𝗕𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗦𝘄𝗲𝗲𝘁

0.5

B I T T E R S W E E T

At the age of twelve, I was given my first lesson in life. I was told to never take nothing for granted. To appreciate everything thrown my way, and to thank whoever gave it to me even if it hadn't been something I wanted in the first place.

At the time, I took those words like a grain of salt.

I didn't appreciate shit until I had a taste of what losing someone really felt like. But even then, I still didn't quite grasp the content of those words.

Not long after, I learned that change was constant, and when the life I once knew with my mama and her military working boyfriend felt like nothing more than a dream, I knew my new life was bound to be changing for the worse.

My uncle Rocco took me and my older brother in when I was just twelve and he was going on sixteen.

We didn't know much about the man because he and Ma didn't get along well. Apparently, she didn't approve of the way he lived, and looking back on why she had been so adamant about us not spending a summer at one of his new vacation homes, it made so much more sense now than it did back when I was a kid.

Being young, the thought of a life like his had seemed like something straight out of a movie.

Guns, girls, partying, drugs, money — it was a hood niggas dream up until I noticed death was a reoccurring thing needed to achieve them.

Back home, we had a small funeral for our parents before Naeem and I were flown out and housed in a place I never would've imagined stepping foot in.

It was a castle compared to home. And while I was grateful that Uncle Rocco took us in the way he did, it wasn't long before I realized the shit he was doing to get to where he was, wasn't something I wanted to be parted in.

I didn't have much of a choice though. Least not as a minor with no one but my sixteen-year-old brother in my corner.

Time passed quick and Naeem and I came to terms with what happened to Ma as best we could before one thing led to another and we were appointed jobs.

Rocco said we had to earn ours here. That just because we were his nephews, hand-outs weren't given.

The day of the funeral, I mourned my mama's death and right after, I mourned my own. Only then did I open my eyes to what was going on around me. I wanted no part in it. But what was a thirteen-year-old to do when a gun is being pointed at his temple all cause he told his uncle no?

Standing the block wasn't hard anyways. The goons that thought they had a place in this world is what made it unbearable; made my thirteen-year-old innocent mind quack.

I went from being a homebody, video game nerd to somebody I couldn't recognize no more.

My first night out on the block was cool though. I was shown how shit operated and the basics of what I was supposed to do and what wasn't allowed. It was simple really. Watch, sell, collect, repeat.

I almost scoffed.

It was simple until it wasn't.

After a year spent standing the corner, I was already getting bumped up, selling bigger shit with higher prices, and running the block by myself since Rocco said I was putting ten times the money them old heads was putting in his pockets before. I had shit under control. I didn't want another gun pointed to my head so I made sure I was doing what I was supposed to and more.

But like I said, change was constant. I had shit under control until control just wasn't in my vocabulary no more.

By time I was fourteen, I'd already been stabbed a total of eight times. Twice on one occasion. Three on another. All in one year.