I was supposed to have a normal childhood, but ever since that fateful day when I was two that all changed. I was sitting in the back of my mom’s red sedan when it all happened my mom and dad got into a fight. My father said “I had to drop out, it was for Jay!” then he reached through the window his hand wrapped around my mother’s throat. It was so scary. It wasn’t until my father’s neighbor came out of his house and it got worse. All he did was laugh as he watched my father choke my mother. Thankfully, my mom took off punching him in the stomach. Dad was sent to jail and had to serve in anger management. My mom tried as hard to get me to like him even though she did not. He visited me on weekends until I was five, but he could not care anymore about me after that, even though he says he loves me, he started his downward spiral with drugs. I haven’t seen him since that sunny day. Then a few years ago in my tenth grade when I was struggling, I knew I had to be better than him. He dropped out in the tenth grade and I was a lot better than him.

My mother has been and will always be a saint and the best person in my life. She is the best person I know. Both sides of my family are messed up, filled with smokers, drug addicts, and alcoholics, except for she and I. I only had her to look up to and I am glad because she has essentially made me the person I am today. My mother has had to fight and keep everything in her life, she was never given anything in life, I am glad that it is this way. My mother has taught me all my life not to be like my father and that is how I have lived my life and will continue to live my life. I have never had a need for a “father figure” to teach me to become a man. That is why my Mother was the only role model I needed.

Like I have stated before my father dropped out in the tenth grade at the age of eighteen, his excuse is he dropped out to support me but it was probably the shame of being in the tenth grade for two years in a row. I have passed the tenth grade and my mother has always been proud of me for that. My mother has always said that she wants me to get a high school degree and that was her only expectation of me academically and I want to rise above that and surpass those expectations. I want to be better than my father and show him that his son is better than he will ever be. I also want to prove to him that I didn’t need him to raise me, my mother did all the work and I am a better person for it. I have already proven myself better than him, but I would like to to do more and show everyone that the kid without a father can succeed.

I have already risen above my father like stated before. But, I also want to be my own man and not be compared to my father. I have already proven so much but, I still have so much more to prove and I would like that chance in a place of higher education.