I used to think my life would end before it ever really began. Back then, nobody expected me to live past twenty-one. Truth be told, neither did I. When you grow up in a place like Kensington during the years I did, your future feels like a rumor you’re not meant to hear.
I carried anger like it was oxygen, walked streets that taught me to keep my head on a swivel, and made choices that could’ve buried me without anyone being surprised. There was a time when my greatest ambition was to go out on Somerset Street in a blaze of confrontation, as if destruction was the only ending a man like me deserved. That was the mindset — warped, reckless, and born from a childhood where chaos felt like the only language I spoke fluently.
But here’s the strange thing: with distance, with age, with scars that cooled into wisdom, I don’t regret those years. I don’t want to relive them, and you couldn’t drag me back to Kensington today, but I’m grateful for what it carved into me.
The trials, the bad decisions, the near-misses — they forged the man I eventually grew into. Every wrong turn taught me how to recognize the right ones. Every moment I thought I was finished showed me a way to keep going. Every dark corner became a map I’d one day navigate my way out of.
If I had a time machine, I wouldn’t fix a thing. Not because the past was good — most of it wasn’t — but because without it, I don’t know who I’d be. Kensington didn’t give me comfort, but it gave me clarity. It showed me the version of myself I never wanted to become and the strength required to walk away from that path.
I’m forty-three now — twice the age anyone expected me to reach, plus one. And every year past twenty-one feels like a personal rebuttal to a fate I refused to accept.
Day by day, it looked like nothing was changing. But when I look back, everything is different. And I’m still here. Still moving. Still becoming.
