Un-Cycled

LC (excerpt from the book Man-U-Script)
I am presently an incarcerated young Black man in America. I share with you an abridged version of my life, so that you can begin to understand my plight and who I am as a Black man in America.

I was born in the early 80’s. Not long after my 2nd or 3rd birthday my father abandoned me and my mother, leaving me to be raised solely by my mother, other family members, and by whichever man that came into our lives…

Even though my father was absent from my life and I had a new father figure (by then), I started to see how much my father and I were alike. I was headstrong and increasingly angry. The anger that I harbored turned into resentment that festered into hatred for my father. I had grown tired of the lies and broken promises. My dear mother, who was employed as a police officer, was also tired. She was tired of having to explain my father’s broken promises each time he failed to visit me as he said he would. The combination of my anger, stubbornness, and resentment was the source of my rebellion…I was one of the smartest students in my class and was generally a good kid, but my anger caused me to make irrational decisions.

By the age of 12 I was sexually active. I learned about sex from watching pornography. I started smoking weed at age 13 and was selling it at 14. All the while I was packing bags at the local supermarket to buy my own Jordans and outfits. Shortly after that, late in the summer of ’93, I became a member of a gang. Within that same year a classmate introduced me to the business of selling crack cocaine.

My very first night in the business I worked about 4 ½ hours selling crack to people from all walks of life. The crack moved quickly…It was the night that changed my life and threw me deeper into the revolving cycle of death, that so many Black men in America get sucked into today.

While my mother was working and doing double shifts to maintain household expenses, her only son was knee deep in the drug game, gang life, and having sex with multiple females, some twice my age. Drawn by the addiction for fast money, women, power, and clothes that selling crack gave me, I fell deeper into the abyss of the street life. I didn’t find out until late in the game that prison and or death were a possibility. I was blinded by my lust and infatuation for the materialistic gain that drug dealing provided.

No one schooled me on how to be a drug dealer. I learned the ins and outs of drug dealing on my own through trial and error. There were opportunities for me to be schooled on the greater and better things in life, perhaps by an older male family member…I could have listened to and learned from a male figure, not just because of the relationship or my admiration for him, but because of his example of manhood. I realize that it takes a man to raise a man. No disrespect or offense, but truth is truth. A man can’t teach a female how to be a woman, and a female can’t teach a male to be a man any more than a rose can produce a tulip.

Much praise and respect is due to my mother who raised and cared for me to the best of her ability. I as a man take full responsibility for my actions, because this is what a man does. However, I do know that if my father, who I now love and respect, had been a man and taken responsibility for me when I was a child as he was supposed to, maybe just maybe things would have turned out different for me. I was my father’s responsibility. He was supposed to raise me to the best of his ability and teach me right from wrong, instead of leaving me to learn on my own, through friends, or from the street. For every action there’s an equal or greater reaction. If my father had only done his part, I think it would have changed the turn of events that led to my incarceration.