My Fundamental Beliefs

I had a long childhood in the South Bronx, with a missing Puerto Rican father who suffered from the horrors of the Vietnam War, and my single mother who raised two kids including myself in an atmosphere of drugs, guns, gangs, criminal activities and poverty in the richest nation on earth. Many of my friends and close family had lost their lives to the harrowing streets of the Bronx. From my early childhood to my late teens my fundamental belief was that there is no God and that anarchy should rule. I was a special education student in the poorest urban area in the U.S. My high school had a 29% graduation rate, and a one percent special education graduation rate; no one expected anything from me, except to get a job and try to stay out of prison. One day Ms. Goldsmith, my high school English teacher, told me one sentence that changed my life forever, “You are smarter than you think, and you could do anything you want in life” and she ended that with a pat on the back. Everything was negative in my life until the moment where I felt the lights were turned on and I was out of the darkness. My gutter language would come to an end and I would be free, self accepting, have faith in God, and have inner confidence; that would be most important to me and my fundamental belief.