My Cycle of Life- Hand Crafted by Oppressors

by Kristen Darrelle Chambliss

My cycle of life was hand-crafted by oppressors who hate me. The cycle they put together was to fail. With only a few ways to escape it and they are to go to a professional sport, sell illegal drugs, or death. My vision is to change that and get my education and succeed in life. I will never be like the others who I call sellouts who sell drugs and their bodies on the street. Or ones who walk on the street and act like they know everything and have twenty and hundred dollar bills in their pocket, and see everyone else around them not to be on their level. We are not different.

This all goes back to what one of my teachers Mr. Zarazua was talking about how living in a poor society leads to poor education, the leads to a low paying job. Growing up for me was and still is hard for me. For eighteen months when I was a little baby me, my sister, and my brother was taken away from my mother and put into a foster home. After she got us back for a few years we kept moving form home to home looking for a good place to live in east Oakland. Time after time the bills got higher and more people became homeless. If it wasn’t for my mother, a single parent who loves and supports me, a young black man, I would be dead or in the streets selling illegal drugs.

With every school I went to, I did the best ii could to get my education. The schools that I went to had barely enough money to stay open. Now it is even worse in the new year. Schools across the nation are being shut down while people, innocent people, die oversees. I might not be the best person that I can be but people will never hear about me being arrested after a drive-by shooting, or in a courtroom with a first, second, or third strike against me.

I will break the cycle of failure and try my best to help those around me who needs it. Many people say that he or she will succeed in life but end up in getting caught up in the system. Do I believe that you can change your destiny? Well just ask and I will tell you that you can. I’m not saying that it is not hard but it can happen.