Where I Live
The safest way to walk through my neighborhood is to mind my own business. After I get off at my bus stop, I always pass by the crack house and make sure my eyes don’t wander off to look at the door or through the windows. By the time I reach the next block, I usually hear screaming and fighting through the windows of another house. A homeless person will undoubtedly have asked me for change. I continue to walk by without making contact and I wonder, why do I have to live here, why this neighborhood? I get home to do my homework and clean the house is the only thing I can help my mom with, she comes home tired of work, and the only thing she seems to ask is, “how are your grades?” and is “school going okay?”
Living in poverty, yes. I see my mom everyday waking up to a beeping alarm at five in the morning, getting ready and making her coffee. She calls out my name making sure I’m ready, she can’t afford to be late. She drops me off at school and the next time I’ll see her will be at night after the sun goes down and all the kids on my block leave their toys on the sidewalk to go inside their homes. I think every saturday how lucky others must be to have their moms home when they wake up and be able to go out with her. Knowing that she is doing it for me, because she wants to give me everything I desire and trying her best to do so, so I don’t ask her for much because I want her home more. I watch kids playing without a care in the world, not knowing their situation in life or the reason why they live in low income housing. I sit there and think, could this living here with my kids be all the outcome of not being successful, not taking the importance of school. I don’t want the same future for me and my family. I want to wake up on that saturday morning and know my hard work has paid off.
I come from a hard working family where no one has graduated college, which is the only thing that could have saved them from this struggle. I am the one my mom, dad, and great grandmother depend on in the future. I try and I realize the importance of everyone’s mistake around me and make them my goals to complete. School always everyone’s priority especially mine. I will be the one to graduate college and make it big in life so I’ll be able to take care of all my loved ones, who in the past have done what ever was possible to help me with school. Then I can insure my moms tired feet and my grandmas tired hands get a break, so they can relax I can provide for them. The meaning of school is family to me, because that’s what will help my family out of poverty.
Friends are a big role in life. Many try to influence the decisions in my daily life, but I don’t let them take over. Many obstacles have come my way. I have a boyfriend who is in and out of jail, who others call a gangbanger looking for love. Or is it my instincts who keep me attracted to those in need, my need that wants to help and lead others in the right directions. Friends who like to party and have fun, why can’t I, always working hard and trying my best all I want is to have some fun too. Friends and boyfriend the ones who I have fun with not always the best situations, getting into cars with drunk drivers thinking its fine, friends who want to stay out all night and so do I, thinking about the next day and the choices I’ve made, knowing its not worth losing my future. Knowing that everything fun isn’t best, learning to leave is what I have learned, it’s my best decision yet.
I dream of leaving the foggy and smoke smelling streets of third. Walking down my block without being harassed for money or walking over trash is the place where I am going to be. Focused and ready is what I am, I will make sure that I will reach all my goals in life. I will take care of those who took care of me. Losing those bad habits and learning from my mistakes. I am a young 17 year old girl but grown at heart. I have overcome all the struggles sent my way and I am ready to overcome a thousand more.
