It's never too late to change your stars!... That would be what I say to myself if I was able to talk to my younger self but in all honesty. Even if I would be able to, my past self would think it was a load of B.S. You see, in my youth. I was just a hoodrat and that's all I thought I would be.

Growing up in Rockaway beach, I lived in Bay Towers on Beach 98 street and I always thought my options were limited. I was in special ed, where the majority of my teachers would come in, sit down and read a newspaper instead of teaching. Not caring to mold out minds. In sixth grade, I witness a classmate getting stabbed in the stomach with a pencil because he accidentally stepped on someone's sneakers. He didn't die, but there was a lot of blood.

In junior high school, I joined a gang. This was done in order to survive. Now, there maybe some of you who would say, that there's a choice. However, what if I tell you that there was no choice? I was getting into fist fights nearly every single day. Getting jumped once a month. I was picked on by the other gang members who were trying to force me to join them. I was constantly getting suspended and I was tired. It was around this time I began to write as a means to escape reality. As a means to keep me sane.

Eventually, I joined the one gang who hardly picked on me and afterward, the fighting stopped and I went back to my studies. Of course, because you are in a gang, there are certain problems and situations that will occur that is beyond your control.

I had friends who were murdered due to gang violence. I have friends who are serving a life sentence. That's a scary thought now that I wrote down. I'm only 38 and I lost nine friends to violence and six who couldn't get out. Yet back then as violent our lives were. We was just kids. We watched cartoons, went to the arcade, collected comics and yet we were basically child soldiers.

My father, God rest his soul knew why I joined and I knew he hated himself for not being able to move us away from the violence. However, he was there for me. Correction, he was there for all of us. My friends didn't have a father figure and he would try to steer them in the right direction, but he knew it was hard.

On several occasions we who would get beaten up by police officers simply because of the beads around our necks. On one occasion my friends and I were forced to line up against the large concrete wall of the handball court on 101st. Where the officers took turns just punching us in the face, laughing the entire time.

It may sound far-fetched, but I implore you to investigate the harsh police brutality in Rockaway Park during the mid to late nineties. Especially to the gang members. We never complained because we knew we never had a voice. I mean, who is going to believe a gang banger over a police officer?

Now, not all officers in Rockaway were bad. There were some who we highly respected and they never looked at us as thugs. They looked at us like children because that was who we were. Sadly, all good cops in Rockaway would eventually get transferred out and we get left with the officers that no one wants to deal with.

There was a detective, who name I will not say for legal reasons. He used to pick us up and take us to the empty field out by the fifties, just beyond Ocean Villiage. There he would have us sit in his car until another car pulled up.

We would watch as he and another detective would place bets, walk to their vehicles and pull us out. The two detectives would make us fight each other for their own amusement. There were rumors that they would have sex with the boys they picked up, but that never happened to myself or the others I was forced to fight with that evening.

It was then I made the decision that I needed to get out. Out of the gang life, out of Rockaway, but more importantly, out of the city. So, I went to my guidance counselor at Beach Channel High School and asked him on how to make that happen and he told me that I should drop out, go to an alternative high school and get my GED.

I was confused. I didn't want to drop out. I just wanted to make my life better. He then escorted me to the principal office where Mrs. Hassan and several security guards basically forced me to sign a piece of paper to make it so. When I told my father what had happened he was furious. For one, I was seventeen years old and a senior. So by making me sign myself out of school without a parent present was illegal.

So after threatening the school with a lawsuit. Mrs. Hassan allowed me to return to school, but she informed me that since I was in Special Ed, I was going to get a Special Ed diploma which still equals out to a GED.

She had this look on her face like she won. She then informed me that if I wanted a regular high school diploma, I would need to pass both my RCT and Regents and I had six months to make it happen.

So I took the challenge and with the help of my banger friends, they prepared me for my test and I passed. I graduated with a regular high school diploma. Did it bother me that those who passed their regents gotten a regent diploma? yes, but I was proud of my diploma. I earned it.

Up until my graduation day, I thought that living in the ghetto. I had no options. I honestly thought that I had no future. It wasn't until I had to take all of those tests in order to get a regular diploma was when I knew, I could do anything, be anything. My options weren't limited. My status in life was labeled as ghetto trash or a banger or a bum. It was a confident booster that I needed and that was my fuel to succeed.

Years later, I met a woman, married her and had three kids before we moved out of Rockaway and into Syracuse NY. Where I eventually went back to school. I worked sixty to seventy hours a week and earned my degree in software development and continued my education and earned a Masters in Information Technology.

Even though I kept working odd jobs, I had two additional children and I bought myself a house. Even though I was unable to get a job in the field of my study due to a lack of experience, I found a way to keep supporting my family instead of blaming others.

All the while I just kept writing. Then my wife told me to submit one of them. That deep down I'm a writer and I should stop denying my calling. So I picked one of my favorites and it was published. I guess what I am trying to say is that no matter where you're from. No matter the situation you are in, it is never too late to change your stars. Thank you for reading this.