If I could turn back time, maybe, just maybe, I would do it all over again. People told me a lot of things in my life. Some said I will forever stay in the gutter. Some told me the
I used to dream of riding on a
My beginnings were not very humble in contrast to those rugs to riches stories you might just heard. I used to work for a white man like me who made his jacket the storage area of a 9 mm handgun and some crack. I used to deliver weed to townhouses among filthy rich kids. I used to carry a small yet toxic magnum .22. I used slash "shipments," "deliveries," and people with a knife.

After eight fruitful years in the streets only knowing how to live each day through reactionary terms, another guy who had the same ideals like mine, who had the same way of living like mine, and who had understood why we live our lives this way, shot me on the body 11 times. All those cracks that made me brave, all those bullets that made me fearless and that entire knife's sharpness that made me intrepid, all those things, vanished in a brink of an eye.

I found myself playing with my own flesh on a stretcher. I haven't seen gallons of blood in my life and it was mine. I could see this small TV without channels but got lines that they said corresponded to my pulse. I saw men and women in long white garments with slender giggling plastic tubes they inserted at the back of my palms. I saw a light. A light on the ceiling that looked like elongated crystals. Then I slept.

When I woke up, there was no one there. Where was the guy who stored morphine and cocaine and guns and knives underneath his jacket? I couldn't possibly pay the bills. Where were my friends whose friendship and brotherhood ideals connived with mine? Where was my family? I could only answer the third question. And it was evident that the answers lie on empty spaces in front of me.

Three years after the incident, I was living in a foster care facility. Someone adopted me since she is living solely by herself. She made me attend school until I was old enough to get into college with the teens.

I graduated with a degree in business. When the economy went down, I was among those guys who chilled with their mothers in affordable limo services and luxury sedan services. How did I accomplish these things?

It's not just about the game plan or the chance of getting adopted. It's about refusing to fail.
Have a nice day.