Sophomore Yr. At Vista

High school for me was seemingly a breeze. I had decent friends that strayed off the straight and narrow every so often, but overall things were good. I played sports, got decent grades and wasn’t the best with women, but had a couple girlfriends. All except for sophomore year when I transferred to Vista. My mother had just started taking her real estate/entrepreneur/hustle seriously and moved us up north. I have no idea why my father agreed to this. At that time it seemed like the worst possible move for everyone. In the past my mother had been flipping properties, but nothing that was out of the zip code. It was great, I remember going over and watching her take these decrepit buildings and turn them into something beautiful, and she always had a team that could turn her vision into reality. Fast forward to the new house up north and all of that was nonexistent. The only thing that stayed consistent was the house being a trash pit. This time not only did we have to live in it, but there was no team. We became the team. We left our beautiful house to chase my mothers dream.

During the chaos of the move my mother asked me what school I wanted to attend. It was a question I didn’t want to answer… I had just left all my friends since childhood. I wanted to go back to my old school, but I seen this as an opportunity to go see my sister that attended Vista. The applications were put in for me to attend since that was not my district and were approved solely on the fact that my sister attended. Being a young teen I hadn’t even called my sister to see if she went there; she didn’t live with us, but she couldn’t just change schools like that it was impossible. I was wrong. She left that year after having “Enough of the drama”. There hasn’t been a day in my life as lonely as that first day at Vista. No one spoke to me, no one looked in my direction. I would’ve missed most of my classes that day if each teacher wasn’t assigning a person to walk me to my next class.

Those following months I made tormentors instead of friends. I still didn’t know anyone so I had changed from a loud bright individual with decent grades to a meek angry young teen. The people I met called themselves my friends, but I was still the new kid. I still played sports and it didn’t matter. They called me everything but my name even the coaches and the teachers seemed to have it out for me. There was a pack culture that I wasn’t used to; I had never been the one outside looking in. During this time we had no money or food really and because of this I was forced to take frozen corn dogs to school. I would eat them throughout the day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So, everyday my “Friends” would come up and ask me why I was eating corn dogs. The response they got wasn’t good enough so they verbally attacked me while I ate them. From there I would go into the gym where I could find my place on the bleachers alone, but it was to no avail. They would still find me and ask me questions spanning from “Why do you walk like that, whats your at home life like, why do you speak like you do?” All the questions stemmed from who I was as a person and it created a fire inside my body. If they were going to attack who I was as a person then I would destroy myself and become someone else.

My sister left me, my mother was to busy chasing her dreams, my father was to busy funding them, and everyone at school treated me as a second class citizen. I started small with things like basketball at lunch time. One day I had on white pants and a lot of the guys thought it would be funny to pick at me because of that. “My mom bought me these pants, and they fit so the next time you talk about them I’m going to beat the shit outta you”. It’s what I said and it’s what I meant; I was tired of all of them and they quickly found out. The next day four boys thought it would be funny to block my shot every time I and I alone shot the ball. It happened about four times with my response increasing each time. Beginning with “Alright.” Then, “Okay bruh.” Then finally I responded with “You better stop”. The fourth time my shot was blocked I turned around and grabbed the kid by his shirt and picked him up. His friends rushed over and tried to coax me telling me it was a joke, but I was past the point of having a laugh. I had started to make a name for myself, but this ostracized me even more and I had put myself in a fight or fight situation on a daily basis.

Most of the upperclassman had taken notice of my bad streak and thought they wanted a piece as they had wronged me as well and just assumed I was weak. I was challenged to bodies (a physical fight where the only punches that can be thrown are at the body) and I accepted. This upperclassmen and I went at it until he clearly hit me in the testicles. It was called off and I thought I had lost, but when I walked over to him he passed out. Up against the wall his friend helped him to his feet and asked what happened. He had been holding his breathe, and our last exchange of punches I knocked it out of him; that with the lack of oxygen he was receiving put him out. They called the fight a draw, but afterwards the upperclassmen kept their distance from me. It meant nothing to have their fear, I need their respect and not just theirs the whole schools. It came second semester when I got into an argument with a girl in our grade. She said some disrespectful things one of them being that I was “A backwards Nigger” and had no place in her school. At that point I was so numb to words of that caliber and proceeded to warn her “I don't want to hurt you, but I will if your still standing here when I get back from the locker room” Sure enough when I got back out there she was still standing there defiant with piercing eyes, almost as if she wanted to kill me. She barked nonstop giving people the chance to crowd us and observe the ongoing situation. The crowd got bigger and she got louder and I finally told her and the crowd to move so I could leave. She refused. I asked again politely because I knew where this could go. She refused. I moved her out of the way, both hands on her shoulders I stiffly put her directly outside my left hip and started walking. She snapped and slapped me in my neck.

I knew I couldn’t hit this girl; It was against what I had been taught since grade school and it wasn’t who I was as a person. So, in that spirit I decided to destroy her in any other possible way I could, and I had the tools because they had been doing it to me for so long. I unloaded a full clip of words that ripped through every fiber of her being forcing her tear ducts to flood. I didn’t stop, I talked about how her mother had really never loved, how her father was a dead beat, where she stood on the totem pole at school and within life. She didn’t matter and I made sure she knew that. Two weeks later she decided to leave the school for good and no one heard from her again. Following that incident I was never bothered aggressively again. I had changed, but I still wasn’t apart of the pack I just grew more violent than its leaders. That year gave me valuable lessons that I still use today. I don’t want to fit in, I didn’t then and I never will.