Me…..
I was born and raised in Santa Barbara. I lived with my dad and older brother Isaias. My mother disappeared when I was the age of one and a half so I never got to know her or her side of the family. According to my family it was due to her addictions. I had pretty rough child hood. After my fifth birthday, my dad got a new girlfriend that he really liked. I really didn’t like her very much at all. You are probably thinking it is because the fact I was going to have a new mom. My first impression of her was a very kind and caring person. She ended up being the exact opposite. When I was with her, (which was most of the time because my dad worked from noon until eleven.) I was not permitted to leave her house or have ay sort of entertainment. So I was deprived of having friends and knowing much of about being a kid. My daily routine with her was once my dad left to work both my brother and I had to sit on the staircase all day of her two story apartment until ten thirty at night (half hour before my dad would get home) and if we were to fall asleep we would be awakened by having ice cold water poured on us. There is also a lot of other stuff that happened that I would much rather not get into detail about. When my dad would get home from work he would be my hero because I would get a break from her, so I would be watching the clock all waiting for him to get home. I did not get any freedom until I reached the eighth grade when I was aloud to leave the house on the condition that the apartment was sparkling clean and that I had really good grades (nothing lower than a b). That is when I had really gotten into fishing. I would spend any time I could fishing anywhere I can go. It got to the point where all the locals new me or had heard of me. At the same time my brother was starting a lot of trouble were we lived and we were constantly moving from apartment to apartment (we were moving on the average of every six to fourteen months).
By the time I was a freshman in high school my brother had gone to Juvenal hall a few times and my dad had already been drinking daily for about a year and I was already on meds for depression. I was still doing well in school and had just started working volunteer on a party boat out of Santa Barbara named the Stardust. It was a way for me to get away from home and take my mind off of all the things going on my life. Everything was ok until the day I got in trouble in the beginning of my junior year. I got expelled for having a knife on me at school. What happened was that I was fishing with my friend Kyle on the weekend and had left my pocket knife with him and while across the street from campus I stumbled into him and paid him back some money I owed him from that he had lent me for lunch the week before and right as I was heading back to school he called me back and gave me my knife I had left with him that weekend. I figured no one would suspect me of anything and had no reason to search me because I was a good student. Well when I got back to school there was an admin waiting for me. He told me, U gave Kyle money and he gave u something and u put it in your pocket. Show me what it was. That’s all it took for me to get expelled. No matter what I did or even my background of being popular fisherman (I had already been in the newspaper twice for it) couldn’t help me from expulsion.
I graduated from El Puente community school the beginning of my senior year with about two hundred and sixty credits. By then I wanted a fresh start and wanted to go to school in a different area because I didn’t want to be in Santa Barbara anymore. But because I was seventeen I was not aloud to leave anywhere without my dads permission. I knew if I went to the local city college I would be too distracted to get anything done. Once I turned eighteen I left the house to try to enroll to at least Oxnard College. But when I did that my dad threatened me that if I was to go to college away from him, he would move far away never to be seen again. I figured I would ignore him and just go to school and get on with life. About three days later I started getting phone calls from family that he was drinking heavily and was really depressed. I figured he would get over it soon. He didn’t. The last call I got was from his girlfriend saying that she couldn’t wake him up and that she had been trying for hours. So I left to home. I didn’t have a job or anything anymore and he was no longer supporting me. I’ve had to keep asking family to help me with food and clothes. After so much time of having nothing I got too tired of being with him. I told my self that if I couldn’t overcome him I would get nowhere in life. So I chose to leave him and know I’m trying to get back into school. It is kind of hard for me now because I haven’t had any real schooling in almost four years.
What I want for my future is still unclear to me. All I know is that I want to make something of my self because I have lived to long already with having nothing of my own and I want to live a better life. I hope that going to college will be able to help me choose a career I want and teach me the life skills for living by myself happily. I thank you all who have taken your time to read this and hope you have it better than I do.
