Now I Am A Different Person

My teenage years were rough ones. While my life started out very simply, like so many teenagers when I reached that point in my life I totally fell off mark, part of it was circumstantial and part of it was me just being an angry person. Recently, I have been inspired by an old friend to open up a little about that part of my life, so that is what I am writing about today.

My life started out very simply, I was home schooled right away and I didn't enter school until 3rd grade. I tested into 4th grade really, but my mother wasn't going to let me be that far ahead and I am glad she didn't because I was very naive. We pretty much always lived in the country growing up, I remember chopping wood with Dad, fishing, canoeing and listening to the Red Sox on the radio. We were a church going family and I was raised with the Bible, memorizing scripture like there was no tomorrow. We never went to the movies, dances, we didn't celebrate Halloween and I didn't get to watch most of the things everyone else did on TV in the 80's. We lived a sheltered middle class life and that's all I knew.

Some time around my twelfth birthday things took a dramatic turn in my life. My parents divorced and not soon after, my Father was in a terrible motorcycle accident. He has fractured his head in 6 places, I remember asking him to squeeze my hand...just like a movie. I didn't know where Dad was for a couple of days following the accident. My girlfriend/best friend at the time were literally waiting for him to go to Rocky Point, an amusement park in Rhode Island when he never came home. That was the first time Dad never came home...it wasn't his fault, he was unconscious.

Sooner or later we did receive that call, I was staying at my grandmothers at the time and was already quite shook up from the divorce and then this. It was hard. My father eventually came home, his injuries were severe at the time I didn't realize that it was going to take 10 years to fully heal, but it was bad. I remember my Dad being irritated by light, he cursed a lot and he didn't remember what things were, simple things, like Cheerios, he called them little donuts. I tried really hard to fetch what he needed, guessing a lot and getting yelled at a lot. It wasn't his fault, but it scared the crap out of me. I remember helping Dad bathe, he had a helluva shoulder injury and his balance was off. After a while things were too difficult and I went down to Florida with my mom.

Florida was hard, we moved to one of the wealthier cities and my life was much different. My mom was really busy trying to feed us kids and my Dad couldn't help with child support because his job involved a lot of math and frankly, he just didn't remember how to do it. I spent my days in a new school, sticking out like a sore thumb, I was different and I had a difficult time making friends because after school I had to watch my little brother and sister while mom went to work. I hated it, I missed home and I missed my friends and I missed my family.

As time went on I became more frustrated and frustrated. I had no friends and I couldn't seem to find the time to make them. I got an old computer and I began logging on to local bulletin boards. Back then the Internet was in its beginning stages, it was sorta like there were local little websites that were ran from peoples personal computers and we would dial in with modems and chat and exchange games etc. I learned how to hack phone lines and wreak havoc and that kept me entertained for a while, I was also able to meet a few people, some cool and some not so cool. I began sneaking out of the house late at night to go hang out, I started to smoke pot and drink, but at the time it was still pretty harmless. I had no idea that some of the people I was associating had very bad intentions, until one day I found out and that was the last I ever hung with that crowd. I wasn't fully aware at the time, but there was a good chance that I woulda gotten molested in that crowd....I heeded the warnings and I am glad I did.

All of a sudden I was back to square one. I had isolated myself with the computer a lot, still had no friends and was still forced to be in the house a lot. My Mom hated that I was sneaking out and thought I was being a lot badder than I was, mainly because of my temper. I was beginning to hate the world. I soon realized that Mom couldn't make me babysit, she couldn't make me stay home and I didn't have to be without friends. I began to skip school and sneak out more and more, I decided I wanted the nice Polo's and the things that the kids around me had, so I made a friend and we began robbing cars at night. We would walk through all of the Apartment complexes around, checking doors and pull the stereos and whatever else was in them out. It was fun and an adrenaline rush and I began to make cash and forget about my problems.

One night me and two buddies went out for our evening crime spree and we took it too far. I was 15 at the time and it was around Christmas. We were having our fun snatching things out of cars, when we stumbled on a Chevy Blazer with the Keys in it. We hopped in the Blazer got a case of beer and headed to Tampa. We drove around Tampa a while, driving through fences and yards when my buddy who was driving just kind of lost it. I didn't know him well at the time, but I guess his Dad had kicked him out and he decided it was time to die and he was taking us with him. We were headed towards the Skyway Bridge in St. Petersburg when hit hit 100 MPH and he said "Fuck it" and threw the radar detector out the window. The next thing that I remember is watching the wheels spin and trying to get out of there. Apparently I climbed out of it, I had my seat belt on, but I don't remember. We closed down the Skyway at 6 am for hours, my friend had to be airlifted out and I was arrested for the first time in my life. Grand Theft Auto a felony and if my buddy died it was gonna be a lot worse, the beer was in the backseat and we were all drunk, so if he died that potentially meant manslaughter.

That Christmas was rough. I know I must have shot my Moms last nerves out after all that she went through. I got grounded, but all of a sudden I was a lot cooler so that didn't matter. I did my little probation, but I didn't learn my lesson. I began stealing more and doing harder drugs. I did cocaine for the first time on my front stoop. Soon my Dad would come because I was out of control, but he wasn't well. My Mom moved out andI stayed with Dad, my brother and sister and his roommates. No one really knew that Dad was still really messed up. He stayed out late at night and I had very little supervision. I began getting wasted a lot, one day after school my Dad just didn't come home, again.

After a few days of no Dad I was a violent drunken mess. I didn't call my Mom at first, I just waited. Soon my Brother and Sister were running out of food so I called mom. She came and got them, somehow I convinced her to let me stay. My friends and I ate a bunch of acid and came up with the bright idea to pay the rent ourselves. 5 of us moved in, my moms hands were full and I was very defiant and angry so she just kind of let me do it. We spent our summer selling drugs, throwing parties fighting and robbing people. We stole cars and robbed houses, I worked, but never had enough hours due to my age. All of a sudden I was one of the cool kids and I got off on doing dangerous things, risking my life and damaging others, I hated everything alive. That summer was the hardest summer of my life. I never heard from my Father and the last time that happened he was almost dead. I don't think the adults in my life realized how to help me, or how bad I really was.

Eventually my Dad turned up and eventually we got kicked out of the Apt. but not before we all climbed the DRUG food chain pretty high. We were constantly raided by Detectives, but we were never caught. On more than one occasion I was woken up by Police putting shackles around my ankles to scare me. There was no room at Moms so I said I wanted to go up to Rhode Island with Dad. I went back to my old town, some old friends and things changed. People were smoking crack a lot, I wasn't down with crack, but I had no problem learning how to sell it. My Dad's head wasn't right, he stayed in bed a lot and I didn't see him much. I drank a liter of Vodka a day and I got into fights and I learned how to sell drugs on the street, instead of in the house.

Soon my mother realized that I was unsupervised and I went back to Florida. I arrived like a bat out of hell. My friends were now forging checks and I began breaking into houses and stealing guns. I stole cars all of the time, mainly to commit other crimes without having the vehicle traced. One day I worked with someone who wasn't hip to the game and I got pinched. I spent 6 months in a juvenile boot camp. That boot camp is what I call the turning point, even though I did a lot worse things after the boot camp, it saved my life and taught me the importance of male role models. It saved my life because the Rave scene blew up around the same time and a lot of my friends started using needles. I graduated high school in the boot camp and got a scholarship and then was unleashed back onto the streets.

I swore when I got out that I was going to do good this time, but in a matter of days I had a pocket full of coke and pills and I was headed to Tampa to party all night long. We began doing and selling more and more drugs, there were times that i was high on 6-7 drugs at a time. We beat people up pretty bad during this time...it was almost like a little mini mafia we had with my buddies being part owners of the club and all of the drugs in it. There was a time when I could get anything you want at anytime and most of the time I didn't even have to pay, Cocaine was so plentiful.

I spent several years selling drugs, I've sold Coke, Crack, Heroin, Ecstasy, Rohyphnol, Oxycontin and Acid, you name it. I was arrested a lot before I turned 18, but I got smarter and somehow managed to only get caught for the little stuff as an adult. As a kid I was arrested for Assault and Battery's, Burglary's, Grand Theft, Possession and countless Violation of Probation's. Eventually I got a girlfriend and settled down, quit the drugs and got a good job at a video store. I was about 18, I moved up fast eventually I got my own store and things were good. I enrolled in college. My problem was that while I had changed so much on the outside, I didn't change on the inside, I would get drunk and still make the same dumb mistakes. One day I was short on rent so I robbed a house, it was the last house ever, I couldn't deal with the guilt and late at night I returned everything and never looked back.

I have made a lot of mistakes in my life, I have stolen cars and driven across the country. I have ran Heroin across state lines. I have sold Crack out of hotels, you name it, I have done it, but after that day I returned that stuff, I began to realize that I was an angry person and I needed to change. I found a mentor who taught me to mix my street smarts with book smarts and I began educating myself. It was a long climb, it took me literally years to get to the point where I was a happy person again. I learned self hypnosis, and meditation, I retraced my childhood steps, I really faced the past in order to let go of it and eventually I did.

It has been many, many years since I have stolen anything and to this day I am still trying to heal the relationships in my life. I have learned to give back in any way that I can and I have learned to share with people. It has become my mission to reach out to young people who are alone and lost and angry and I write my blog to show the people in my life that you can also be happy. God saved my life time in and time out, but I didn't really begin to grow until I learned to accept myself, my life, what is and embrace the moment. It's all about NOW. NOW is the time to be the best YOU that YOU can be, that's where the true happiness is.

I still screw up from time to time, but now my mistakes are very little ones in comparison. I can't believe the person that I was all of those years ago. I was lucky, to have good roots and to have been smart enough to find key mentors at key times to help guide me out of those dark caves I was in, but some people are not that lucky. There are so many people out there who don't have good roots and don't have people who care about them. I have seen a lot of them die young and lonely and a lot of times it was just lack of direction or attention.

My Dad is now well, later, when I got married I learned that his type of injury takes 10 years to fully heal. He is now working at a desk and back in his field and has just recently purchased a new home in Atlanta. My mother, God bless her, has built herself a little empire in a small town where she attends church regularly and has been able to show my sister and neice a different life and me, I'm ok. Thank God that I have been able to systematically work on myself and while it has been many years since I have committed any crimes, it wasn't until 3 years ago that I really turned it up and started to fine tune the areas of my life that matter most. I have never been closer to my family than now because of it.

Now I think it's getting near time for me to turn it up a notch again. I've been married and divorced and I have learned to enjoy the simpler things in life. I enjoy being alone and I love people and I love my life. I have experienced so much. I have learned that I don't have to DO WHATEVER IT TAKES to be a big baller and have a lot of flashy things and I have learned to appreciate simple, now I am ready to move forward and make the certain decisions that effect the rest of my life in the most positive ways.

These days a lot of the people in my life have no idea where I came from because I am just such a different person, so now I feel like it is time to share who I once was. There are some of you who knew me way back then and have seen how far I have come internally and I thank you for sticking by me...for the friends who I have made in the last 8 years or so who don't know where I came from, here is a sneak preview of the book....there are a lot of stories and a lot of chapters that got me to where I am today.

Now I am a different person, now I am a MAN and it's time to shoot for the sky!

~1 love

Tilly
(thanks Kim keep it up!!)

and very special thanks to my mentors over the years.... Joe Chestnut, Ed Sullivan, Theresa Cardin, Matisse Long, Kelvin Blyden, Stephen Lortz,Larry DeNofio, Bob Thomas (R.I.P) Gary Muniz, Sandi Piper, Mr T and all the guys at Crossroads, My Uncle Leo, Uncle Shorty and Aunt Sue, Al Rocuant, Dina Rocuant (R.I.P.), Paul Rocuant my Grandmother and of course MOM and DAD