Beep Beep Beep,  Beep  Beep  Beep,  Beep Beep Beep. The alarm clock informed me that it was 7:00 in the morning, the first day of school. When I first heard those few loops from my alarm clock I was really frustrated not because I had to go to school but more because of the fact that I was up all night because I was nervous yet excited for the first day of school. I finally got out of bed at about 7:10 and got dressed and of course I had to wear something nice or agreeable because I wanted to make a good impression. I was done changing, brushing my teeth, etc. Due to the fact that SEPTA was not something that I enjoyed for a way to commute, my mother thought that it would be a nice idea to drive me to school because it was the first day. I lived less than a mile away from school so the car ride was going to be short. As we were in the car I thought about how will it be different from my middle school, and if the teachers will be less strict. For example, I thought back when I shadowed SLA the teachers seemed to be more friendly than the teachers at my middle school. Although I did not know if some of them really were or if they acted like that because I was a shadow. When we got closer towards the school on 30th and Market, I began to get a weird array of mixed feelings. The feelings that I began to develop were both excited and nervous feelings and this combination made me not know how tell what I was expecting. Before I knew it, we were a block away from school and I had to grab my bag and get ready to hop out of the car. I was then right in front of the school and the car stopped, my mom wished me luck and I opened the car door and was by Science Leadership Academy. I walked toward the entrance of the school and then opened up to doors to my new school and a fresh start.

   I went to middle school at Girard Academic Music Program which is also known as GAMP. GAMP was a school that went from grades fifth to twelfth. During my years at Gamp I made some new friends and met pretty chill people. I enjoyed how everyone seemed to all be friends and not cause that much problems amongst each other.  For example, in seventh grade the whole grade had a fundraiser to help children in Uganda achieve a better education and I found that very interesting and a great life experience. Also every year GAMP would have a Talent show, musical, Winter Concert, and Spring Concert due to the fact that it was a music school.  When it was time to decide if I should stay I knew that GAMP was not a good choice for me. Starting off, GAMP was a very small school because it had only had about 60 students per grade and I did not enjoy that at all because you never meet new people and it made my social life in school less diverse. In addition, GAMP highs school was just like the middle school. It had two groups that would stay in the same classes as each other and it had no electives. Lastly, GAMP was a music focused school and I was not interested in music.

  The whole transition phase from middle school to high school started in a way that I remember it very detailed.  I remember the time that I found out that was accepted in SLA like it was yesterday. It all started when I was with my 8th grade class on a tour bus for a trip to New York. On the bus ride my mother was my chaperone and she then gave me the news and sad “Hey Jamal I was just talking to the principal of SLA and he said that you were accepted!” I was very pleased because it was my number one choice of schools to go. In addition the fact that I was waitlisted to ⅘ of the schools that I choose including SLA made me even more happy because I was very lucky to get that waitlisted spot. During the long bus ride to New York, not did I only feel happy that I was going to go to SLA but I did not really express the fact on how grateful I was. Reflecting back on this particular moment really questions who I really was back then because deep inside I felt very happy, but I on the outside i just treated this moment not as a big deal and made it seem like it was a minor moment of my day. Although I was very excited and happy about the fact that I finally had the chance to leave middle school and start my high school experience.

    The earliest memories I can recall about my transition in Science Leadership Academy was the Summer Institute where it is a few weeks before school and I am already being asked to participate in it’s activities. I do not know anybody here which starts to annoy me even more. As I walk into the building all I can think is why I am here. When I finally get signed in I am asked to take a seat anywhere on a side of the cafeteria because the other side was for SLA Beeber.  When I sat down there were two types of people in the room. In the cafeteria there were people that wanted to make to friends that were talking to others. On the other hand, there was people that were on their phone who distanced themselves from everybody else. I was on my phone because I figured that I really don’t need to make friends because I will make them when school actually starts because this is just the summer institute. Before I get a chance to get a good five minutes to sit down and look around, I am told to get up with the rest of the SLA students. We are told how to play a game and I vaguely remember how it went. Although, I remember that we were told to pretend that we were animals who evolved and it was very weird. We had to make weird noises and move around crazily like as if we were told if we did not stop moving we would die. When the game was finally over the student instructor told us to move on told our next activity in a normal tone as if what we just did was completely usual and not odd at all. At this point I then knew that events abnormal and strange as this one will be ordinary during my next few years at SLA and they were.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

    Getting back on topic, a lot of important moments took place on the first day of school. As I was walking through those two glass doors a person greeted me at the front desk. This person informed me what room to go too which was my advisor’s class in the library. When advisory started in the morning we did not need to introduce ourselves because we all met each other at the summer institute. We were then given our rosters and  informed what classes to go. I was then introduced to my stream where we had our first class together. Our first class was Bio- Chem and I already could tell how different it was compared to GAMP. Every student was not wearing the same uniform which made the environment not seem negative and grey but rather diverse. The curriculum that was taught during class was more hands on and we had more freedom due to the fact that we're not in single desk divided in rows. During lunch I met up with a couple people in my stream that I recognized from my baseball league and we talked for a while. From here things got a little interesting. Me and a few people from my stream that I met were walking downstairs and in the stairwell we met up with people from another stream. I do not recall why we were staying there be was began to do so. We were joking around then somebody threw milk at somebody else. “Yo bro, I did not think it was going to bust open! I'm really sorry” I did not possibly know what was going to happen next. Would there be a fist-fight or even food-fight? At first the person who had milk on their shoes was pretty mad but then we began to laugh and today we are all very good friends and look back at this moment on how we all met each other.

   As the first few days of SLA went by not only did I experience a new education, but a new social life. Everyday after school me and the new friends that I made would have something to do. The was a big change for me because in middle school after school I would just get on the yellow school bus and go home. My life after school went from the same boring routine to a more collective and thrilling afternoon. For example, after school me and my friends decided to hang out. We all did not know what to do as usual but the one of my friends shouts “Comcast”! I was very confused and did not know what was exactly in the building it was at the time but I agreed that we should go there because it would give us something to do. The reason why I stated this point was because I am the type of person who always has to be stimulated in some sort of way and by giving me something to do rather than nothing was a pleasure. When we arrived at the Comcast building I said to my friends “So where what exactly are we going to do here because it seems to be a play that is not for the public.” We then walked downstairs where there was a food court and it all made sense. We got some food and joked around then from here we got bored and did not know what to do. I do not recall why by we then  though it would be a great idea to go to Chinatown afterwards. Due to the fact that I was new at public transportation, I let my friends lead the way to the  regional rail train to Chinatown. The fact that we took the regional rail train shows how inexperienced my friends and I were because it would have been much easier to take the Market-Frankford Line. We all began to notice that the train ride was taking oddly long just to got to Chinatown so we  I began to have feeling that we took the wrong train and we did. The train exited the tunnel and I heard “You have arrived at Temple station”. All I could think is that we messed up big time and how to get back to Center City. Once we found out by one of the conductors that we just have to take the train in the opposite direction to 15th St we began to laugh. This moment really was a wake-up call that the school life that I will be living after school will not be as simple as it used to be and that I will be experiencing my social life in a new environment. In addition, I will be experiencing it more independently than with a bus driver and a bus full of middle schoolers.

   When coming to SLA the largest alter that I had to get used to where the academic class. In middle school homework was pretty light and rarely was up past 10:00 doing homework. Although at SLA homework was pretty complicated. We had to submit it on a website called canvas and we did almost all of our work on the computers that we were provided. The class that really made me realize that things will no longer be like they used to was Geometry. I was always not great at math but Geometry really frustrated me because I was put in that class even though I was not academically prepared and I was supposed to be in Algebra 1. I remember saying to my advisor “Mr. Ames, I really think that I need to be with rest of the average ninth graders because I am not advanced in math and happen to struggle in it.” He mentioned that it was just a phase for starting high school and I will eventually overcome it, but I did not. The challenge of math in SLA refined my whole my entire mindset and it is something that I still struggle with today. For example, due to the fact that I fell behind in geometry, I was not prepared for Algebra 2 which leads to why I am so weak in Pre-Calculus. This is an example of how even my transition from middle school from high school is over its impacts to this very day.

I sit on the concrete floor playing with the dogs. There are small prickly dark green cacti right next to me. My curious mind touches the spike on the cactus, I know that it will hurt but I still do it. The feeling of a sharp needle grazing your fingertips slowly starts to wash over me.  I slowly push more and more till I can feel the cactus prick inside me. I release my finger and the dark red blood that I held is slowly oozing out. All the dogs, but one, start to bark at the sight of blood. Peace, the dog not barking, looks at the large brass gate that shields our property from the outside world. The gates’ hinges that have rusted from years of being beaten by rain water slowly start to turn right. As the gate is being opened I see an elderly figure holding a letter. My grandmother slowly starts to walk towards me with glee. With every step it seemed as though the 60 year old woman wanted to hop or skip. As she gets closer I notice a smile on her face. Every single white tooth is shown and the sunlight reflecting of them almost blinds me. When she is within arms distance of me she lifts my three year old self into the air and spins me around. Soundless words are uttered as I am spun till she places me done and says with a big grin; “You’re going to America.”

America. The average African yearns for a chance to enter this beautiful country, but I was different. From a young age I had been told that my parents are in America getting ready for my arrival. This repeated story that I was told made me start to hate this country. At the mere mention of the name America, my blood would boil as if a flame was burning deep within me. Matter of fact there was a flame. A flame of hatred for the parents I did not know, a flame of hatred for the parents that left me, their first and only son for this country. A flame of hatred for America, the country that took my parents. As my grandmother placed me on the ground her joyfulness slowly morphed into confusion. Her face showed confusion as to why my 3 year old self seemed upset but her eyes showed understanding. Her deep brown eyes showed a perfect reflection of me and in that reflection I felt as though she understood everything. As I stood there she took her rough, strong hand, wrinkled from years of working in the farm and patted my bald head. “Nipa trew baku”, she said. One week,I had one week to decide what to do. Would I stay in Ghana, the country who has grown me and I have come to love, or would I go to America the country that I had grown to resent, yet was called the “best” country in the world.

The next morning I woke up greeted by the rays of sun that had sneaked their way through the window and landed on my face. As I lay there staring at the bright pink ceiling analyzing the cracks that ran through the paint as if they were a massive spider web, I remembered. I needed to make a choice. The weight of this decision caused me to feel as though I was in the middle of two planets. The gravitational pull of both planets splitting me in half. On one planet was the warm rays of the African sun, the loud, annoying, and yet loveable barking of dogs, and my grandmother edging me to embrace that world. But the other planet was foreign. It held nothing I knew, it held nothing of grave importance to me. Yet there was one thing, Family. At the center of the planet there was a man and woman edging me to accept this world, a man and a woman holding open their loving arms waiting for me to embrace them. Inside me I was being told by a voice to go to the man and woman, it felt right, it felt like that was where I am destined to be. As I slowly stopped resisting and allowed foreign world to pull me in a scent slowly creeped its way into my nostrils. The scent of jollof, a simple dish that is made up of rice and stew. This scent brought more than a yearning in my stomach for the dish, but memories. Memories of the times spent with my grandmother. Memories of the constant times I had grown bored and played with the cacti. Memories of Peace, the dog that I have always loved. “Be didi.” These words knocked me from my trance like state and as I look towards my open door, I see my grandmother holding a wooden spoon in her hand. It is now that I realize the scent of jollof was not an imagination but a reality. The scent bombards it’s way into my room blocking all my senses and causing my mouth to water. “Be didi”, my grandmother says these words once more, urging me to come eat. I slowly get up from my bed to go brush my teeth. There may be a choice at hand but for now the only thing I care about is jollof.

The day continues as normally as most African days were. I ate, I played, then I ate again. A repetitive pattern I had grown accustomed to. However, for the first time the pattern seemed unique. It seemed as if I did everything for the last time. It was the voice. The voice was telling me to leave my home, leave the dirt roads, the deep brown eyes of my grandmother, and to leave the jollof. Once again the man and woman made their way into my minds. Arms outstretched waiting for me. However this time there was a difference. The woman had the deep hazel eyes of my grandmother. As I stared into the woman’s eyes I saw myself. I saw myself embraced by the man and woman being held as if I was the most precious object in the whole world. Around us, we were surrounded by numerous foreign monsters slowly making their way closer and closer to us. The figures stopped embracing me and grabbed my hands. The man held my left hand. His rough strong muscular hands showed experience and years of hard work. The man stared at the foreign monsters with a look of protection. The man brought a sense of security. His rough strong hands and the daggering look he administered to the monsters brought upon an unspoken promise. A promise that I would never experience pain, a promise that I would be guarded. The woman holding my right hand was not looking at the monsters, in lieu she was staring at me. Her deep brown eyes pierced my being in the gentle way the cacti would pierce my fingers. The only difference was that unlike the cacti, who brought a sharp pain, the eyes delivered a deep love. This love added with the protection brought by the hands caused the man and woman to slowly start changing. Not a physical change like that of a butterfly in metamorphosis, but an internal change in opinions that I felt. The man and woman were no longer foreign strangers pulling me into a foreign world. In contrary the man and woman where now my sources of love and protection against the monsters that I will face. The man and woman where my family.

My past is something that I don’t like talking about. It brings back emotions that I buried inside me long ago. Thinking about what to write and my past I realized that I haven’t dealt with it. I didn’t want to and I was never forced to, so I didn’t. I hid behind a blank face and blackened heart. I cut off all the emotions that I didn’t want to feel. Life became easier when you didn’t feel pain and disappointment. I think the biggest disappointment of my life was my childhood, well what little of it I remember. For 12 years my mom, sister and I lived with my aunt, my younger cousin and my uncle. Living with them was an uphill battle. There were good times and then there were bad ones. The biggest challenge/annoyance was my aunt’s attitude. She was always so rude and nasty about everything. She made it clear that everything was hers. The tv, the couch, the refrigerator and even the dust bunnies that often resided on the floor. It was tolerable, sometimes. I never got along with my younger cousin. Her being the only child made her selfish. She didn’t have to share her things and she could say and do basically anything she wanted. Most of the times I don’t even think it’s the fact that she’s an only child, but the fact that her parents allowed her to get away with her actions.  I remember one time Anaiya, my cousin, and I were arguing; which we often did. My mother was in the same room while my aunt was in the kitchen. I know as the oldest I should lead by example but at the same time I’m not just going to let her say what she wants to me. As we argued I apparently said something that was so tragic that my aunt had to yell from all the way in the kitchen to tell me and me only to stop and shut up. Of course I was threaten and I tried to explain that Anaiya started it and was saying things that were way worse than me but she didn’t want to hear it. I looked at my mom and she just shook her head and said leave it alone. So I did. It was always my cousin and I going back and forth and me being the only one in trouble. At the time I never understood why my mom just told me to leave it alone. I knew that I was right in the sense to stand up for myself but why wasn’t I able to do that when it came to my aunt?

During the time I was living with my aunt I use to visit my dad.  My dad was married and had a son, my younger brother. He also had two other kids by another woman, my older sisters. When I was younger I would visit my dad’s house over the weekends. I would see my family and occasionally spend time with them. I felt like an outsider. Everyone was always together and developed a bond while I only visited twice a month. I felt like I didn’t belong. I was never comfortable and just wanted to go back home with my family. When I was around them I didn’t feel like they accepted me. I never really had an opinion about my dad’s wife at the time, but she was someone that I grew to dislike. To me she was just simply his wife. I already had a mother and didn’t need another one. I didn’t look at her as a stepmother but I respected her as an adult because that’s how I was raised. I didn’t like spending time with them. I would have preferred if it was just my dad and I. I always wanted to go back home but I was too scared to say it. One day while I was over their house I was sitting on the end chair, where my dad usually sits. It was cold and that seat was the furthest from the air conditioner. Ms. Sandy, the wife, was in the kitchen and when she came back she looked at me like I stole something. She said “That’s your father’s seat. I don’t know why you think you could sit there.” I didn’t say anything because what would I even say to that? Coincidentally, my dad and brother were coming down the stairs at the same time she said that. I was thinking that he would have said I could sit there but he sided with her. He told me that was the “man’s” seat and kicked me out of the chair and sat down with my younger brother in his lap. In the corner of my eye I could remember seeing Ms. Sandy smirk. I sat on the couch and said nothing. I didn’t care it was just a seat to me, but the fact that I felt outcasted made me want to go home even more. There was always something little that Ms. Sandy would do and say that I never realized was wrong. When it came to me I always felt like I was treated differently. I  knew I wasn’t wanted at that home and I didn’t understand what was the purpose of having me there. I remember one day I didn’t want to stay and I said out loud that I wanted to go home. Ms. Sandy said “Well you can’t. You have to be here for the weekend.” As a kid I didn’t know what that meant. I thought it was the simple fact that my dad wanted to spend time with me not because he had to. Years later I learned that the court ordered me to spend every other weekend with my dad. At that point in my life I already became numb so I had no feelings about the situation. I didn’t and still don’t consider that man to be my father. It’s just something that I made myself believe.  

A challenge of me being a kid was my hair. It was so thick and very hard to do. It didn’t help that I was tender headed, meaning I felt a lot of pain when getting my hair done. My mom or aunts did my hair and they became use to doing it and so did I. They understood what to do to prevent the amounts of pain that I would feel. My dad wanted to go to the my grandmother’s house. Before we went Ms. Sandy decided to do my hair. It was strange because she’s never even attempted to do my hair before. She said that it “looked a mess” and that it needed to be fixed. I sat on the chair that was moved from the kitchen to the living room. My brother along with my step cousin were sitting on the couch waiting for me to get my hair finished. My dad was in the kitchen. As she was doing my hair it hurt really bad, more than usual; so I began to cry. She kept telling me to be quiet and began combing my hair even harder which made me cry harder. I subconsciously reached my hand up to touch my hair because it hurt. Then as I did I felt a throbbing pain on my hand. One. Two. Three. She hit me on my hand with the comb three times. I saw my dad watching and did nothing but go upstairs. I immediately stopped crying because shock took over. I stayed quiet. That was the day when I felt hatred for my dad. I hated him because he didn’t care, he let her do and say whatever she wanted to me. My own dad never hit me so why would it be alright for her to? I didn’t want to go to my grandmother’s house. I didn’t want to be around them or see any of them. From that day forward they were all dead to me. I didn’t tell my mom for years about what had been happening. I don’t know why. I think it was a mixture of being scared and the development of me not caring. I just felt like it wasn’t important. There were a lot of events that happened in my life and it would be impossible to explain in one simple essay. It’s harder to understand my life with so many missing pieces. That’s similar to how I am. I’m a puzzle with missing pieces. They’re lost but eventually they will come back and fit into their predetermined places. To this day I do not have a relationship with my dad and his family. I don’t acknowledge them and they don’t acknowledge me, I like it that way. I’m not mad or sad because that’s just a part of life. You have to move on and do what’s in the best interest of yourself. I can’t predict the future but I would like things to stay as they are now. I already have my family and incorporating people who have not fought or cared enough to fight for me are people who I do not want in my life. It’s easy for me to not care about and forget you. Just like a light switch, on and off.

“How can I paint this picture when the colorblind is hanging with you?”

Doubt is entwined in our DNA like the bones to our skin, hidden by layers of fat and muscle. I do not believe there has ever been a moment in the span of human sentience where there was not uncertainty in the world. A species lacking of instinct, traded for control and freedom, leaves them without a proper place in the world with options so open.

Hey that’s just like me, approaching my adulthood without direction! My life looks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, except the top is four and a half inches from the ground. There’s a lot of things you can see if you just pay attention to people. If you just take into account that they are a person, and everything they do becomes so much more childlike and malnourished of maturity. I can see their fear, or maybe that’s what I like to tell myself in order to feel stronger.

As an artist I do this a lot. Sometimes I take pictures of things to refer to later, or maybe I’m in the middle of class and use someone standing at the board for gesture practice. I look at the characteristics of these people and after all of this staring and studying it leaves me in an almost constant state of over analysis and distant thought. Body speaks a lot more than the word. The alphabet is an abstract concept of passing information, pushing thoughts through a filter of audible shapes and sounds someone else decided on, to the ears and mind of the listener. It’s even stranger that we think in our spoken language. Somehow that makes the idea of safety of the mind a little less safe, an intrusion. Words don’t have to mean what they mean. They can lie. They string long like pinocchio noses and dusty fables. The body tells the truth to me. Because if I can see you in all your nakedness, stripped of all emotional coverage, I can see that we all came from the same place.

I’m talking to someone and they snap me into focus. I’m not entirely sure what we were talking about before or what I was thinking about beforehand, as if I had just awoken from an eventful dream, yet too eventful to remember the events after. Drifted from life or something. That reminds me.

When my mom told me that a someone close to me from my childhood (our parents were close, close enough that I call his mother “auntie”) had died, I felt the same. I really didn’t know what to feel. Not even emptiness. It was more like, apathy. I think I was scared, actually, like pushing away the grief of another in order to avoid it for myself, to push myself far enough from death as possible. Which is funny because I spend so much time floating away from life, in daydreams, yet I still just as equally push myself off of death. Like water limbo, and his scythe is an oar to keep me between. Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen him in a while, last time I saw him he was about, my age. He was finishing college, it was his last year. His heart failed playing ball on the court with some friends. He had some heart problems I didn’t know about. I have so many thoughts on this but none at the same time.

Cool. But that doesn’t effect me, We move in on the same direction we’ve always been moving. Collectively, as a planet. I can’t do much about it, I’m technically forced to keep moving by whatever forces are keeping the earth together, regardless of how I feel the gravities of the situations.

All I can really see is this fuzzy blackness. It’s not totally dark, but there certainly isn’t very much light. There never really is, here. Not since the lights went out. It was about a month ago, I think. The lights hanging over my head stopped giving that pure, white light they used to and just, blink. Yellow. Occasionally.

But that’s alright, I don’t really need to see. If I wanted to see I would have my glasses on. They’re sitting right next to my bed on a chair that I have just for that purpose. They lay upside down, open fully. But I can’t really move to grab them. I’m sorta stuck where I am, laying on my back, head perched up with my right arm underneath it, followed by pillow, pillow, mattress.

It’s something like 2 in the morning. I’ve just been thinking. Well, it’s more worrying. I’m worrying about being a successful person. That may seem like something stupid to worry about, but it’s less about whether or not I can do it but more about whether or not I will do it. It’s just so hard to define what that even means, to be successful.

Does it simply mean to complete a goal? Surely that’s too easy, because a goal can be as simple as walking down the stairs without tripping and falling. That’s exactly where the subjectivity plays into it. If I break my legs and I finally can walk down the stairs by myself, that would be a big deal to me.

But that’s only a huge feat in my head. The world will look at me walking down the stairs and probably not even notice. It doesn’t seem possible to treat success objectively, as each person considers different things to be successful. When I moved all of the pieces of my bed to my room, something that took a long time since I did it myself, and I put a lot of work in to make it good and I actually made that bed myself, I felt successful. I had achieved my goal, but the world doesn’t really care. The world doesn’t care whether or not I have a bed.

If I figure out how to stop cancer, something that has plagued humanity for generations, that would be something that the world cares about. And they would show it. I would get countless awards recognizing what I have done. My name would go down in history as one of the greats. That’s clearly a success, right?
What if my goal was to create a new way to pack potato chips. I hadn’t even been considering cancer when I set out my goal, and what I ended up with was not a way to pack potato chips. I didn’t complete my goal. Does that mean I’ve failed, even though I found a cure to cancer?

Well I want to be successful, so why not just do alright, come up with something, and consider that a success. The problem with that is it removes the drive to improve. What reason do I have to get better, I’m already successful by default. If there are two people and only one can be successful, suddenly there’s competition to be the best. To be the winner, that’s how you be successful. But is it really? If you’ve gotten third place four times in a row and you REALLY want to get second and you train really hard and you actually make it to second, are you successful? You’ve reached your goal. Is that a problem with the goal or the way success is defined? Is there even a problem with the goal? You haven’t gotten first. Though that limits the amount people are allowed to succeed, saying that if you don’t get first, you’re a failure. That’s calling most everyone a failure; some people do actually get first. I don’t think most everyone is a failure.

And then where does failure play into it? That’s the antithesis of success. Surely something like failure would invalidate success. It has to be impossible for me to fail and succeed at the same time if all that I’m considering is my point of view, but the world thinks differently than me. If I had tried my absolute hardest to make that bed work and I just couldn’t do it, I would feel like I had failed. The world still wouldn’t care whether or not I have a bed.

That’s what’s stressing me out about this. I go through my life day by day, and then eventually something will come up that will matter to the world and it will actually matter whether or not I succeed, but I won’t be able to tell.

Though maybe it is possible to define success. Maybe it’s like a coin. Maybe you can quantify it, with each success being a shiny green coin, and each failure a dull, red coin. And maybe each success and failure can be given a value based on how much of a success it was, or how much of a failure it was, and the coin is given a corresponding size. That’s determined by each person, meaning that if you think that walking down the stairs is a great success, then you get a big coin to match.

Maybe you can treat the green coins like positives and the red coins like negatives, where if you have one of each that are the same size, they turn into a zero. A neutral. Or maybe it’s more like owing money to the world, where for every failure that happens the world expects a success of the same size, maybe not from the cause, but from somebody.

Maybe when someone dies, they take all of their coins, green or red, and throw them into a big pot, and melt it down, and the world refines it and takes out what’s useful to them, and puts that into another, bigger pot, so we can later come back and look into the huge pot as a whole, and see the history of every success and failure as one big bowl of humanity.

https://www.wevideo.com/view/825484089

Although my palms were clammy tucked into one another, my fingertips felt cold and numb. My stomach felt like it was trying to pull itself through my throat. I wasn’t sure if I was nervous or just suddenly feeling the guilt of my actions falling onto me all at once. I sat restless on the wooden bench outside of the windowless room I knew I was gonna be pulled into at any moment, tapping my toe anxiously on the cream-colored linoleum flooring. My eyes were pinned on the white fluorescent light hanging above me, surrounded by off-white paneling that seemed like it’d be more suitable for a high school band room than a court house. The door next to me swung open as the judge peaked her head into the hall before calling my name to come in.

I sat down in a hard plastic chair across from the judge, with nothing between us. Her typist sat behind her, eyes glued to the laptop in front of her. My eyes stayed attached to my feet as she began to speak. I could recognize the fact that she was speaking, but her words weren’t registering much at all. My brain went on autopilot as I responded to her questions in quick, silent succession. No, my dad never hurt me. Yes, I liked my step dad. No, I didn’t like my step mom. Yes, I did miss my mom. No, I didn’t like my school. The deeper she got into the line of questioning the more it felt like I was slipping into some sort of an odd dream, as her words faded out of recognition more and more and the keyboard clicking behind her faded out into a dull hum.

“So?” She said, snapping me out of my own thoughts, “Who do you wanna live with?”

I couldn’t even bring myself to meet her eyes. I rested my hands in one another. The words sat on the tip of my tongue for a minute, hesitant to come out. Finally, “Mom. I wanna live with my mom.”

My dad’s eyes looked sad and hurt when I saw him after. I wanted to tell him that it had nothing to do with him and I just needed to get out of that town and that school, but I knew no words I could say would sufficiently catalyze the healing process for him. After all, it was my decision to go to court and get the custody reversed, and he knew it. There was no ambiguity in my actions. No excuses I could make. This was fully my burden to bear; his sad gaze rested softly on me, his throat flexing slightly like he was holding back tears, or he just couldn’t bring himself to say what he wanted. Instead, he bent over and hugged me tightly. Like he wasn’t sure if it would be the last time he’d be able to do that. To be honest, at the time I wasn’t so sure myself. I told him goodbye before stepping into a separate hallway to leave with my mom. I had nothing to say to her, despite knowing how happy she likely was. I didn’t feel happy, even though it was what I wanted. I was almost sure of it. Almost.

Much of my childhood was composed of biscuit and gravy mornings, baseball games, and long bike rides down the trails that were paved over the old rails that used to cross through what felt like nearly every town in Michigan, but had since been decommissioned. I lived in a good area, I had a handful of close friends, all the time in the world, and nearly everything a kid could ask for. Still, I wasn’t happy. Things hadn’t been the same for years. Not since mom left. I often found myself romanticizing aspects of my time with her and longing to be back in Philly, back in that tiny, 2 bedroom apartment up on Spruce Hill, spending time with her and my sister. Playing board games, going for walks, watching movies, just the three of us. I longed for that, especially in an environment where I really did feel so alone. I had my friends at school, but my nights and weekends were spent simply sat in front of a TV waiting for my dad to finish working so we could eat, or sitting in my room in dim lighting, drawing for hours on end with a terrible local radio station playing beside me. As I got older, I found myself growing into myself more and more, and I felt less alone over all, but I began to feel like I was disconnected from the town we were in, like I was just meant for a bigger city with people who were more like me, in a school that challenged me. I guess that’s when the idea of changing custody first began.

After 7 years of going to school in Michigan and Philly being somewhat of an afterthought being reserved for school breaks exclusively, in late June of 2013, 4 months after I went to court to testify to get it changed, the custody order was reversed, with my mom being granted primary custody. It was a pretty happy day for my mom, sister, and I. We began to make plans concerning high school and where we would be living. West Philly was a home to me and my sister, but not so much for my mom, who spent most of her time in Center City with her boyfriend of 8 years, Robert. In what seemed like nearly sudden succession, I was thrust into a new school, a new home, and what felt like a new family.

The funny thing about moving to a spot that you view as almost a vacation destination is that once the honeymoon phase is over and the real world sets in, the novelty disappears very very quickly. After being put into a higher pressure situation of a prestigious preparatory school, with my mom now being the one who had to take responsibility for my grades and such, her true parenting style began to reveal itself. Her emotionally driven anger when things weren’t falling in place as she wanted them to, her lack of empathy towards me and the constantly morphing environment around me, her long lists of rules. It was somewhat of a shock to my system compared to my dad’s near laissez-faire parenting. When she didn’t have to deal with the pressures of things like school and how they affected me, she was a great mother. But when she tried to interject herself into my school and social life it just complicated things and made me feel like I just was never good enough. It was nothing like what I had expected or hoped for, and absolutely nothing like what I was used to. The new school that I was placed in was a complete shift from the terrible public schools I’d been going to, but I soon found that the workload was just barely manageable and I was unlike the vast majority of the students who attended there as well. It all took a major toll on me. I felt more alone than ever, suffocated by my home life and new school, spiraling into depressive patterns, crushed by the weight of my constantly evolving environment.

I could do nothing about the situation I went through as a kid, but this situation was one that I intentionally and deliberately manipulated to get what I thought I wanted. Why then did I feel so absolutely out of control? In essence, I believe that it boils down to the relationship between oneself and the changing world. When things are out of your control, you have no choice but to let go and accept it. When things are in your control and need to be changed, you can simply just hope that you have the strength to change it. But what kind of a person chooses to do something for no reason other than selfishness that didn’t need to be changed, knowing they’d potentially hurt someone in the process? Nothing reveals who you are as a person more than the decisions you meticulously plot out.

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” - Leo Tolstoy