My name is August M. Williams, and I’m giving you, the reader, brief insight on me as a young person. I was born in a middle class homestead, and was blessed enough to experience more joyful moments than sad ones. Both of my parents were in the house until I was five years old, which affected me a lot. I was told as a child I laugh and smile a lot, love to explore because I was curious about what’s around the corner, and had a thing for building block toys because building something is exciting to me. I was also hyperactive, so staying still was hard for me and I would have explosive emotional moments when tense or felt embarrassed.
I felt lonely a lot because my father didn’t live with us anymore, and it became a norm for me to create my own friends in my head and play with them alone in my room. Socializing with others was difficult and stressful back then. Between the ages of six and twelve I developed an aggressive behavior because I felt worthless and I honestly couldn’t see a future for myself. I stopped trying to be somebody important. My attitude towards school and life was like, “What’s the point”. Family members would try to talk to me when I did wrong but nobody understood how defeated and insufficient I felt growing up. My father is a great liar and manipulator and he was part of the root reason for my destructive behavior. The other part is that I chose to be.
I never heard my father say anything good about me and it seemed like he enjoyed comparing me to other children which made me feel more worthless because I had to compete for my own father’s attention and love. Despite my anger towards my father – for a long time I just wanted him to recognize me, to teach me something constructive and explain to me what it means to be a man. None of that ever happened.
There were times when school was fun and exciting because I had a few teachers who knew how to reach me so I learned something. But on May 7, 1984, my loneliness lessened a great deal because my brother, E, was born. He’s that light I need in a room of darkness that I’ll forever protect and hold onto. My father was jealous of my brother the moment I put, E, before him, and that fact was well known to me because of how he treated me thereafter.
By middle school, I worshiped the attention I got from my peers when I did bad things, which was the motivating factor of my joining a gang, drinking alcohol, using and selling drugs, and sad to say – emotionally and verbally abusive towards girls. Lying, stealing, and manipulating became my old behavior. Back then I took great pride in being noticed by my peers because I understood their insecurities, fears, neglect, hopelessness, and the pain they live in. To have someone who you love tell you every time they get mad at you or look down at you in disgust say, “You won’t amount to nothing”, “You are so stupid”, “I don’t know why you’re so dumb”, or “You’re gonna end up in prison or dead one day” for years will do a number on your mind. Thanks for reading and I will submit another soon.