Growing up as an immigrant teenager in Long Island, New York wasn't easy, especially because I had left my homeland behind and took on the new journey of life that my parents were preparing me for.

One of the first problems I had to face was the language barrier which as the days went by, it started to become easier for me to learn to communicate with others besides using sign language trying to get a point across. I was humiliated by people that spoke the same language as me but didn’t want to speak it, simply because they felt superior for knowing English and didn’t give two shits about just another Latino in the bunch.

This made me set a goal to keep getting better and better at the language by listening, reading and writing everyday trying to improve my communication skills and after 6 months of arriving in the US I was already speaking to my classmates and a year later competing in a spelling bee contest in 8th grade which I took home 2nd place. Unfortunately this also gave me the opportunity to mingle with the wrong crowd of people and I was introduced to the drug game.

I tried weed and alcohol for the first time when I was about to turn 13 years old just to look "cool" and try to fit in with the rest of the crew because I didn’t want to be left out or experiencing the feeling of humiliation like it had happened a few years before. Besides consuming drugs, I was now involved in the distribution of narcotics, not a big time drug dealer or a Capo but I was making 600 USD a week at the age of 15 in school.

This money ambition had driven me to this point and unfortunately I loved every emotion that my body felt every time I was cashing money into my pockets but not reflecting upon the harm I was doing to other people. In school I was never very disciplined and was about to drop out but I had clear that education was very necessary to learn how to make more money and a couple of years later at the age of 17, almost getting done with high school I got introduced to cocaine and a new business strategy to earn more money.

Now things at home were looking very ugly with my parents, whom the only thing they ever wanted for me was a brighter future, far away from all those problems that we were facing back in our country and to their surprise, I was now surrounded by problematic situations in a foreign country.

My mother didn’t like the “friends” I hung out with and always said to me,
“Tell me who you’re walking with and I’ll tell you who you are."

But at that time I didn’t absorb that strong message she was trying to get me to understand. So the drug consumption kept progressing, on top of this by the age of 18 I was morbidly obese, weighing 265 lbs because of bad eating habits and alcohol abuse and to top it off I had high blood pressure. Also, my pancreas was producing too much insulin so I could’ve turned diabetic and I had symptoms of cirrhosis because my liver was showing initial signs of malfunctioning.

At this moment after leaving the doctor’s office, I was struck by reality and decided that I had to make a change for my life and not only because of my health, but for my parents who really deserved it.

I moved back to my country of origin because I applied for college and my petition was denied because I didn’t have a green card. This made me realize that I wasn't worth shit in the U.S., and I definitely didn't have a future there realizing the last 8 years of my life had been thrown away in a garbage can. Now I was 20 years old, had lost 20 lbs and was trying to change my life but I was living back in the home of Pablo Escobar, guerrilla and paramilitary groups and all sorts of delinquency which absorbed me once again into that “fast lane” life.

I was going to college at this period of time. My money here was worth almost triple compared to the exchange rate, so basically I was on party animal mode and leading a very promiscuous active sex life.

I kept abusing my health for the next couple of years and things just got worse as I started getting involved with murderers, drug traffickers and others not to mention. This time I was so caught up with drug consumption that my parents had started to get more worried about the situation because my family members had told them I was taking the wrong road to walk in life, the worst thing that they didn’t know was that I had dropped out of college in 7th semester while believing I was attending.

Before the semester was done my mother had the gut feeling and found out I didn’t sign up that semester. This was the most devastating news my parents could’ve gotten but I recognize that for me, it was the most shameful thing I’ve done in my life because I was raised to not be a quitter and that was exactly what I was doing, quitting!

I’m 29 years old right now, I lost more than 60 lbs and I live with my girlfriend whom I adore and I have changed my life. My new life started 2 years ago. Back then I didn't know her yet and I was very controlled with drugs but at least twice a month I was partying not as bad as when I used to party for two days straight in a row.

But it seemed like this drug demon was trying to possess me again.

In between of one of those nights in a rush of cocaine I got into a fight with the wrong person.

This person was a known hitman and when I realized it, it was too late to step back. He was actually from around my way and I grew up with him before I had left overseas but that wasn’t a good reason for him to threaten to kill me. The thing was that I couldn’t go to the police because that’s just something you can’t do unless you’re trying to stay alive.

Two days later like it was what I call a miracle, he got caught and charged with more than 7 murders and three attempts. This was a sign that God works in different and magical ways because in return for that I promised to focus on recovering my life and climbing out of the hole that I was burying myself in.

Now I’m two years cocaine, tobacco and alcohol free and like my favorite rapper Biggie Smalls said,

“And I went from negative to positive, and it’s all good!”

-Secret Writer