Childhood

   Looking back to my childhood it was a bittersweet experience. The reason why is because for the first half of my childhood I grew up with an abusive father. My biological father was in gang activity, and never spent any time with his family, when he did spent time with us, it wasn't anything to sweet to take in. My "father" would hit me with the electric wire, but it was not a soft hit, it was hit that will leave your back red, and all bruised up. My "father" hit me when I could not spell my name right correctly, even though it was the first day of kindergarten, and he also hit me when I asked him I was hungry and wanted food to eat. Well where was my mother during all of this? Well my "father" never wanted to help out in the house, so my mom had to take jobs to pay for bills and rent. The only time I felt safe was when I was in my bed, and doing word search puzzle (it was a book my mother bought me). I loved doing word search puzzle, even though I did not know what the words meant, or how to do pronunciation, I knew how to find them in the book by following letter by letter. One day my mother had the courage to give my dad an ultimatum, "do you choose your gang or your family." Not surprisingly he chose the gang over his kids. He then leaves the house, and hours later he gets arrested. He has served 14 years in prison, and that is the last I saw of him. In retrospect I  don't miss him at all, I'm glad he got arrested, and I never have to see him again. Yet, the issue that happen, had a very big impact on me, I began to isolate my self from people. I never spoke, I was labeled as the "shy kid." I did not like it all, and this shyness I had  prevented me from doing activity and making new friends. It does make me sad when I see kids having a good connection with their father, but also it makes me happy that their father is there, and helping them out in the life journey. I promised myself the day I become a father I would be their for my kids, and they don't have to worry me leaving.
        I was not the brightest person in the class, I will always do bad in my vocabulary test, and my math skills were so awful. My mother who wasn't a native English speaker would corroborate me with my vocab test, and then one day I did good in one test. Ever since that one test, I started doing good in class, going from the dumb kid to the smart kid. Ever since then I have been an ostentatious person when it comes to academics. I am now good at mathematics, and I got to skip from Math 80 to Math 180. I also won second place at my school spelling bee, and I won second place at the California Science Center Science Fair on Microbiology, which is where my interest in biology started growing.

>>Fast Forward>>
Well now I am a 19 year old, who attends El Camino College in hoping to transfer to UC San Diego, and getting my Bachelor's Degree in Human Biology. I am the first person in my family to graduate from High School, and go to college, and I'm euphoric that all my hard work paid off, and I still need more to go, but it all pays off.
I am not the shy kid I was years ago. I like making new friends, even though people tell me I look mean, and don't like talking, but I like meeting people, and getting to know them.