Most of my close friends are aware that I don’t associate with the majority of my immediate family; sometimes you have to shake the bad influences in your life even if they are blood bound. This doesn’t mean that I have lived a life without family; it simply means that I’ve had to learn family values in another way… through finding my brothers. I picked up most of my family on the street, a little game where you weed out the good ones through acts of absolute loyalty. This was a very hard task, considering my environment was a breeding ground for snakes. But I think that when you are constantly placed in an abundance of volatile situations, acts of loyalty and character identification shine through like a light in a pit of darkness. This is how I found my lifelong brothers.
My brothers have experienced the inside of prison walls, drug addiction, homelessness, incomprehensible violence, a plethora of death and through all of this, we have all stood by eachother. I guess I didn’t find them through traditional methods, but I feel the bonds built in precarious situations are stronger than a simple likeminded personality connection.
As we all walked similar paths, we were able build an armoured love for eachother. In my moments of angst, they’d drop everything to be there for me, when the world was against me, they’d stand proudly by my side, when it seemed that life wasn’t worth living, they always remind me that we didn’t go through all this hardship for nothing.
Friendship is about good times, honesty and a sense of comradery, but my brand of family is an indescribable bond that is only communicated through energy and gesture. It is the type of thing that builds a modern type of wisdom that is strictly for the moment and stands still in time.
I am proud to say that we all passed the challenges thrown at us, but still bare the scars of the past. I know that our experiences have awarded us a deep understanding for both sides of the fence and all of us are passionate about passing our wisdom on to our next generations.
I’m blessed that through life experience, I earnt the opportunity to have some of the best people around me. My brothers need not be named, they know who they are. I want to thank all of them for making me the man I am today.