How many of us have been abused by adults? I know I'm not the only one who has cried out for help. Too young to help myself, too scared to protect myself. This shit was real, maybe it was the initial abuse that made me not want to feel anymore. My emotions were raw, I wanted to become numb. They tried to steal my innocence, and in a sense they did. I was a depressed and sad kid who's dad hid from his responsibilites, in fected by the pathogenic qualities of homelessness, hunger, and poverty. I watched as my mother sank into the murky depths of depression, while I played out my addiction through the artistic expression of my agression known as graffitti. I stole spray paint and wrote my name wherever you could see me. I felt invisible but became visible through aerosol tags and throwups. I rebelled, I showed those grownups what they could do with themselves. You see, if they didn't give a fuck then how was I suppose to care for me? I didn't. I did what I wanted, I smoked blunts, dranks 40's , and went on the hunt for pussy from shorties who were just as emotionally twisted as I, that was a piece of my high. I got caught writing, shipped to Spotford, nail biting, I was a nervous wreak. Lived in a group home after that, then released back to the streets with no direction, no map to follow, no rolls to model. I felt like an outcast, trapped in the extraordinary confines of my youth at the time. If the behavior was negative I was engaged, that was how I channelled my rage. Years before my introduction of pen to page, I acted out my life on a dangerous and uncertain stage. My juvenile delinquent phase was colored with anger and hopelessness and I wanted to escape my reality. The duality was that I also wanted to live a different existance, as the forces of my personal destruction remained persistant, and I couldn't see my future. The distance was so vast as to cloud my vision of it. Decisions, or, rather, a series of bad choices embarrassments, and situations I would have preferred to avoid, as the smoke from the herb fills my lungs, travels to my brain, making me paranoid. To fill a void, I drank and developed a deep relationship with a girl I met in Washington Heights. She wasn't Dominican, she was white and we'd go skiing together every other night....