When I was in grade 5 at Millstream Elementary School , I started to go to Sunday School. It was held in the gymnasium at the school I attended. Both of my parents are atheist but my father’s family are religious. They did differ in the different followings though. I did not know at that time the subtle differences between Catholic and Protestant. I knew there were other types of religious factions such as Jehovah Witness , Jewish Religion , Hinduism and a long list of others. I started to attend because I did not understand the differences and was hoping to be enlightened through the people that ran this Sunday School. I soon discovered there were not a lot of questions answered but instead , there was a lot of preaching. Mainly on how the Bible was to be interpreted. After the service was held , we were shuffled into groups to be taught more lessons on how the Bible was to guide us through our lives.

I am not one to close myself off to being guided but being involved in any religion , a person is coaxed into believing that religion’s interpretation. If or when you do not conform to how they think and behave , great lengths are taken to brainwash or convince you that their way of thinking is the only path accepted. When any adult tries to guide any child there is a resistance by most children. This happens for a lot of different reasons. I am not proud to point this out but even though an older person is a mature adult , if they are not properly raised , that adult is intellectually immature. There may also be areas of awareness these adults are unable to recognize or deal with properly. Either way these teachers of religion are in a position of power and unfortunately that does not always go well for the children.

Some of these people are predators and others are just hungry for having power over other people. I am not just referring to Sunday School but in a general way , to all religions. It is a sad fact that the general public knows exactly what I am talking about. I honestly feel great sympathy for all the people who have been abused or mistreated by people who were in a position of power. When a person is mistreated by someone who should of been a safe person to be around , it affects more people than this person , who was mistreated. These people live for the rest of their lives knowing they can not place their trust into people who society believes are trust worthy. That has a ripple effect that not only damages the person involved but anyone that person comes into contact with.

On a large scale we can be confident that almost every family has someone in it who has been tarnished with abuse from a person who was in a position of power. This person does not have to be involved with religion but could be a doctor , fireman , police officer , security guard or someone’s boss or even a person who has more seniority than another. The point is that how we treat each other matters ! The ripple effect of someone abused is one that continues for the rest of that person’s life. It changes the innocence in that person and they are forever changed. At times the abused can not live with the regret and shame. They either start a cycle of hurting other people or hurt themselves. Not every situation goes to an extreme but every person is changed from the experience.

While I was in grade 5 I had a music teacher named Mr. Wall. I honestly could not say anything bad about this teacher. I believe he loved teaching children about music and he was very compassionate and kind to all of his students. For whatever reasons I had a gift of being able to mimic singing styles. I was also able to reach any note , on a scale. Mr. Wall would use me to tune his guitar and check the calibration with the piano. Since I was able to hold a note for a long time and was quite loud , he would give me tasks which placed me separate from the rest of the class. We would sing the same song but I would be singing either ahead or behind the rest of the class. We all found his class very amusing and enjoyable. He had taken me aside on a couple of occasions and told me about the gift I had. He also told me of a time when my voice would change , around puberty and I would lose this talent unless I worked very hard to keep it. He was the person who advised me to go to Sunday school so that I could continue to sing.

I followed his advice because I thoroughly enjoyed singing. It filled me with happiness when I saw how people responded when I sang. Sunday school and I fit like a glove and the adults enjoyed my abundance of energy as well. When Christmas came upon us the teachers and the adults from Sunday School decided it would be fun to throw a play together for the public. It would be a play about the baby Jesus being born and the three wise men who came to bear witness, I played the role of Joseph and Mary was played by the best female singer in school. If memory serves me well , I believe her name was Lisa. The play was held on a Saturday night , a week before Christmas. The play went off without a hitch except for me dropping my song cheat sheet under the baby Jesus’s crib. I was not about to get on my hands and knees to grab the paper. I knew the song by heart and did not need it. Both Lisa and I sang the final song. Both of us had solo pieces in it and then everyone on stage sang the chorus. When the song ended we got a standing ovation.

I had never received any level of gratitude for singing before and the fuss over how well I did seemed unwarranted. In fact I felt overwhelmed. There was lots of praise to everyone involved but a big deal was made that I dropped my paper and sang without it ! I was glad to escape from the audience and go home. What I did not want or expect was the treatment I got the next day at Sunday School. Everyone of the adults were still buzzing from the play , the night before. As soon as I showed up I was pressured to lead the class with a song. I did not want to be the center of attention and simply stated that I did not want to sing. That was not an answer they were willing to accept and more pressure was applied to me. Finally I actually got mad for one of the first times I remember. I yelled that I already said I do not want to sing and you can not make me !! I fled from the gym in a mass of confusion.

I ran back home and have never went to church or Sunday School again. I remember thinking that they do not care what I am saying , they only care about what they want. I could not understand why they could not accept the simple fact , that I did not want to sing. I believe that is when my young mind started to understand about manipulation. I was very upset these people treated me with no compassion. Did they not consider how I felt. As unfortunate as it is we all manipulate and get manipulated. It is a technique everyone is aware of. It was after the play I found out my parents were not religious , that they did not believe in God. I was taught that everyone believes in God so hearing this caused a massive amount of confusion in me. Fast forward around 7 or 8 years and I was no longer a child but growing into an adult.

I had lived through a lot of unrest in my life and started to become bitter. I had always tried to look on the bright side and try to be a good person. Especially when it came to individuals. If you had not done anything bad to me , then I would make an attempt to trust you. After you implement these rules into your life and find that you are consistently abandoned or hurt , you start to lean towards changing who you are. It almost seems practical to change the philosophy you have lived your life by. It got to a point in my life where I did not want to feel the pain of being hurt by others. I wanted to start hurting people. I wanted to be a predator who hurt people. I wanted to be the person who had control. There was an anger in me that I did not want and it made me even madder that other people hurting me , was making me think about changing the person I wanted to be.

As I struggled with what to do , I found that injecting drugs fought off my ability to think or feel pain. In between these euphoric highs with cocaine , I tried to reconcile with myself , if I was going to change the person I am. At a certain point I remember getting very angry , that I was allowing other people’s actions to change the person who I wanted to be. As I felt the anger grow I realized I could not allow the actions of other people to influence the person I wanted to be. In every person’s life there comes a time during adolescence where we are faced to understand , it is our own personal decision , in who we want to be. Our morals and ethics determine our guidelines in that endeavor. We face challenges along the way and they strengthen our resolve. It is never as easy as being a good or bad person.

I have seen good people abusing young men because of their thirst for sex. I have also witnessed bad men come to the rescue of woman being mentally and physically abused. So to say it is a simple matter of good or bad , is inaccurate. Many people realize there is a gray area , where most people navigate life. There is a continuous counter balance of doing the right thing , for the wrong reasons. Also doing the wrong things for the right reasons. In this battle within ourselves to be a good person , we justify our actions to act badly. As most people on this planet are aware , there have been more deaths caused in the name of God than all the other wars , combined. That simple fact goes to prove what I am trying to say.

I have learned that my actions , being good or bad , have consequences. I learned early that I must consider the consequences of my actions before I act. When I commit a crime I know what punishment I could face , if caught. There is a simple code known by prisoners in jail. If you can’t do the time , don’t do the crime. So even though I chose to live my life outside the law , I tried not to hurt individuals. When a drug dealer sells to their customers , they know if they do not sell to them the buyer will simply go to someone else. Most drug dealers have three ground rules. You do not sell to children , people you do not know ( unless they bring someone you know and trust to verify this person is their personal friend ) and you never sell to people who have never used drugs before. The second and third rules kind of go hand in hand. Point behind this logic is to not hurt individuals who are not bound to this lifestyle.

People can say all kind of terrible things about drug dealers and there are some people that do not have any problem selling to anyone that wants to buy. These people give most of the other dealers a bad name. I am not trying to justify selling drugs but most dealers are playing by the same set of rules I have listed. After 25 years of selling drugs in the same town , I know they are a small community and they are in constant contact with each other. We have a network of people and every one of them have their own network. So it becomes commonplace to know who is who and when new people have entered the circles. We chose to sell and do drugs as our coping mechanism. Other people eat food , have sex , become a workaholic , drink booze and even hurt themselves as their coping mechanism. Most people try hard to go through life without encouraging hardship or bring harm onto themselves or others. We all do the best we can but unless we have parents or a guide preparing us for things we have not even considered , we all make mistakes.

Some of these mistakes have a way of putting ourselves into situations we never thought possible. Either way , we learn as we move through life. I try to make my life easier by learning through my mistakes so I will not repeat them. I turn my mistakes into lessons learned , so instead of making a mistake I like to believe I have learned a lesson. It is not easy to recognize what we should be learning but due diligence and the thirst of learning , reveals the lesson. As we stay constant in our quest to learn , it becomes easier to understand our flaw in our process or ability to plan and think. It becomes clear where we made our mistakes and if we stay humble , the truth is revealed.

I chose not to become someone who has no remorse. I chose to accept that anything and everything that happens in my life is because I allowed it to happen. Sometimes it was because I stayed blind to the truth of other people’s intentions and I did not want to accept that a person I thought was a friend , was greedy or mislead. Other times I did not ask the serious questions or did not think of the possibility of being deceived. Any time that I endured pain , suffering or loss , I accepted it as my failure. Every time I fought to understand how these mistakes could become a lesson in life , so that it would never happen again. I wish I could say that after a certain period of time , these life lessons come to an end. I am not going to lie and say it does. For the rest of my life I will be making attempts to keep learning . I will adapt and overcome. I will stay strong and true to the child that decided to not let the actions of other people , change the person who I want to be !

I was enlightened one day by a convict inside a penitentiary who shared with me that knowledge weighs nothing so obtain as much as you can and carry it with you for the rest of your life. For it will serve you well and it usually does not cost a thing. In this way of thinking I started to understand that no one is going to help me with my life , so I need to start taking accountability onto my shoulders and make improvements in my life. I know that from birth until death I am going to be the only person who is always going to be there. If I do not treat myself like I am the most important person on the planet , no one else is. So I made a commitment to myself that I will not hide from my future but embrace it. I will learn from my mistakes and turn mistakes into lessons learned in life. I will also do my best to share the knowledge I have acquired. I hope I am not alone in this endeavor but am not afraid to stand alone !