First of all let me say one thing, I am in no way making excuses for the way I’ve lived my life. We all have to take responsibility for the choices we make, and deal with the consequences. Let’s just say I was a bad guy, not an evil guy, just a bad guy. I didn’t start out that way mind you, I guess nobody does. You know how this story goes, smart kid born into a poor family, limited opportunities and lack of supervision. My mom wasn’t to blame for any of it, she was a hard worker that had to pick up the slack when my piece of shit father decided that shooting up was more important then taking care of his family. Mom was always working to put food on the table and I was left to my own devices for the most part, and everything was going great until I reached the age where you start realizing that people have things that you don’t. I wanted things too, nice car, nice clothes, money in my pocket, reasonable expectations for an 18 year old boy.

Let’s go back to the limited opportunities thing again. College wasn’t a realistic option because number 1, I couldn’t afford it, and number 2, by the time I graduated high school I was so disenfranchised with the whole idea that I just said fuck it. I was always a firm believer in the old saying “if you’re gonna do something, do it right, or don’t do it at all”. I was intelligent, disgruntled, and angry at the world. My mother had me late in life and she was getting up there in age by this time, and I wanted to bear some of her burden...it was the least I could do, so I went out and got a crappy job to pitch in for our living expenses. It was hard to get anywhere in the unskilled labor “workforce “, nobody wants to hire you unless you have experience, and you can’t get the experience without getting hired, it’s the classic rock and hard place scenario.

Fast forward a couple of years and a chance meeting with the right person, or wrong person, depending on how you look at it, set me down the path that eventually landed me in my current situation. We’ll get back to that in a minute, because it’s an unbelievable situation to say the least. I met my “friend “ Anthony right after my 20th birthday, he was cool, had money, cars, girls, I kinda looked up to him. It started out small time, you know selling weed to my friends, selling illegal fireworks and stolen merchandise, and gradually got worse as time went on. I stole cars, beat people up, robbed churches, and generally did anything I could to make a buck. Finally, I was able to do nice things for my mother, I wore nice clothes, drove a nice car, and had money in my pocket. Mission accomplished right? In some ways there was a sense of satisfaction, but I also walked around with a nasty little guilty conscience problem. You know somethings not right in your head when you start doing things to counteract your daily shitbag behavior. First it was donating to charity, then volunteering at the local soup kitchen, then going to church(the same church that I had previously robbed by the way), I even adopted a fucking kitten from a kill shelter. Talk about grasping at straws, but none of it made me feel any better. This nonsense went on for a couple of years, and I was at the point where I was finally resigned to the fact that this was my life. And wouldn’t you know it, 2 days after my 25th birthday, I choke to death on a chicken parm hero. A fucking chicken parm hero! You can’t make this stuff up. And this my friends is where my story really begins.