I've been thinking of writing an autobiography or memoir but it just never comes together for me but I figured if I write one story at a time and post it on my blog maybe once a month, I can do that. Maybe one day I'll pull all the stories together and put them in a book but for now I'll just share some stories with you about my childhood. Some of the stories will be happy, some sad and some horrific because that was my childhood. But they will all be real, things that actually happened. If it seems like something that people enjoy reading maybe I'll keep it going. These stories will not be in any kind of order, I'll just write them as they come to me.
My 9th and 10th grade of high school
In 9th and 10th grade I went to Leuzinger High School in Lawndale, Ca and I was 15 and 16 years old. By this time my grandpa who we had been living with had died of cancer and Larry had died by suicide. My mom met a new guy named Jose Salazar. Jose had been going to college to become a doctor when he crashed his motorcycle and lost part of his skull and had some brain damage. He walked with a limp and had seizures. According to his mom, he wasn't the same smart man he had been before the accident and it was pretty obvious. But he was so lucky, had a second chance at life and could have gone on to lead a productive life. But instead, he chose drugs. The man did cocaine and smoked cigarettes dipped in PCP. He got my mom hooked on those drugs as well and things got really bad. He had won some kind of settlement because of his accident and had something like 1 million dollars that his mother was in charge of. But she gave him money whenever he asked for it and that's how he and my mother were able to get the drugs so often.
My mom and he ended up in jail a few times and she would call me from jail and tell me she would be home in a few days when he posted bail and he always did. I took care of my brother who was 2 years younger than me and we went to school or stayed home during the Summer. I was baby sitting and would buy food when there was none. Jose was paying the other bills. One night Jose and my mom got pulled over and she had a PCP dipped cigarette in her purse and he told her to eat it. So she did but while the officer was doing the stop, my mom started acting crazy and they realized that she was overdosing on something. They were both arrested and they took her to the ER. The hospital called my grandma and she took me to the hospital to see my mom. She was handcuffed to the bed and had a breathing tube in her mouth and another tube in her nose to pump her stomach. My mom was arrested when she got better and my grandma came to stay with us for a few days until both my mom and Jose got out of jail. I don't know what happened in court a couple of months later when they went but Jose said something about paying a fine and them being done with court.
Things went on like that for months and then the police came and raided my apartment after my uncle Jack talked my 14 year old brother into calling the cops. My mom and Jose were arrested and my brother and I ended up in foster care. My mom did 6 months in Sybil Brand Institute (jail) for drug paraphernalia, child neglect, child endangerment and being under the influence of drugs. I don't know how long Jose got since I never saw him again. I'll talk more about foster care next month.
Links to past stories
2023
