachers are jokes, they could hardly care whether the essay we hand in was done in scribbly handwriting on the bus ride over or if we put actual effort into it. I want to be a writer, and these teachers aren’t helping at all.”

“Raca, what does it matter?” Mom managed to retort after a good laugh. “We ain’t got the money to send you to some fancy school to learn how to write, let alone the money to get more than two meals a day. Give it up, someone like you’s never gonna be able to be a writer. You should focus on a trade that don’t require anything more than a high school diploma, if that. Any dreams you got beyond that are foolish, people like us ain’t get to have dreams like that. How am I gonna care for your two younger sisters when you’s away at some expensive school? We live in the projects; we don’t get options. And society ain’t gonna provide you the chance either, we’s stuck here and you best face it now and get over it.”


“Cameo, you’re grounded for the next two weeks. What the hell is with this 78 on your Algebra test?” I was eating a dinner of leftover pasta alone when my mom came home from work. That was the first thing she said to me.

“I tried really hard Mom, I swear, it was just a hard test. Everyone did poorly on it.” I replied.

“I don’t care at all how other people performed on the test, I care how you performed. Clearly you didn’t study enough. I should have never let you hang out on a school night.”

“Mom, I studied for three hours before I hung out. I thought I was prepared and tried really hard.”

“Well evidently three hours isn’t long enough to study. You can’t just think you’re prepared; you have to know you’re prepared. You think your father and I are able to afford a Manhattan loft and one of the best private schools in the city for you by just thinking we were doing our best? It doesn’t matter if you get to hang out, all that matters is that you’re getting good grades and preparing yourself to get into an Ivy League university so you can eventually live like we are right now. Don’t disappoint me again with another grade that low, Cameo.”


That was when I was in tenth grade. My mom was really struggling in those days. A couple months after that conversation, her brother was killed, and we had to take in his two young kids. It become impractical for me to continue school, they would have starved and I was the man of the family (neither my father, nor my young sisters’ father was ever around) so I had to do whatever it took to provide. So I dropped out of school, got a job at the local McDonalds, and began dealing drugs when I wasn’t working. It wasn’t hard at all to get into the trade. As you can imagine, the Queensbridge projects are crawling with drug dealers. There weren’t really any other options, either. My family needed money fast, like many of the families around here.

Now, years later, my sisters are grown and I could have gone back to school if I really tried. But I got good at dealing. And what’s the point of trying to be better anyways? People like me are slated for this kind of life. This is our, and my, role in society. There’s a reason we’re at the bottom, and it’s because we were put here. There’s a reason I’m at the bottom; I was put here, and I’m not meant to get out. So I’ll keep on dealing until the day I get shot. I, Raca, am no one special. I am another face in the crowd of poverty and hopelessness.


I sacrificed a lot to try to please my parents. I hung out less, studied more, ignored my conscience that screamed for something else to live for. The drug use started with Adderall, so I could stay concentrated for longer and not feel tired. I still felt miserable though, so then I turned to drinking to numb that. That turned into painkillers, Vicodin, Percocets, the mix. Then came the expulsion. When the school caught me with pills and alcohol. I was trying to please my parents by numbing myself into conforming to their rules, and now the complete opposite became the result. They were disgusted with me. Concerned? No, never concerned with my personal wellbeing, just my grades and my appearance to colleges. I could never please them. I will never please them. I’m just not worthy enough for their superior life style. I’ll never be good enough or smart enough or hard working enough. And that never leaves my mind.

The drug use continued. How could it not? How could I live with myself, my disgusting, good-for-nothing self? I can’t. But I also can’t afford the painkillers anymore. So I turned to heroin, because it’s become way cheaper. Bottom line is I need to numb myself, and can only afford the cheapest. The high makes me forget those crippling thoughts swirling around in my brain, makes me forget how worthless I am.


The autumn air is crisp and biting, but I decide to walk to meet my buyer anyways. On the sidewalk I spot a dead raven infested with maggots. I almost didn’t spot it amongst all the dead, fallen leaves. I thought it was odd, it’s something I’d never seen before, but I shrug it off and continue walking. I stuff my numb hands in my pockets and feel the small bags of heroin.


The night is especially dark as I make my way out of the subway station in Queens, where I’m meeting my dealer. The stars are absent tonight, leaving a cloak of absolute blackness over the borough. A chill runs down my spine as I reach the usual meeting spot, a 7/11 parking lot. My dealer approaches.

“Hey, Raca.” I utter quietly.

“Hey, Cameo.” He replies while promptly reaching into his pockets and pulling out the small baggies of heroin, with their familiar rubber bands holding them shut. I grab the rolled up bills from my pocket and we quickly exchange. As I’m about to say bye to him I’m knocked to the ground.

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you…” the undercover cop begins as he rolls me onto my stomach and slaps a pair of handcuffs on me. Glancing to my right I see the same being done to Raca a few yards away. Everything begins to move in a blurred fashion, the sounds of the cop become muffled, and I become hyperaware of my own mind and not of my surroundings. I begin to think about everything that led up to this exact moment, watching it play out like a movie in my head. How my parents made me feel worthless and pathetic, how I foolishly turned to drugs to numb myself, how I screwed myself over worrying about what they thought even when I knew they didn’t care about me. How their mental abuse manipulated me into feeling like I would never be good enough. Regret washed over me like a tsunami, pounding its waves into my brain over and over again, flooding my mind. I should have never let them influence how I valued myself. I tried my best, I know I did, and that makes me the opposite of worthless.


My thoughts seemed to echo off the white, barren walls of the holding cell I was placed in. Here I was like so many of my kind before me, like I’d come to accept. Yet the bleakness of prison life that lay before me made me realize I was mistaken for ever accepting that. It didn’t have to be like this, like I told myself it was destined to be. I could have gone back to school if I’d really tried. I could have made something of myself. But the stark listlessness of the projects etched into and manipulated my mind that I’d been doomed to deal until I was dead or in jail. That there was no other option for people who came where I came from.

It took rock bottom to realize this. But now I vow that I will turn my life around and not become another victim of this learned helplessness. No one should let their surroundings brainwash them into thinking they are worthless. No one is worthless.