I was pretty much raised by my brother that was 7 years older than me because my mom was always out smoking crack. Even though we lived with her, we had to take care of ourselves. When my mom was smoking we'd live in shelters or in a dope house where there would always people running in and out of the house. If she was clean we'd live in nicer houses. We never had any stability and it was hard to be a family. It was really difficult to just be a kid. We saw so much and had to take care of ourselves. Some good things came out of it though. Some brothers and sisters don't get along but in my family my siblings are all really close. We have always pulled together. I went to probably 10 elementary school and 11 different middle schools. Only three years of middle school and I went to 11 schools! I never stayed at one school for a whole year until I was in foster care. At that time, I stayed in a high school for 2 1/2 years.

Growing up, I lived in a trailer park in a small town with my mom, dad, younger brother, and sister until I was about 8-years-old. That's when my parents split up. I lived with my dad and step-mom until I was about 11. At that point, things got really hard, because my dad went to prison and I started moving around all the time. At first I was living with family and friends that I knew, but then I went into foster care. It was hard to be away from my family and not be able to see my younger brother and sister. At least I enjoyed going to school and I got along with my teachers. In fact, I still stay in touch with a couple of teachers from elementary school.

My parents got divorced when I was in Kindergarten. Before they got divorced, my life was pretty normal. My dad was always an alcoholic, but my mom was better before the divorce. After my parents got divorced, I was bouncing back and forth between my parents. My dad did construction work and had to travel a lot, so I didn't get to see him as much. My mom worked all the time and dated a lot, so she wasn't around very much. It was like nobody was really there for me. When I was younger, my parents fought physically and the police would get called a lot. My dad drank a lot all the time. He drank everyday; it was like he never stopped. It got to be really normal to see him drinking.

I was born in an inner city area in the Midwest. You could say I grew up in the ghetto. For the first part of my childhood, I lived in a housing project with my grandmother, my two brothers, and some of my cousins. It was very crowded in our small house and we didn't have much, but I was happy. I didn't realize that we were poor. When I lived with my grandmother, I would see my mother sometimes. She lived with us too, but she wasn't there very much. I would only see her a couple times a year. She spent most of her time on the streets, doing drugs. That was her home. My mom was addicted to crack cocaine and wasn't very involved with me or my brothers. She never saw me grow up because she was never around.

When I was a young child, I lived in the country. I felt kind of isolated. I didn't really like school because I didn't have many friends. We lived in the country until I was thirteen, then we moved back into town. We moved around a lot when we moved back to town, then I went into foster care when I was 16. Being in foster care was difficult. I didn't like where I was living or how I was treated.

My mom was really young when she had me. I don't remember her being around much until I got older. My grandma and grandpa helped raise me. When I was young we always lived in big cities even though we moved around some. The neighbors right near our house were fine, but close by were some bad neighborhoods. There were always people outside. There were drug dealers and crack houses. My middle school was 3% white. The rest of the students were Hispanic or African-American. I'd say it was pretty rough school. There were always a lot of fights and drugs. My high school was pretty good. There was a magnet program within our high school so there were a lot of good kids that were bussed in. There were still gang fights though between different hoods.