A long slow and cold walk down the road to one of my friends’ houses, I have just been kicked out of my house. The reality of what has just happened has not yet registered in my head. I can feel my heart falling into a very deep and dark abyss. My face feels like there are 1000 goose bumps on it. As I start my walk away from the one and only home that I have ever known, my bags feel like cinder blocks on my back. The scene of what just happened keeps replaying through my head over and over again. The feeling is numbing and I hope that this I just another bad dream and that I will wake up momentarily. What is usually a 5-minute walk feels like it takes hours.

When I get to the front door of my friends house, I feel like some sort of weirdo because I thought of all the people that could of been kicked out of their house, why did it have to be me? When my friend asked me what happened, I realized that I didn’t even entirely know why myself. I was so mixed up with different types of emotions and thoughts, I could not manage to hone in on just one. Like any good friend, he was there for me, we talked for a little bit then he dropped me off at another one of my friends’ houses.

Even though my friend Devonte is a good friend, living with him for a brief time did not help my situation. During this period, I stopped going to school and I was doing things that I thought I would never do. I had new clothes every week and food in my stomach but I wasn’t getting those things the right way. At the time, I knew what I was doing was wrong but I didn’t care, I blamed my parents for all of my bad decisions. I figured I wouldn’t have to do any of those things if they would have never kicked me out of my house.

In my darkest hour, one of my best friends reached out to me when she saw I was in a place that I shouldn’t have been in. Bernadette is one of the best friends anyone could ever ask for. She wrote me a long message on Facebook that really made me think: “What are you going through dude? What happened? You haven’t been in school, I don’t understand why you’re

I just feel bad because I feel so helpless and I can’t do anything to help you, you mean a lot to me Damari, you need to straighten out and I’m telling you this as a friend. I love you dude, please think about what’s going on and what’s gonna happen if you don’t change.” She really helped me to see that I could not use my parents as an excuse to fail.

After that I started hanging out more with someone that people hardly ever saw me with, and to be honest, when we first met there was a lot of animosity between us. Bryant has been many things to me: a teammate, associate, enemy, friend, best friend, and now I consider him my brother. He taught me things that I could not learn at school, things that I never really even knew about. One of the most important things was how to have fun, and how to chill when it was time to chill.

Once I moved in with Bryant, I started going back to school and back into my old groove. My best friends Veronica, Bernadette, and Emma were happy to see that I was back in school.I wanted to start doing better for myself, in school and life in general. My friends were a shoulder to lean on, a very strong support system just when I needed them most. I tried to talk to my parents, but unfortunately I was unsuccessful in my attempt to go back home. If anyone reading this finds themselves in the same situation, I would advise them to make the best out of their situation, everything happens for a reason and no matter what happens, always try to be all you can be.

Tags: family, homelessness, spotlight