Beautiful Darkness by Maurice Mitchell (literature books to read TXT) 📖

year, more then I can remember. I don’t think I started any of them, but for some reason I always found myself in one. This was the year I held my first gun, scored my first knock out, and met my first true friend. His name was Lamar, that was my man, we did everything together. Lamar was shorter, but bigger then me. He was brown-skinned and had a rough look to him. He didn’t really get along with any of the other kids either and I think that’s why we clicked. We played ball together, fought together, and just ran the streets together. It felt good to know that somebody had my back, the same way I had theirs, we were a good team. Lamar had the same attitude as me, he wasn’t a tough guy, but he wasn’t a punk. We tried our best to stay out of trouble, but always backed each other up whenever we found ourselves in it. Unfortunately for me, most of the negativity I witnessed that year, Lamar wasn’t around for. I always seemed to find myself alone when I needed him most. I saw a lot of violence that year, the good thing was most of it didn’t involve me. It seemed to have a similar effect on me though. I remember one day I was sitting with my Grandmother at this bagel shop we used to eat at quite often. I loved their bagels and the men behind the counter were always cool. It was a smaller shop on the corner of a Queens block in Jamaica, one way in, one way out. We always sat on the first two stools right by the door and enjoyed the food and the view. Every time we went it was normally the same routine, but one day I wished we didn’t have that view. It was nice clear summer day and I was looking out the window and eating a bagel as I’d done so many time before. I heard a big thump hit the window and I looked up and saw this man get stabbed in both of his eyes. He was bleeding profusely, and all the bagel shop owner wanted him to do was get away from the shop. He threw some napkins and some water at him and told him to find another place to die. Unbelievable. Another time I was looking outside the window from my Grandmothers 7 story apartment building also in Jamaica Queens, and I saw a man get ran over by a car. The man laid there in the street under the street lights dying while the driver kept driving. Shortly after that while I was in the hospital waiting to get stitches on my knee, a man ran in the hospital screaming he was shot. He was a younger black male and he stumbled into the hospital with his clothes ripped and covered in blood yelling to save his life. They didn’t seem to be in a rush to help him, in fact they treated him like he was a burden. The last incident of violence I witnessed that year was a gang initiation on my block in Brooklyn. It was late at night and I was walking home from somewhere, when I ran into a group of kids. I cant quite remember where I was coming from but I never forgot what I saw. They were hosting a gang initiation and they beat that kid damn near to death. I remember they banged his head on the concrete and almost through a car window. Suddenly I had no interest in joining a gang after that night. I’m not exactly sure why I saw so much violence in that short period of time, but if nothing else it forced me to understand that violence is an everyday part of life. It showed me that you have to be on your p’s and q’s every second because you never know when someone will call your number. It made me uneasy, slightly vicious, and I was always tested because I was skinny. I never wanted to be either guy on the wrong end of those incidents, I knew I’d do whatever to ensure I wasn’t. That made me feel as if I had to become violent, not because it was cool, but to survive. I felt it was a necessary evil. It also showed me how ruthless some human beings could really be, another notch on my reasons to never trust anyone list. That list just kept growing and growing as I got older, and eventually became too long to deny. Those incidents also showed me how thoughtless and carless people could be. I kept hearing what the bagel owner told that dying stranger and seeing that driver drive off after hitting that man. I felt as if I’d knew the truth about people, and you would have one hell of fight in front of you if you wanted to tell me different. Violence wasn’t the only thing that corrupted me that year, I also dealt with two pretty somber family issues. I wont go too deep into either one, because they both pain me to this day, but I cant completely leave them out because its an important piece of my childhood. Something bad happened to my mother, something real bad. Something that should never happened to any women so long as she walks the earth.

Chapter 8 (Hatred)

I could never forget the day, nor the feeling. There I was, sitting on my bed watching television, another normal day just letting the time pass. I heard the front door bust open and heard a women screaming. I took a step outside my room to find that the woman screaming was my mother, and she wasn’t screaming for joy. I saw her crying uncontrollably and tears hitting the floor as she stumbled into her bedroom. Her face was red, her shirt undone and her hair ruined. I was too young at the time to put together exactly what happened immediately, but eventually I figured it out. I asked her what happened, and she said “nothing,” she just held me and cried. I cried with her, and we sat there on the bed and cried for minutes, as I tried my best to console my Mother the only way I knew how. I’d never seen her in so much pain, so much agony. It was to the point I remember feeling something inside of me snap. I lost it. I left the room and immediately went to the balcony. I kicked everything outside over and punched the walls until my knuckles began to bleed. I remember crying and cursing at God, I felt if he was real he would of never let this happen to my Mother. This was around the time that my family began to believe in God and his word. I believed no longer, my faith fell short. They say everything happens for a reason and bad things happen to good people; But in my eyes that was b*llsh*t, not things that bad, not to a woman that good. I remember her describing the incident on the phone, and my thoughts of feeling I could never find this guy. I searched high and low for weeks, looking for a man that I wouldn’t recognize if I saw him everyday. I didn’t know how I’d find him, or when I’d find him, but I felt I would, and I knew when I did, I’d kill him. I wanted him to feel just half the pain my Mother and I felt when we cried in the room together that day. That was my mission and I carried that burden for years, to an extent I still do. All in all the only feeling I remember having after that event was hatred. I hated everybody, wanted to hurt people who never did anything to me. They say hurt people, hurt people; truer words have never been spoken. I remember not being able to sleep, and constantly trying to come up with ways I could avenge my Mother and make someone feel what I felt. Even though my Mother found ways to be strong, I couldn’t. She would try to get me to understand that these things happen and we would only get stronger for it. It made me feel as if she was the strongest woman in the world, a lot stronger then I could ever be. I couldn’t let it go that easy, I wanted someone else to hurt like I did. Unfortunately I was too ignorant at the time to understand that this wouldn’t change anything, and the man who did this would feel no pain. I had to release, and I never quite figured out a healthy way to do it. That’s the day I learned how fair life really was, and that’s the same day I became a monster. A monster in no way prepared for the things that where to follow in the next phase of his life.

Chapter 9 (The Decision)

The rest of my sixth grade year was also filled with negativity. It didn’t phase me though, it had become the norm. After seeing the way people reacted to those violent moments, and after what happened to my Mother, I saw that people really didn’t give a damn about each other. I once again remembered my Mother telling me that life wasn’t fair, and I decided since life wasn’t fair, I wouldn’t be fair either. I begin to take things I wanted, whatever it was. If it didn’t have a bulletproof glass and cameras around it, I would take it. I stole food from stores and took things out of peoples bags and coats. I hated what life had done to my family and I guess in my own little way, this was my way of paying life back. The one thing I realized in stealing everyday was that I was pretty damn good at it. I never got caught, I mean never, and that lead me to steal for years to come. It got to the point I would steal from people and they knew I stole from them. I never cared though, at that point I wanted a reason. To this day I don’t really know why I started stealing so much. I think in the beginning it was out of anger, and somehow I felt like I was paying life back for the things that happened to me. Little did I know, I was only hurting innocent people, and Karma would later come looking for me many times. After a while I think it was simply because I wanted things that I either couldn’t afford or didn’t want to pay for. Either way it was a bad habit that I didn’t break for years.

The end of my sixth grade year came fast and I graduated. It was a good feeling, even though I graduated in fifth grade as well, it kind of felt like routine at that point. That’s how it was when you moved every year, I lost friends and I got extra graduations. That was a good time for me though, that was a good time for all of us. Graduations have a way of bringing families together and bringing the best out of everybody, I was glad I got to experience that twice in such a short period of time. I remember seeing the smiles on everybody in my family’s faces. Unfortunately those smiles would soon fade and that feeling was short lived. It was at this point that my parents decided enough was enough and choose to move to Colorado. I remember the day my mom told me, she sat me down in her room and said she had something to explain to me. It kind of felt like the time she told me she got married. I