Growing Up in Ghettos. [Stories from My Childhood]

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Though I have talked about my childhood here I don't think I ever did a good job of talking about growing up in ghettos.

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Sadly, I have no photos of me as a child to share as it would requite talking to my mother and even then very few photos exist, maybe three.

When I say ghettos I am talking parts of Los Angeles where you can't wear colors outside or you'll get shot and area of Baltimore where you can't walk to the store without being offered drugs or having someone try to pick you up as a prostitute if you are unfortunate enough to be a female in the neighborhood, even when you are only twelve. I have seen some people talk about bad neighborhoods that to me look like Beverly Hills.

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My time in Los Angeles.

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I moved around a lot when I lived in California. I live there from birth until I was about twelve. Maybe eleven. Dates and specifics are fuzzy due to trauma. I lived in Santa Monica, Culver City, and Los Angeles. I was in a homeless shelter for awhile and actually went to a really nice school for a month. It was heart-breaking to leave and go to a ghetto. We had gotten section 8 and ended up in a complex in a serious ghetto.

I made up a game to play with the other neighborhood kids when we walked to the store called "drive-by" where we would drop on the lawn when cars drove past and the last person to land lost a limb, there was a judge. After you lost I think it was 2 limbs you had a 3rd fatal shot and had to remain in the grass until we were on our way back from the store. This is not a game that a kid would come up with if they didn't have experience with such things. There were constant gunshots. We were evacuated on an almost monthly basis due to a couple up stairs that would fight and shoot their shot gun.

I got bullied at school a lot. I had friends in my complex but at school people did not like me. I was not only the only white kid but I also wore rags. My clothes were often dirty and always falling apart. I was socially awkward at best. I was already experiencing extreme sexual abuse at home and this reflected in my personality. I had a lot of issues on top of being the smelly, poor, white kid and due to this I had no friends at school. I got constantly ridiculed and picked on. I cried on my way home every day. Leaving a place where I was abused to go to a place I would be even more abused.

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Things got much worse in Highlandtown, Maryland.

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Me on the far right at age 14 with two of my cousins. The only people I talk to from my family. The clothes were borrowed you will see my goth attire at this age further down.

Little did I know when we moved to Highlandtown, MD things would get much, much worse. Not only would my dad start abusing me sexually and getting other men to abuse me but the schools were even worse. I was in highschool now and highschool here was much worse than the middle school in Los Angeles. I didn't just get picked on and ridiculed here I got violently assaulted. I was used to being the only white kid as it had been this way for years but at this school even the teachers would join in on the abuse. They would mock me with the students. The teachers didn't physically assault me but they did bully me verbally and never helped me.

It didn't take long for me to start trying to avoid school. A group of kids was relentlessly trying to beat me up. I had befriended the only white kid in my school because I don't know I hoped for some safety in numbers? This girl ended up being part of a teen gang or something which I joined. I say this because after a few months of hanging out with them I saw a girl get jumped with a metal baseball bat. When I stopped hanging out with them they started coming to my house every day with adult men with them and broke down my door, threw bricks through my window. They called my phone 24/7 telling me mom things like I was pregnant and had STDs. I had to take alleys and backways home every day to avoid them.

Instead of going to school I either hung out in the park hiding in a kid jungle gym hoping they didn't find me as they ditched too or I crawled back into my basement window here my room was to read all day. I had put up a sheet divider closing off a small part of my room because the washer and dryer were down there and my mom would go in there throughout the day. My heart would stop every time she came down as I tried to stop my moving and breathing so she wouldn't find me. Eventually, I took a sharpened letter opener to school and decided the next person to assault me would get stabbed. I must have looked insane because this was the only day nobody assaulted me. I came home and dropped the letter opener on the table, broke down crying, and told me mom if she didn't take me out of school I would end up killing someone and go to juvenile hall. She took me out.

Pretty soon after this the people coming to my home and terrorizing us got so bad that my mom moved us to Florida because she worried I would die. Along with the phone calls, bricks, and broken door they had started opening the mail slot looking for me and screaming taunts. I couldn't be in my own living room. My entire life was lived in fear. Fear of being raped by family members, fear of being beat up by strangers, I was just afraid at all times.

Once, we moved to FL things would slowly get better but it took many years and a final assault for me to actually break away from my abusive family. My father had died right after I moved to FL but I was still connected to my mom and brother.

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Get these badges I made here.