The Struggle Read Count : 114

Category : Books-Fiction

Sub Category : Adventure
Another time in my life, a life of struggle.

So I must have been about 15 maybe 16 when I moved to the South side of Seattle. We lived in white center. One day On my way to Grandmas house I heard the first gunshot from a distance i figured it was meant for me. So I ran. With the sound of gunfire trailing​ me, I made my way down the street, through an alley and up the stairs of the Sherri arm apartments to the door of the weathered two story building where she lived. I heard shots coming toward me. I didn't see any faces. I just heard 'ping, ping, I recall I was casually browsing pictures of girls from one of those chat lines on my cellphone. When it all started, to say the least I didn't get a chance to talk to anyone. Shit I was about to die. "At that time, I was thinking, 'I want to get home.' meet one of these chicks and get some. But now I was just checking my body to see if I was wet (with blood) anywhere." As the city tries to grapple with the carnage that claimed to many lives that year. It is worth considering what life is like for  young men now coming of age in one of the city's poorest and most violent communities in Seattle.

This story of growing up in a neighborhood and trying to navigate the streets of gangs and crime at a time when the city's gun violence is always high because​ of drug wars, and teenage kids with guns and attitudes, and something to prove. The streets is not where a 15-year-old should be, but the lack of supervision made it easier to do what I wanted to do. In my friends apartment across the way is where I got my introduction to meth. It was where my uncle Adam took me to meet so people to hangout​. There I meet Travis and amber. Me and amber got together around the time my uncle got shot. It was a hard time in my life Adam looked out of me. He was more like a brother. He was only two years older than me, so we really kicked it together. He was a 74 Hoover, and my older brother was a blood. Me I got robbed by a bunch of bloods, and when I told my brother no one did shit. So naturally I went to my uncle and him and his homies handled it. So I started fucking with them. If I would of known I only had another year with him I would of did a lot of stuff different. But it is what it is. That's life in South Seattle. It is uncommon to dodge a bullet. You could just be on the way to the store, or in my case Grandmas house. For some young people, it is easier to not go at all than to risk their lives, walking around the corner. People would be watching​ movies​ on a cellphone while they hang out at home on the Northside of Seattle. When me a 15-year-old faces gun, gangs, and drugs. having to always navigate the landscape. Made me a different kinda person. When I went back to the north end to see my old friends, none of them would ever come up to my place. I ended up not going there anymore and started selling dope getting money.

But dropping out of school shouldn't have been an option for me. My uncle who has cared for me much of his life, made sure I didn't want for anything. Money, sex, and drugs what more could you ask for( So I thought). He insisted​ that education of these streets is the only way I survive. But really school was the only way I could of broke free from the cycle of poverty and violence that has plagued the Southside neighborhood for decades. life for me was always struggling to make ends meet. I wanted​ more for myself than i got it on the streets. Hanging on the corner day in and day out with no job and no hope for a future, but I had dope and people wanted it and I needed that all mighty dollar. Thanks what I thought life was I envisioned​ a thug life.  About six months into selling dope, and​ smoking meth. I remember it was Easter Sunday. I got the news, Adam got shot in the head and passed away. The night before that me and him was chilling and he told me his plans of going to skyway. That he wanted me to go with him. But for some reason I ended up at Amber and Travis's​ house and stayed the night with amber. She's the one who woke me up and told me about it. I wasn't able to feel much of anything I was to high, and I just went about my business. It's funny how your environment can change your whole perspective on life. I got shot a few months after that, I got hit in the leg thank God. But that's when I started packing heat. I wasn't going to get caught slipping. It was at his wake I seen my family and I knew I needed to get out of town. I was emotionally unstable and my uncle wasn't gone. I had nothing​ there but I life that was going to put me in a box. It was a constant struggle trying to leave everything behind but I did it and my life got harder.

The way God was knocking on my life, I couldn't get to the door fast enough. Now nobody is shooting at me.' The first thing was to find out was where would I go. Then I had to decide whether to go back to school.
I didn't make it back because I didn't know what real life​ was about. I had reasons not to tell people things, but I know my secrets held me back. I wanted another life, just didn't know how to get it. That's not uncommon for people living at the intersection of poverty and violence.
Thanks whole time I was thinking, 'I want to get home. Though less than 5 miles from the park bitter lake it is littered with boarded-up storefronts, empty lots and vacant buildings that once housed all the crack heads. Then around the corner was thriving industries. There was plenty of opportunities, I still didn't know how to make it happen, no one showed me how to be a good Samaritan. There are many educated, working-class and professional people in the North end who are raising children in stable families. But of all the residents all I seen was, more than 90 percent live in poverty. There were more shootings in the North end and homicides during that time. Only  the South side had more violent crime, in the city. The city's systemic segregation is largely responsible for the concentration of poverty and other predominantly African-American communities. When you have economically disinvested communities, people are cut off from opportunities. Over time, the community instability grows and trickles down to the families. When you have that, you more likely will also have symptoms of poverty, such as crime and under-resourced schools." None of this helped me. In my neighborhood parents of my friends found themselves in a tug of war with me and the streets. Drugs and joblessness have left me without a family, forcing me to struggle in life. To fight the battles alone. Sometimes, no matter how tight the grip, I slipped away, turning into someone even a mother no longer loved. I eventually got caught up and went to prison.

During a 43-month stay at Walla Walla state prison, there was 23 rapes and three homicides a week in the cell-block area where I lived. I wished I could of just walked out the door. You realize that life can get worse or it can get better, it's up to you. That's when the man does what he feels he must to protect himself to survive. You've got to protect yourself in there because you never know if someone is going to be trying to take your stuff, or take off on you and hit you with a lock in a sock. Sometimes people just think you have money, and it can cost you your life. I have to look at that everyone like he's trying to hurt me or take what I've got. Because having friends or family means nothing in a place like this. It's all about protecting yourself and protecting what you got. The Rev. That's what I called him, a longtime inmate and community organizer who knows everyone, showed me how to survive. I stayed away from the cell block-to-block wars that has been going on for years. You can't label them all a gang, but they are cliques,"  like in the Hood, a former activist with cross Fire, which deploys former gang members and ex-felons to intervene in violent feuds. "They're still about that gang life, but it's not over drugs. It's over personal vendettas.
Rev said it's imperative to reach new inmates before they fall off what he calls the "the top cliff." Walla Walla was three stories high, it's a long drop for some unfortunately. If you don't get with the program by the first week, you fall right off the cliff. It becomes a continuous vicious cycle of violence that happens over and over again. I was Born into a violent culture, ended up becoming a man in a violent place. Sometimes people take life for granted and others struggle to grip life and barely survive it. You just never know what's​ that persons past by looking at them. I didn't create the violent culture I lived in. I was born into it, and born from it. I got out with no place to live, and right back to the streets. But this time I had a chance a choice to do it better than before. But that didn't stop me from having to beg for money. Stay in shelters. Struggling to survive. But I didn't have to sell drugs, and carry a gun. I just learned to live life on lifes agenda.


© Jesse Boston

Comments

  • No Comments
Log Out?

Are you sure you want to log out?