Opinion: Time To Confront Yourself AND Society

I ran away from home at 12 years old. I was one of millions of children who live in constant danger, who learn to fight in order to survive in a volatile environment, both on the streets and at home. A stepfather who drank and beat the mother and children. A mother who fought back against the father and also beat the children. 

After one event I made up my mind. ''I have to get out of here,'' I remember thinking. Me and my brother got caught shoplifting at a local store — we wanted materials for school, pens and folders. Only he got caught. I ran. He was 7. They called the cops while I watched from outside, at a safe distance, powerless.

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When my mom took us home, I got my basic whooping. But my brother, oh brother. Extension cord. And she was hysterical, screaming and crying. I think the stress of life, job issues, being abused by her spouse, the horrors of her difficult life leaving Mexico were some elements that influenced her unstable behavior then. She turned the stove on and dragged my brother toward the flames, to burn his hands. 

For a moment I watched in amazement at the fact that my mother was trying to burn my brother's hands and at the powerful fight my brother put up. In the face of danger, a little boy put up a heroic fight and he actually hit my mother back and was able to prevent her from burning his hands, fighting from pure wild instinct, a little animal in terror.

When she got him close to the stove, I jumped in and grabbed his little hands that desperately reached out to me, his cries begging my help and I helped pull him away from the fire. She whipped me with the cord and I jumped away from her reach. Then she pulled him toward the stove again and we fought her back and forth like this until she got tired and left us alone.

A plan, foiled

One day, soon after, I got the clippers and shaved my head. I saw on the news how they'd show pictures of kids that went missing and I didn't want anyone to recognize me. I felt trapped at home and I was tired of the constant fighting between my parents, tired of being abused by them, of living in constant fear and not being able to feel free. I took $70 from my mom's stash spot and filled a duffel bag with clothes and snacks. My plan was to use that money to buy a gun and do robberies to survive. I went into a pawn shop where I had seen a gun I could afford the week before, but the man just laughed and said they don't sell guns to kids.

I had no other plan, had nowhere to go. I just walked fast, heading deeper into the dangerous LA streets, jittery as if I were getting onto a big ride at the fair. I went to a park and sat against the side of the park office and watched the people play sports and have fun, wondering why they were happy and how it might feel to be like them. Wondering where I was going to sleep, what I was going to eat, what I was going to do to survive.

Eventually a group of gangsters walked up to me. One said, ''Where you from, fool?" asking if I'm from any gang. I said I'm from nowhere. Because I shaved my head and dressed in black, I looked like a Mexican gang member. I held tight to my duffel bag as they asked questions and stood over me and I just told them the truth, that I ran away from home. They invited me to go hang out with them in their section of the park and I accepted, happy that people were accepting me into their group.

A woman in her 20s, a member of the gang, offered me to stay with her and in the evening she took me to her trailer home parked in a backyard. With guilty pain I shoved my brothers and home to the back of my mind, a life I had decided was now in the past. 

At night, the woman asked me to get naked with her. I had never seen porn nor had I received any sort of sex education, so I had no idea what to do. But I lied and told her I had sex before. I just did what she said because I was curious and I didn't want her to kick me out. But I didn't even know where the pieces went. She had to show me. 

It wasn't that good for me and I guess it wasn't so good to her either, a grown woman having sex with a 12-year-old boy. It was very awkward and something inside me felt dirty, like now I wasn't good anymore and I had lost some invisible treasure, leaving me empty and cheap and with a vague sense of loss. The next morning she told me I had to leave.           

I went to the only people I could think of who might help, the gangsters I met at the park. They took me to the house of one of the local leaders and told him my situation. The man, Vic, told me I could live with him, but I had to work. He called me ''little brother,'' and from that moment on I felt we were family. 

‘I felt proud’

Soon after I was helping them commit robberies and burglaries. They taught me how to drive, handle guns, sell drugs and the ways of the streets. They put me in an abandoned house that had power and water and had me sell crack and hold guns there. I began to smoke weed, drink and have unprotected sex with grown women. One day soon after, as we're walking down the street, a van pulled up beside us and a group of men jumped out with bats, my first taste of ''enemies.'' I was confused, scared and had no clue who they were, why they wanted to hurt us or why they were so angry.

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We ran. I had a small pistol that Vic had me carry sometimes. He yelled at me to stop running and to shoot. Afraid, I pulled the gun out and turned on the men chasing us. I had never fired a gun. I didn't want to. But I just did. The men turned in shock and ran back to their van and sped away. I met Vic and the other homie with us back in the house. Vic was getting other guns from under his mattress and told me I did a good job and that the gun I had fired was mines now. He said I could earn a bigger one once I proved to be a solid soldier. I felt proud and part of a family.

You can guess what sort of life happened next. Deaths, drugs, crime, in and out of jail. I spiraled, faster and faster, on that cycle towards the bottom, towards destruction. Sometimes I wonder what if I had been welcomed by musicians instead. Or if some church people would've taken me in. Or if I had walked to Hollywood instead and was used by the men who use runaways to sell merchandise to tourists on the streets there. Or if I had never ran away and just kept going to school. Anything but meeting those gang members that day. 

But I don't regret what happened. It was meant to be.

‘You can mold society’

In this hyper-individualist society, the individual is celebrated. When he has amazing success, he takes all the credit, as if no one and nothing helped him. And when he fails, when he makes mistakes and struggles in life, the same thing happens — he is held responsible for his own demise. In this individualist society, it is his own fault for being poor and not educated and falling into the violent traps of poverty. Society and his environment take no responsibility. The individual is blamed for his own struggles and in this way society is left off the hook, it doesn't have to change.

But I am not blaming society. No. I used to. But it is important to acknowledge to what degree society is responsible for the plight of millions who fall into crime and drugs and are victimized by their circumstances. A child who comes from a happy and healthy home, in a safe and healthy town, does not naturally turn to crime and gangs. In a factory, if the machinery continues to manufacture broken products, you don't look at the individual products and blame them for breaking themselves. You look at the whole factory, the process of it all and pinpoint where the problem is, what is causing the defects, in order to produce strong and healthy products.

Massive amounts of data collected by social scientists demonstrate that we are largely molded by our environments. If you get on an elevator and everyone is facing one way, more than likely you will turn in the same direction as everyone else. If all your friends wear certain clothes and listen to certain music, you probably will follow the trend. It is natural to seek to belong to a group. But sometimes that group could be toxic to the individual, as in street gangs, even though that might be the only option at the time. Culture is the set of behaviors that you absorb from your surroundings and at times, we absorb negative cultures. But it is human.

And it is hard to break free of habits. It begins with taking responsibility for your actions and recognizing that a much larger world exists beyond the small area you come from. Remember you are human, because society does tend to forget that's what we are. Don't blame yourself and don't blame society. But do acknowledge the hurtful actions both sides have taken. 

It is not easy, my friend. It is not easy to fall to the bottom, to fail, to be a certain way for so many years, to only know how to be one way, to only know how to survive and function one way and then be sent away to prison and then trying to make a normal life. We don't have many options. The odds are stacked against us. But you can fight against those odds and work on creating a new culture. Only if you choose to do so. Things will not change themselves and success for us does not come easy.

I am still heavily shaped by my environment, where I come from. But it's not who I am, it doesn't define me. There comes a point where you can begin to mold society instead. To rise up and let those old negative cultures go. When I ran away from home, I didn't know there was nowhere to run. Society had us in a prison. I ran from reality, ran from myself. Lost myself. 

In this cell, I cannot run anymore. They gave me life [sentence] in prison and I have come to appreciate life, in prison. Not much has changed across society. The factory is still broken, producing broken humans. Some kid is running away right now, joining a gang. Firing a gun. Committing crimes to survive. Keeping the prisons full. While politicians call us criminals and lock us up, instead of addressing the real problems.

It is time to stop running. Time to confront yourself, to confront society. To find and make a healthy family. To educate yourself. 

I don't even care if I die here anymore. Whether out there, or in this cell, I will be ME. I guess that is what it means to be free. I think that is what that kid was looking for when he ran away. Looking for his place in this world. Looking for himself. And sadly, I found him at last, in this empty cell.

Z is serving 137 years to life on kidnapping and robbery charges in a California state prison level 4 prison yard.

The Beat Within, a publication of writing and art from incarcerated youth, was founded by David Inocencio in San Francisco in 1996. Weekly writing and conversation workshops are held in California, six other states and Washington, D.C. Submissions and new partners are welcomed. Write to him at dinocencio@thebeatwithin.org.