Now I don’t want to say that it wasn’t my fault, because it was, but I believe that Dangerous Christmas really messed me up. At the beginning, I behaved perfectly well and promised my mom every time she was sad that I would never be like my brother. She told me to not say that, always defending my brother and me. I wish I would’ve understood before. I began my 7th grade with no intentions of accomplishing anything. I didn’t care about anything really. I only cared about my sports and my girls. Education and school were never important to me. I was the typical jock who just wanted to party and be the toughest guy in school. Making fun of those who were actually studying and getting A’s when I was barely passing my classes (Those eventually became my closest friends). Little did I know at the time, that this way of being was going to cause me to be in bad relationships and surround myself in harmful environments. That year I began some classes with a 48 as an average. I was a wreck, like literally I had lack in every part of my life. I had the family, I had the love, I had the morals, I even had a house to sleep in when others didn’t and there I was, arrogant, and there was something inside me that just wanted to do whatever I wanted and not care about the consequences. That year was the first time I broke my mom’s promise of never doing drugs. I began lying more to my parents and began bringing weapons to school; getting suspensions. Maybe it was seeing how perfect my cousins were academically and emotionally that I just wanted to be different. Everybody saying so many good things about my cousins, but no, never about me. They would ask how was school but they always knew how I was doing. I was always so jealous of them, but I always told myself that they were study freaks and they never had fun. Now I know that I could have been totally different from my cousins without being dangerous or a bad influence. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, I had no idea that the friends that I had were just making me worse. I even believed that sex was everything and that love and friendship was a waste of time. Since I saw myself as stupid, I always solved my problems with violence. I always threatened people so that they could do stuff for me, or constantly play very rough with the people who hanged out with me, so that they knew not to mess with me. Basically I was at the peak of my immaturity. After I barely passed my 7th grade, I began having some very emotional nights. Constantly I would lock myself in my room and just begin to cry for the person that I had become. I never told anyone about these moments; which just made it worse. All that fake acting of me being so tough and emotionless was gone. I had become what I never wanted to be. I realized that I hated every part of me, my body, the way I treated people, and even the way I thought of things. I hated the negative and messed up thoughts I had in my mind. Everything was always so negative. This was the time when I began to spend more time with God. I begged to have a covenant relationship with God and try to rehabilitate myself, without my parents knowing anything. I even began to read the Bible. Imagine me in summer reading the Bible in privacy, afraid of being judged. I was so embarrassed with myself because I couldn’t really understand most of the words. But I just kept going and learning new prayers. My mom was and continues to be a trained life-coach and she has a small collection of self-motivating books in the family room. Some days I would go down and look over them. The official first book and documentary that I saw under my own will was The Secret. After realizing all these secrets, I saw the world from a total different perspective. I did more research over self-motivation and began to improve myself everyday. Researched countless successful people and their stories just intrigued me. I applied many of their techniques and positive habits, I made a vision board of my dreams and goals, I prayed every night, I began to believe in myself and I began to believe that life had so much more to give. I sort of went on my own spiritual journey to find myself and discover my purpose. In the end, I accomplished my goal. I found what it is I wanted to do, I knew how to do it, I knew what I had to do, I knew for who I was doing this for, and I knew the people who were expecting that from me. While other kid’s were in the beach, travelling, and partying in the summer, because I go to a very prestigious school, I dedicated that summer to discover myself and organize my life because it was just out of control. It took me the whole summer, but I managed to get ahold of it. Eighth grade was coming up and I was motivated as ever, pumped to begin my classes and getting A’s, but most importantly to show everyone that I am a new man. I was terrified to begin school because a part of me didn’t want me to change; my dark side was tempting me to explore new things. Instead of resolving my problems in dangerous ways, I wanted to use my mind as a weapon. I wanted to discover my true ability and what I was capable of doing. To be honest with you, I really wasn’t sure how I was going to turn out but somehow I was willing to risk it.