January 15th, 2009

I feel so good! Oh my god, I feel good! I never felt like this ever! 

I don’t know where I’d be without Narcotics Anonymous. I never thought I’d make it, I really believed I’d die out there, I wanted to die out there.

I brought in my meeting to FRC and had this guy Jeff speak, he killed it. The whole place was clapping and cheering... it was so cool seeing those guys smile! Everyone was thanking me after the meeting, telling me my speakers are the best and how much they look forward to it! God,  it's the best feeling In the world!

A year ago, I was going to Pine Ridge Learning Center, the school where they send kids who get kicked out of school. I was hurting four days out the week, I was so strung out. I’d get on the bus, go into the fetal position and stare out the window, something inside me crying out, "“Kill me, just kill me, let us all die in a car accident. I can’t live like this,” like a dog that needs to be put down.  

The utter and complete loneliness, feeling broken and hopeless. Some days I was too sick to go to school. Even when I would cop I would tell myself, “Okay, these 12 Roxys should last me at least three days” but then I’d do them all and be dope sick the next day, cursing myself, shitting endlessly, aching. “Fuck, Bryan! Why did you do them all? You dumb fucking piece of shit. Now we’re sick! You dumb fuck!” 

Even when I was high, I was miserable. Being high just allowed me to think about how much of a fuck up I really was, having drugs, money but no one to hang out with. Going  through my phone and realizing that there’s not a single person who wants to be around me… you know how fucked up you gotta be that even other junkies don’t want you around.

  I don’t ever want to go back to that…

      “are you wasting away in your skin.
        are you missing the love of your kid.
          drifting and floating and fading away”
                                                                —RHCP (Listen)

Phew! I left my diary in one of my classes. Thank God no one read it. I let some people read my diary but if some random kid read my “Western High, you’re all going to die” poem, they’d probably send in the S.W.A.T.

I had finals today. I need to get a D on my Algebra 2 exam to pass. I paid this girl $10 to write down her answers. She took the test this morning but I didn’t want it to look too good, she got an 87% on it. So I changed some of the answers and I think I changed too many, and I fucked up on copying it down and the correlation on the scantron got fucked up so the last eight are probably all wrong. And I changed like 10 answers, so 18 wrong out of 50, two points each…

64%, hmm.. I don’t know! Hopefully I got a D. Only I would fail a test I had the answers to. God I’m fucking retarded.

Every paycheck I get, I spend it in a matter of days. I can’t manage my money. I should be saving up for dope rims, but I just buy dumb clothes and shit. I did get a new iPod, so I don’t have to carry around that old-ass one.

I remember when I got jumped by JT and some kids, it didn’t even bother me. I almost knew it was going to happen and I just let it. Before I got in the car, I put my money in my sock.

I had robbed JT a few hundred dollars a while back. I met up with him to give him liquid Oxy. I had some water in a glass vile that I put in this little leather traveling bag. I had Banks drive me since it was Stoop’s boy and he specifically told me not to rob him. I got in JT’s car and I kept pretending to be all paranoid, “Just give me the money, let's do this quick.” He kept insisting that he see the shit first. I said, “Nah man, c’mon people are watching.” He got annoyed, “No one’s watching. Open the case.” We were in a plaza near the movie theatre out in Pembroke Pines.

“Chill, chill, let me see the money. I told you last time someone gave me fake money, I just want to make sure it’s real.”  He holds the money to the light…

“It’s fucking real dawg.”
“Let me see it,” I say.

He gets all red and heated, starts yelling, “You trying to peel me dawg? You trying to peel me nigga!” I put my hands up innocently… “Nah, nah, I just wanna see it, count it out man, just chill, I got the shit right here!” I scream back at him holding up the leather travel bag.

I was so dope sick and I knew I wasn’t leaving that car without the money. I was wearing a brown jacket, jeans and collared shirt, sweating underneath. Banks was parked down the street in the Publix parking lot. JT finally gave in and started counting out the money, I eyed the lock on the car door, trying to think how to exactly open it fast enough to run. I made my move. I grabbed about half the money when he was counting it out with my left hand, opened the door with my other hand and ran. I fell out to the ground, ran across the parking lot, jumped over a bush into oncoming traffic,  a car almost hit me, honked at me, I fell again, scraped my arm, two cars swerving out of the way to not hit me. I run to Banks’ Audi. “GO, GO, GO, GO!!” 

Banks hates robbing people. He’s always saying stuff like, “Well Bryan, think about how you would feel if someone robbed you.” Up until this point he had never really never been in a car chase — I had been in my fair share.

He slowly backs out and I’m in the passenger seat screaming, “What the fuck are you doing!!! Fucking GO! GO! GO!” JT had already turned down our aisle and jumped out of his car. He punched Banks’ window as hard as he could, screaming, “Get out the car, bitch!” Banks is scared and freaking out. I’m yelling, “Fucking drive!” Banks steps on it and pulls out of the parking lot, running all the stop signs. JT  follows us in his silver Chevy Impala, driving and dipping through streets, running red lights. Banks is screaming and telling me to get the fuck out of his car. “Bryan, get the fuck out of my car! Get the fuck out!” I never explained to Banks that we were robbing JT, I told him I was picking up money JT owed me. It was the only way to get him to take me…

I yell back at Banks, “Drive to Stoop’s!” I call Stoop…

“Yo, I just bucked JT,” I say.

“Why? What the fuck…. for how much?” he asks.

“Not a lot, but he’s chasing us right now. I need to get out of the car, we’re running on E,” I say.

“Who did you rob him with” he asks.

“Banks,” I say.

“Why didn’t you call me?” he asks annoyingly… 

“I JUST FUCKING NEED A RIDE RIGHT NOW!” I scream looking in the rear view with JT’s car hitting our bumper every chance he gets.

“I’ll come get you if you buy blues off me,” he says.

“Fuck yeah nigga, you got the A215s?” I ask.

“Yea fo sho, okay, meet me two streets down from my house, text me when you're five minutes away” he says.

“Stoop, you better fucking be there,” I say.
“Ahha, I’ll be there,” he says.

Banks gets to the street. JT is right behind him, Banks screams, “Get the fuck out!” He slows down to about 12 mph, I jump out and roll out onto the grass, blood all on the left side of me. I get up and start running down where Stoop is supposed to be. 

He’s not there. What the fuck.

Looking all around for him. Then I hear it — his souped-up four wheeler. He rips through one of his neighbors’ backyards and I get on the back and he takes me to some off-road trail. I’ve never been on the back of an ATV before. I’m kind of scared. He’s driving fast as fuck over these dirt mounds. JT kept following Banks but I told Banks to just pull into the police station. 

We dropped off the four wheeler and got into Stoops’ truck. He had just got his script, which pissed me off because I’m thinking, “What the fuck, this nigga is mad cause I didn’t hit him up to bust a lick but yet he just got his script and didn’t call me?” I didn’t care though, because now I don’t need to get another ride to go get pills. Kill two birds with one stone… but then he pulls out the bottle and totally fucks me over. I look at the bottle and yell out, “What the fuck, you got the white generic ETHs. I hate ‘em, dawg, I’m not buying them, I thought you had BLUES!” I say.

“Nigga these are blues! We had a deal, I come get you, and you buy blues off me,” he says, driving me back to my neighborhood.

“I had to break off Banks, I really don’t have that much money,” I say.

“BRO THEY’RE THE SAME SHIT! STOP FUCKING LYING, BUY THEM!” he says.

“They fucking suck. They don’t even get me high, they just make me itch and you need a fucking rock and hammer to break them up. I’d rather just wait and get blues. YOU’RE THE ONE LYING! I SPECIFICALLY ASKED IF YOU HAD A215s!” I say.

We keep arguing and I end up buying them. He drops me off at my house and we give each other daps, “Iight, I’ll holla atchu tomorrow.”

I walk into my house and my parents ask how I’m doing, I mumble some shit and go to my room to crush up the pills and wipe the blood off my elbow and knee. 

Months went by and JT would threaten me all the time, leaving me voicemails, texting me my address, saying he was going to shoot me. A lot of people pretend to be real hard but after a while they just chuck it up as a loss and forget about it or just wait till they run into you.

Well, one day he got me…

I don’t remember how I got the money, but I had like $130 dollars on me. I kept blowing Patrick’s phone up to take me to go cop, but he insisted we wait till he got off work, Stoop was at work too. Then I get a phone call from this kid Andrew I kind of knew. He used to not like me cause he thought I robbed his boy of a bottle of  Xanax worth about $800. This was a few years ago, but people tend not to forget shit like that. I really didn’t rob his boy, but he never believed me. We chilled a few times after that, did coke together. But I always got the feeling he was sketch. He was always looking at me like he could swing on me at any moment. He was a redneck kid, like six years older than me.

He hit me up this one day, “Yo, what’s up man, can you get me blues?” I’m smirking on the other line, “Why the fuck would I get YOU blues?” and then he said it:

 “I’ll buy you ONE.”

ONE BLUE, that was it. I was sold and I told him to meet me outside my neighborhood to pick me up. I walk down the street, pass the gate and wait on the corner for a black pick-up truck he said he was driving. I put my money in my sock, like I always did, but I had a bad feeling, I knew something was going to happen. The car was packed, one of the kids got out of the back seat and I sat in the middle. I look around but Andrew isn’t even in the truck. “So, where’s Drew?”’

“Oh, don’t worry about him, it's for us anyways.” There is two of them in the back with me and two up front.

These kids were probably 22-26 years old, all big and healthy looking. They didn’t look like dope fiends, the fucking pills weren’t for them. I tried to make small talk but no one really said anything the whole ride there. I noticed we were going the wrong way, taking Griffin Road out west — all the way out west. “Yo, where we going? My boy doesn’t live this way.”

“Oh it's straight, we gotta pick up the money first.” I knew I was being set up.

We drive out west, all the way out west, ‘til there’s nothing out there. Out in the everglades, we pull down a dark street into a driveway with a rundown house. It’s like 6pm, the sun is going down. We all get out to the truck and the kid driving runs up the driveway and knocks on the door. There wasn’t another house in sight, not really sure where I was. I light up a cigarette outside and then another car pulls out. A silver Impala. JT steps out with a grey hoodie on. He takes off his hoodie with his left hand and swings with his right. That’s how it began — square in the face. Whammm! 

I fell to the floor and tried to guard my head instinctively. My face was warm from the blood. They took turns kicking me and cursing but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. All I could remember was screaming out, “I’m only 15!” It was all I could think to say. My age had gotten me out of a lot of situations; a lot of times, I would rob someone and then someone would be like, “Yo, you know Bryan’s only fifteen?” and then they would never retaliate.

However, these guys, they didn’t care. And besides I wasn’t 15 anymore, I was 17. They took turns kicking me, over and over. I finally got away and had one shoe on, one all-black low-top Chuck Taylor. I still had my money in my sock and that’s all I cared about. To be honest, they didn’t even try taking my money or my phone. They wanted me to know that $250 dollars wasn’t shit to them and they were just beating my ass on principle. I made a phone call, I called my boy Matty who I grew up with and told him I just got jumped by JT. Matty has always looked out for me. He was a few years older and when I was younger, if someone fucked with me, he would go and beat their ass. This time I called and he just laughed and laughed and said, “About time someone beat your ass.” I called Stoop next and he came and got me like five minutes later without hesitation (that’s why Stoop will always be my boy). I got in the back of his lifted F150; Taylor Lang was with him — this kid who just got back from the military — in the front seat. They were laughing their asses off. They pulled over and got their phones out to take pictures, turning the lights on in the truck. “Hahaha, oh my God. Damnnn, they got you good huh! Ha! Omg they fucking beat the shit out of Alzate. There’s blood all over you! Haha!” I couldn’t talk, my head was throbbing and my jaw felt like it was out of place. Blood all in my mouth and in my eyes. They dropped me off at a gas station to meet Patrick, he had just gotten off work. I went into the gas station, went straight to the bathroom, put my head in the sink, cleaned the blood off me the best I could and took my shirt off. Patrick pulled up and I got in his car. “Damn nigga, they fucking got your ass!” We met up with Sydney and copped some blues. I remember Patrick looking at me snorting the seven blues out of what was left of my nose. I could taste the blues and blood mixing together when the drip hit my throat and a sick part in me liked it. Patrick just looked at me. He looked at me like I was the biggest piece of shit on earth. I know the look, I get it all the time. We sat in a parking lot in silence. I lifted my head up, opened my nostrils and snorted a big snort, more blood and Roxy hitting my throat. Before Patrick put the car in drive, he looked at me one more time and asked, “Are you okay?” Holding my head up so the rest of the Roxy drips down my throat and blood doesn’t leak all in his car, I give him the thumbs up.

When I got home my Mom gasped, “Bryan, que paso?!” I had a giant bump on the top of my head and my face was swollen. I told them I was at my friend’s house boxing. I knew she didn’t believe me, but she really didn’t ask anything about it after that. 

People don’t understand that getting away from the drugs is the easy part, it’s the people that keep pulling you back in. It was so hard to stay clean when Patrick kept texting my phone and people kept asking me if I can get drugs. They say in meetings, “If the drugs don’t kill you, the lifestyle will.” It’s the lifestyle I miss sometimes. It was hard breaking away from Stoop and Patrick and even Banks. We’ve been through so much. They were there for me when no one else was and I felt like a sell out by getting clean. I would go hang out with Banks and he would ask, “How are those fucking meetings going? Hahaahah, that shit is so stupid, are you like a teacher there yet?” He’s just mad that I got clean and was doing good. I tried to help them all when I first got clean but it was my first sponsor, Gio, who told me, “They’ll get you high before you get them clean.” It’s the truth. With 60 days clean, I had no fucking business trying to help a using addict. I needed to help myself.