Ready, Set, Fire.

I live in the Tenderloin and most of you already know this. You may think no big deal. You may think it sucks. You may think it’s unfortunate. You may think nothing at all. Welcome to my average night in the Tenderloin:
Today I have so much rage in me that I can barely type. The only thing going through my head is ‘I wish I had a gun!’ It’s a typical evening and I’m sitting in my living room slaving away reading countless textbooks, writing notes, and doing question after question. Laura, the handicapped and crippled woman who lives upstairs is starting her normal amount of bullshit. Every night around the same time she brings home a visitor of a different sort. She always has a story claiming that this visitor is helping her do her laundry, carry groceries or give her medication. Each visitor looks like some random hoodlum off the street, a homeless alcoholic, or at times a coked out prostitute. They are all unique characters of the bizarre play that takes place here at this famous hotel, my home. My grandparents scream their heads off for no damn reason and tell her she cannot have visitors after visiting hours are over. The rules of the hotel clearly explain to her that visiting hours are between a certain time and she as well as everyone else must adhere to those rules regardless of disability. My parents being the pushovers that they are always allow her to get what she wants as a way of just not having to deal with it. I, on the other hand, put my foot down especially if I’m watching the office which I rarely do for this obvious reason. I will yell and scream and do whatever it takes. It may not be the right way but it works for me. As I’m dealing with Laura who is always up for complaining I hear shouts from outside. My grandma is already heading to the fire escape and I hear her yelling out to the bottom of the street “GO AWAY!” and a loud man’s voice booms back “SUCK MY DICK BITCH.” My grandmother is a 76 year old religious and conservative Indian woman and the fact that someone would have the audacity to scream this at her made me furious. I ran to the fire escape and the wrath seeped out as I saw the man’s face. He used to be allowed to visit here until he lashed out at my grandmother and attacked another tenant. After five minutes of yelling back and forth I had had enough. The blood in my veins was boiling and if I had a gun in my hand all six rounds would have been fired easily on point, with precision, and on target which at that point was his head, heart, and groin. The man called out verbal, racial, and downright degrading slurs mostly along the lines of “you can suck my dick” and “go call your dad to come suck my dick too” and “ill fucking beat your ass bitch.” This was outrage and my patience had escaped me a long time ago. How dare he? Now I had already hated this man who was yelling back at me for a long time now. One day when we were on vacation this same man had snuck into the building much like he does every night and beat up another tenant living in our hotel as well as pushed my grandmother. My parents were furious and he was forbidden to enter the property or we would call the police. He’s done it every night and has never been caught. This man has very violent behavior and as it seems he is very sick in the head. He is dangerous and I am unprotected. I can’t do anything because I don’t have a gun. And my family’s security is in danger. ( The video on my page shows him having convulsions right outside my house an hour after our altercation. ) He is obviously unwell.
This has always been the case in my life. Every time I walk out the building there is a good chance that I might get mugged by this man or any another. There is a possibility of rape and even death. There is a possibility that this could happen to my elderly grandparents or my young brother who is only seven years old. About a year ago my mom was on her way to work. It was one o’ clock in the afternoon and she was walking down the street like she usually does until some lady mugged her and left her with seven stitches above her eyebrow, a few court cases and nightmares for a lifetime. When I first learned about what happened to my mom I broke down in tears of rage. I was crying uncontrollably but more than that my insides were fighting against themselves. The blood wanted to pour out. My veins wanted to split. And my hair wanted to catch fire. The whites of my eyes turned bloody red and I felt like my brain was going to burst. I was frustrated because I wasn’t there to protect her. I was frustrated she had to be put in such a position, my own mother! I was frustrated to think that a human being could do that to another human being. There was no point calming me down so my friends just let me be. It’s the best thing to do when I get in this zone. Rage was burning through my insides and all the water in the world couldn’t cool me down. It’s a sickness. It’s my fury and it cannot be dealt with by anyone but me. At times I feel God is testing me but at times I feel like it’s just a step closer to the point that I’ve pretty much almost reached. It’s unexplainable. And for a person who talks nonstop, I have no words.
Tonight I am typing this up as the steam pours through my fingertips and every other pore throughout my body burns. My tears hot like boiling water rushing down my cheeks and my brain is exhausted from the over heat. I don’t have patience. I don’t have calm. I don’t have serenity. I am anger. And there is nothing that can be done to stop what I’m feeling. I am filled with hatred for the world. I am filled with resent to the people who gave birth to me including God himself. I am filled with passion with the conclusion that I have come to that this place is sick and I do not deserve such a life as this.
I texted my father after tonight’s incident the following- Final conclusion: either we move out or I’m buying a gun. Period. Make a choice.
God forbid the day I ever say I would buy a gun. I like their mechanics. The masterpiece of the machine that it is but its purpose is immoral. Guns have been around me since my early teen years and it’s no surprise to those who know me. I’ve held guns, handled them, loaded them and fired. It’s not a pretty site. It’s not a nice sound. It’s not a good look. For me, not at all. I’ve had them shot at me and around me. I’ve dealt with people in hospital beds wounded by the burning bullets of somebody’s hate or more often their mistake. Stray bullets breaking families. Confused bullets causing rivalries. Bullets causing suffering. Nothing compares to how many tears have been tasted caused by a trigger being pulled and released in a swift movement too soon. No one has the power to kill anyone or anything for that matter. No one can hate someone so much they wish them death. Such hatred and power does not exist in the realm of humanity. However, today in me, it has been born. The wrath. The venom. The vengeance. The hatred. The sinful. I screamed my head off the minute my mom walked into the house. She had missed the episode that took place while picking up my sister.
I hope your reading this. I hope it makes you cry. I hope it brings you both to tears because I have cried enough over this god forsaken hell hole that I call my life. What do I have to do to make you UNDERSTAND. I’ve forfeited my education at the University of San Francisco to go to San Francisco State University where I will probably have to struggle my way to graduation which has been ungratefully set back to possibly 5 or 6 years rather than just four due the state’s economy. I have sacrificed the 30 grand a year in attempt that the money saved would be seen as a way to buy a home! A home in a nice part of town, a place where my brother can ride around the block on his new bicycle and see something a lot more pleasant then hmm let’s say a prostitute overdosed on drugs laying on the sidewalk half naked. A place where my sister and I can walk to and from school without feeling uncomfortable about men gawking and whistling and cat calling at us like we are cheap whores for sale. A place where my grandparents can walk without me having to worry about if they’ll make it home safe. This place is not safe. This place is not home. It can never be home.
I’ve put up with the Tenderloin and this hotel for the last 20 years of my life and hated every minute of it. I’ve sav’d it out and yes it’s made me twice as smart as your average teenager. The ghetto of the Tenderloin has many life lessons but the one lesson we’re about to learn is that it makes me unwell. I hate living here among the scum. I hate living here and not knowing what humanity is. I hate seeing the things that I have see which have stained bloody and tainted images to the backs of my eyeballs so I can’t sleep with peace at night. Most importantly I hate walking home from people who don’t understand the sickness that I’ve been living in. The disease that infects my soul with a hatred for all the people living here.
I pleaded to my mother this evening. WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO to make it clear that I can’t live this way anymore. Sure, I can get up and leave. Pack my shit and get an apartment somewhere out there but they’d still be here and it would tear me apart. Should I slit my wrists in the name of the Tenderloin? Oh wait, no that doesn’t help. Or should I do a hunger strike until you have to all hold me down and force feed me? That didn’t work either. Should I contemplate suicidal schemes in my mind and say them out loud at random until you can’t trust me to be alone anymore? Ha! That never worked. Or do I do what I can and simply purchase a gun, buy ammunition and be prepared to use it? Will that make you want to buy a house? Will it finally make you take me seriously since all the above didn’t work? Will you finally see the wrath that escapes from the beauty that’s composed in tight shell? My life is lived in a box. It’s a tight box and my brain has no space to breathe. My words slip out and it stirs trouble. But to me, it’s only foreshadowing the storm ahead. I have a demented mind. Welcome to my nightmare.