The Art of My Failure

My story begins in a third world country, Jamaica to be more specific. I'm the 3rd child of a total of 6 children for my mom. A woman having so little time to share as she tends to the needs of everyone and also herself. I discovered at a very tender age that I had the ability to draw, I embraced my artistic nature. It loved me and I loved it back. I had no idea that my love for Art would become a curse, how so you ask? I was failing school. I didn't know and quite frankly I didn't even know.

What was reading? I didn't have the slightest clue, teachers labeled me a failure right off the bat. My salvation came in the form of my mom, at this point in time I was living with her. My bags packed, she gave me one last pep talk and shipped me off to military school. Wait if y'all really know Jamaica we don't have military school. So where did she send me? That's right to live with my Dad, I think if you searched for the word "discipline" in the dictionary you would see a picture of my Dad. I had to learn the fundamentals of literacy, caress her with my artistic mind. Words illuminated my darkness, I absorded their rays and grew, constantly surpassing the limitations that my former educators placed on me.

I faught for my life. In a system where the weak was left behind I pulled a John Wick and just like him my educational success came at a cost. A year after my mom sent me to live with my dad she was murdered. My world became a living nightmare, I walked around with a broken heart but I had a whole mind. How am I to comprehend the complexity of loss at such a tender age? I was 10. Psycologically I was scared, my youth could not put 1 to this 0, at this pivital moment in my life I lost one of my heroes. I was now at a cross road Books or Bullets that's the reality of this tropical paradise. I opened books that took me to realms that gave rise to artistic passion that will forever burn.

Reading is more than just a skill thus every human being must be given this key to open the mind's eye. All facetes of life is impacted by reading. I'm a living example of a life that reading has changed and saved. "Reading maketh a man" as my fellow countrymen would say, never neglect the strongest muscle that you possess feed it and flex with a book.