Before I go to bed, I check every lock in house. I make sure my children are in bed and a light is left on, just in case. When I wake up in the morning, I'm even more vigilant as I walk down the hall to check my home once again before leaving for work. I bring this sense of caution with me wherever I go and in everything I do. The first thing I do when I walk into a room is look for multiple exits and take a mental inventory of potential weapons. If a room is occupied by people, I sum up who will be the hardest to overcome and who to take out first should a problem arise. How did I get this way, you might ask. Here is my story. Well what we have time for.
It all started in a rough part of New York, where my mother who is partially paralyzed from the waist down, raised my siblings and me. I never really had a chance to meet my father because one muggy day while he was working he lost his footing and fell from the ledge of a bridge. He was impaled through the skull with a piece of rebar and passed away instantly. After his passing my mother had a few male companions but the ones that I remember left the biggest scars. When my brother was seven, my sister was four and I was five my mom let a man come and live with us. This man sexually assaulted my siblings and I for a couple of months before either one of us finally got the courage to speak up.
At the age of twelve I saw my first dead body. While walking down the street with my mother's new boyfriend we saw a man lying limp on the sidewalk. His head was turned to the side and there was blood pouring from his mouth, encircling his head like a halo. The man's ice cold eyes stared into the distance, probably locked on his last view of life. It was that moment in my life when I realized that life is fragile. At thirteen my downstairs neighbor, Bud was out riding his motorcycle. Bud was struck by a pickup and died upon impact; he was only a block from the house.
