So...As I walked down the road, thick trash bag in hand, the cold wind biting my ears on a deserted corner in a really ghetto hood in small town Temple, TX my mind wandered. How did you get here?
Well dummy, it answered back, You know how you got here.
Oh how the mighty have fallen.
2 years ago I was "The Man". Living in Austin, TX, a good amount stashed in my bank account, and 60,000 stashed in a box underneath a layer of packing paper and an old printer in a storage unit, I thought I was the shit. I thought I'd never lose what I had made, and that it would only grow larger.
Then guess what? Shit happened.
Neighbors started hating, the house got broken into twice, and the old felon me's mind started contemplating some of the worse shit to do to people, just to show them I wasn't the one to fuck with.
Me and my wife started sleeping on a mattress jammed against the front door -- No kickin' in our shit. I had my Bowflex blocking the backdoor and a gun ready.
A gun that this felon was definitely not supposed to have. A gun that would've taken my own life away.
I had already done 108 months in the Feds behind guns, and here I was taking my new found hustlin' mentality and fucking up again.
I had gotten out and started selling "Reggie". That progressed to "Dro" and then the real money started to come.
I say real money because it was more than my poor ass had ever seen before. And it came in like a 1990's crack house!
So yeah, I thought I was the shit. I was providing for my family and I had enough to lend to friends. And it felt good.
No other scheme was gonna put me in the money, being a felon and all -- so I thought.
But anyway back to the story...
Things got worse and the sensible me said, OK it's time to go. I didn't want to, but other factors where at play at the same time.
If you don't know, Austin---The city I grew up in --- isn't very felon friendly these days. They don't like to rent to felons. And rent ain't cheap!
But I had the money.
But every time it came time to renew, we either had to move -- no we definitely had to move -- and it was always to another spot in the "hood". Only the most ghetto for us.
Fuck.
So, as all the shit was going on and the fact that nobody really wanted to rent to us, plus the facts that (1)We were prisoners in our own home and (2) I was really starting to feel like a fraud -- Because everything we had was from ill begotten gains-- We decided to move out of Austin.
We made lots of excuses. Like; it's cheaper ; we'll last longer; and so on. But truth be told, I knew this would be the end of the money and I was sick to my stomach. I was gonna walk away from it all.
Kind of.
But remember the beginning line in this post? And the title? Well check out part 2 for another piece of this story.
Thanks for reading.
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From @selfmade78704