The Goal
Throughout his entire life my father had one goal in mind, to get out of the city. Now, this phase is commonly used and means nothing to the people that live out of the Baltimore lines, but to the people that live inside the boarders, this is a common dream among many. For example, in reality Baltimore is just one big piece of land that holds over 636,000 people, but for the people inside the lines the term Baltimore City and Baltimore County mean a lot. When traveling down the pot hole filled roads of Baltimore, there is a particular spot that you will pass when it is just understood that you have left the city. Now, this spot is not marked, it is an invisible line that is seen by the people who live there.
My father tried more than half his life to cross that line and he did, when I was twelve years old, but this story isn’t about going off into the sunlight once we crossed that line. It isn’t even about what happened to me after I crossed that line. My story is about the events that lead up to the November when I walked into a world completely different from my own, seeing and meeting people that would never truly understand me.
The Reason
At this moment I feel like I should make it clear, before I continue that I am glad I moved, and I understand why we did. My father did not want me to see or have to experience the things he did while growing up. The drugs, the fights, a friend getting stabbed in the eye with a pencil, my mother almost getting rape, are all events he wanted me to avoid, for good reasons. I am just happy I was able to have my childhood in the city, allowing me to learn so many lessons that I would have never known otherwise.
