Gerald G. Brown

Introduction:

My name is Gerald G. Brown but I call myself Astral Walker because spirituality has always played an integral role in my life, I've always felt like I have a connection to more than the physical. My entire life I have always been the misfit of situations, I was never really invited to parties or get togethers but I always seemed to be the center of attention whether it was negative or positive.

childhood:

I was born in Austin Texas but moved to Manor soon after, I lived a pretty normal life while there. I got into a few fights but besides that Manor was the place I had the most normal social life. My Father was in I.T and my Mother was a realtor so my brother and I never went without, but at around the age of 6 or 7 the 2008 recession kicked in and the housing market crashed. In response my Father stepped up and became a contractor in Iraq to alleviate the families economic pressure, I began to experience separation anxiety around this time and fell into depression for the first time, this is also around the time I attempted suicide for first time. The stress began to weigh on the marriage of my parents and they separated, my mother no longer wanted to depend on my Father while he was in Iraq so we moved to Houston. While in Houston I experienced violence I was previously never exposed to, the violence took the life of my best friend Nicholas and the life of my brother's best friend Red. The trauma of these experiences made me a shell of my former bubbly self, leaving me angry and on edge at all times. After about 2 years my Father returned and I returned to Manor to live with him, but he had returned a different person, he was more aggressive and would snap for the smallest of things. I grew to fear my Father and started to take my anger out on the other children at school, I would have scissor fights  in the back of the class or fist fights in the restroom with the other angry kids.

My mother returned to the Austin area and I moved in with her in the 5th grade

I attended Parmer elementary, this school was made up of less aggressive children so I learned to relax and fight less. However this is where I realized I was different from other kids, I would often be casted to the side and made fun of, the other children started something called the “Gerald touch” where if someone else touched me they would be avoided as well.

Pre-teen Life:

As I transitioned into middle school the bullying began to get more intense, I would get jumped nearly everyday while changing into my kickstart uniform. As time went on I got more and more fed up, I began to start roasting the other kids back and towards the end of my 6th grade year I started hitting back as well, soon after that they stopped hitting me. My 7th grade year I went from the least popular kid to one of the most popular due to my athleticism. I also met some of my bestfriends around this time, these guys are the biggest reason I am so open to new things till this day , the group was just so diverse, Persian, Mexican, Dabawi, White, Black, Mixed, Honduran, if you can name it we had it. We were all pretty weird and didn't really fit in but the vibe we had as a group was so infectious that we kind of grew into the popular crew that everyone knew about in school we called ourselves “Happy meal squad” and “Halloween Taliban” . My life got drastically better through sports and my new found friendships but I harbored so much hatred for those who had once bullied me and I took every opportunity to get my revenge. I soon realized it didn't make the trauma and anxiety go away so I forgave them and respected them, I felt it was my obligation to lead by example. I knew I was the number one athlete at the school and that if I treated someone who rode the bench with respect my back-up logically has no room to look down on the player that rides the bench, that respect trickled down to the other players. 

Teen life:

In my freshman year I moved back with my Father, I attended Hendrickson high and for the first time I experienced anxiety attacks because the school was so overpopulated there were around 4,500 students that year, there were so many students there that we had an A,B, and C freshman football team. My Father noticed and rented a one bedroom apartment near John B Connally High which is where all of my friends were, this was a real grounding experience and was a breath of fresh air, sadly it was short lived. I felt like I was being a burden on my father's wallet and moved into my mother's new apartment down the street, in order to run varsity track it was mandatory that I was zoned for Connally high, to my surprise her apartment was about 300ft in the schoolzone of Mcneil high. And so I moved to my third school that year, Mcneil seemed okay at first because I was texting a girl from there before I moved, but after I met her I didn't think we clicked so she tainted my name on landing. I would eat lunch alone and would be teased because it was her word against mine, I was branded a manipulative player before I even opened my mouth. Nothing really changed until track season, overnight I went from the nameless quiet kid to “Flash”. I finished up my freshman year at Mcneil and moved back with my father, a new high school was built called weiss high and this is where I will be graduating from next week. My sophomore year was run of the mill but junior year is when things got spicy, all of the trauma I had experienced caught up with me. My grades began to slip, I was sidelined for the track season, and my anxiety was worse than ever, anytime I was around people my skin would begin to burn so my social life went down the drain as well.

The depression got so bad that I fantasized about ending it all more than I fantasized about sex, the last week of junior year I was diagnosed with ADHD and my grades made somewhat of a rebound but the thought of how much time I wasted weighed on me heavy, so 2 days before summer break I downed a bottle of pill and a bottle of gin, miraculously I survived but it took a toll on my body, I had rashes that covered both of my forearms, I had a rash that covered my chest and one more that covered my lower stomach. I was sick for a month after my attempt, but I had never felt such an opportunity to rebuild myself as the man I wanted to be. Today nearly a year later I am on my way to a prosperous career in acting and music, however I am currently distracted by the current situation involving black people in America, I am the leader of a group called youth.vs.Injustice out of Austin Texas, so

until we have things locked down here in Austin my artistic career is on the back burner.