Beautiful Darkness, Maurice Mitchell [interesting novels to read txt] 📗

my life. See we had a long road with a lot of bumps and bruises as mentioned earlier in the book. In most families the stepfather thing doesn’t ever seem to pan out well. Well in this family, my Stepfather stepped up and lost the step. My Pop is an handsome guy, bald-headed and average height with a muscular build. Very intelligent but strong as a bull with a good sense of humor. After dealing with my Father I developed an appreciation for my Pop that would never fade. When you see how bad things can be, it makes it real easy to appreciate how good they can be. I realized that my Pop was everything my Father wasn’t and I appreciated that. I felt safe when I was with my Pop, not scared, I felt love when I was with my Pop, not hate. We’d go on to develop a relationship that to this day is one I am very blessed to have. Even though I went through what I did with my Father, I still feel like one of the lucky ones. Truthfully I could easily be one the people who live without ever knowing the love of a dad. I may have gone through a lot to get it, but I got it. I spent months asking God why couldn’t I have a dad that loved me, that could show me how to be a man and stand on my own two. Little did I know he answered that question years before, and I finally figured it out. All in all my home life in Colorado was good. I was back with my family and moving one step away from the dark year I’d previously experienced. I tried to take things one day at a time and for a while everything worked out just fine. What I knew was I loved my family and I was happy to be home, what I didn’t know was there were demons inside of me and they would soon begin to show. While I was happy to be home, I couldn’t necessarily say the same about being in Colorado. Everything was great while I was home, but unfortunately it was the complete opposite when I wasn’t.

Chapter 14 (Colorado Rocky)

My first year in Colorado was tough for several reasons. I was in a dark place and felt as if I was two different people. When I was with my Family I was happy, normal, but when I wasn’t I was mean, cruel. This is the point in my life where being intelligent, and too analytical started to work against me. I really started to realize that most people were full of it and never who they appeared to be. In my later years my Grandmother would teach me that people lie and that’s the bottom line, you just have to know that and deal with it accordingly. For some reason or another I always took it personal when people lied to me. After being lied to or discovering that a person was fake, I couldn’t respect them and therefore I couldn’t be around them. I decided that wasn’t me, I wouldn’t lie, and no one would intimidate me enough to make me lie. I never wanted to be anybody else, I was always happy being myself. If you didn’t like the person I was, I had no problems deleting our history and acting like we never met. I was told that when your honest and real, you should expect to have few friends. That was a challenge I was ok with, and that was a challenge that began my first year in Colorado. I didn’t really get along with anybody in school my eight grade year either. That was for several reasons, some probably due to issues I created myself. Part of it was because I was angry, and didn’t want to be there. I was angry with my Father for what he did, and angry with my Mother for making me leave NY. I missed Brooklyn, and felt as if I was stripped of an opportunity to have a much better childhood. My Mother’s decision to move me out of New York would later prove to save my life, but at the time it just seemed like a selfish decision. I felt as if my needs or opinions were not considered and the decision was made against my better judgment. As a kid, you always think everything is about you and you know best, so realistically I was just being a child. Nonetheless, that anger stuck with me throughout my years in Colorado and it was painfully obvious in my first. The other part of me not getting along with anyone seemed to be simply because I was new. I remember being tested by my peers early and often simply because I was the new kid from New York. It was almost as if the kids felt that had something to prove and would gain some type of stripes by fighting a kid from Brooklyn. It was nothing personal I just happened to be that kid. That made me the right one for the job, but the wrong one to try to hire. It was clear that I had a lot of anger I needed to release. Unfortunately more times then not, when you find yourself in that situation that anger finds a negative outlet. This time would be no different. I remember the first few days of school that year and sitting by myself at lunchtime. I denied acceptance to all who asked to sit with me, I had no friends and wanted to leave it that way. My trust issues began to take over my life slowly and I had no idea just how bad it would really get. I trusted myself, that’s it and only had expectations for myself as well. I felt as if everybody else’s intentions could only be bad and by day three that feeling would prove to be accurate.

It was another school day and most of the eight graders were in the lunch room waiting to eat. I remember the lunch room was huge, as was the rest of the school and seemed to have a thousand tables. There was a big glass window that took up the entire side of the cafeteria and you could look outside into the yard. The tables were round and they each had a few chairs, while there were soda machines and televisions along the walls. The lines were always long and ran all the way out of the food area. Waiting in the line was the worse cause there was hardly enough room to stand, let alone grab food and walk. I stood in the lunch line waiting to be served my everyday crappy school meal like every other student. As I waited patiently for the line to move I felt something hit me in my head, Pow! I turned to see what it was and discovered it was a French Fry, right as another one struck my face while turning. It was then I realized this black kid was throwing fries at me and laughing with the four kids he was with. I would later come to find that this kids name was Solomon, and he was the quite the neighborhood bully. Similar story to the rest, a kid a little bigger then most of his classmates and strongly protected by his two older brothers. They both attended the high school across the street, so there wasn’t much you could tell this dude. Solomon was an ugly kid, he was dark, short, practically bald and muscular. I remember he had funny looking teeth, when he smiled he looked like a ferret to me. He pretty much messed with whoever he wanted and most of these kids never had the balls to do anything back. We’ll at that time I didn’t know that, not that I would have cared if I did. Either way I felt as if two fries hitting me in my head were two fries too many, besides I didn’t do anything to this man. I realize now that my problem was I always had to stand up to the bully. It wasn’t because I thought I was tough, just too prideful or maybe too stupid to let anybody get off on me. Truth be told half the time I was as nervous as everybody else and didn’t know if I could win, but I was damn good at hiding it. I’d been fighting the bully my whole life, why stop now. My thought process in that line was one, why the hell is this ugly kid throwing fries at me, and two, I really don’t want to get into any trouble while I’m out here. I had a feeling my family already thought I was troubled and I knew getting suspended from school on the third day would only prove their concerns to be accurate. However, conversely I also knew that if you let the first person who showed his a** punk you, you was just setting yourself up to be the target of abuse the rest of the year. So in my own calm and diffusive way I asked this kid “Yo what the f*** are your throwing fries at me for?” He responded “Cause I feel like it New York. I heard you ni**as think ya’ll hard, welcome to Colorado.” It was like a movie, I was thinking “this really happens?” It was then he’s intentions became clear, he was simply jealous and felt threatened because a new kid was gaining a little more attention then him. I guess this was his own little way of establishing his dominance. Well I’d dealt with a man who felt the need to show his dominance before, only difference was that man was twice the size of this ugliness. It was also then I decided that this kid would never hit me with fry again. He said something else to me after his previous comment, but it was a little difficult to hear him over the sound of my lunch tray hitting him in his face. Before you knew it, it was on and everybody was pushing everybody on the lunch line, it felt like an episode of Oz. The good news was I established myself as a player in the little game these kids were playing, that bad news was I was on the away team. In the mist of the scuffle this short, skinny Mexican kid grabbed me and pretty much prevented me from putting my hands on my French Fry throwing adversary. More importantly though, he prevented a fight from happening in a situation where I was clearly out numbered. I’d forgotten about the three amigos that accompanies Solomon on the line. I appreciated that. Once the fight got broken up I was sent to the principals office and I pretty much started counting my loses at that point. I got inside the office ready to face whatever charges would be handed down to me, and to my surprise I found my principal was pretty understanding. He asked what happened, and I explained. I said I felt as if I was targeted because I was new and I decided not to try to make friends with these guys. He told me he realized that Solomon was a troublemaker and finding him in this situation was not surprising. Fortunately, for that he didn’t suspend me. Instead he gave me I.S.S, which stands for In School Suspension. It carries the same name, but it definitely doesn’t carry the same punishment as Outer School Suspension. The good thing was I avoided having to explain to my parents I was suspended from school in my first week. The bad thing was I was now on my principals radar, and would soon become a regular inside that I.S.S room.