Represent-Feature Story

Life in a New World
In America, I became someone I didn’t want to be

By Daniel V.

I remember looking out the plane’s window and seeing how beautiful America looked. I couldn’t wait to be in New York City among all those tall buildings. I expected America to be a very good country. I pictured my mom and me having a good life, ready to overcome anything.

But when we got to America, it wasn’t as perfect as it looked. In Russia I was a good, quiet kid, always staying at home and spending time with my family. But in America, I started to become a different Daniel.

A New Life

When we got to New York my mom got a job as a cleaning lady, but a few months later she got hurt and couldn’t work anymore. Since we had no money to pay the rent, we had to go into a shelter for homeless people.

When we moved into the shelter I was very sad and depressed. I started to miss my family. I felt sorry for myself, and even more for my mother.

Our neighborhood in Brooklyn smelled like straight garbage and old buildings. Every other night I heard these loud noises that always woke me up. I thought it was fireworks at first. I also heard a lot of ambulances. “There must be lots of accidents around here,” I thought. Later I realized that the fireworks were gunshots and the accidents were bullet wounds.

The first couple of weeks I tried to stay away from meeting new people. I felt unsure of myself in this new life, and I didn’t have the confidence to go out and look for friends. I was shy and used to keeping to myself. In Russia, I never needed to meet new people because I had my family. There were six of us and we were like a team, always together and always looking out for each other. I felt safe, and knew that with my family behind me I could accomplish anything I set my mind to.

But now I was in America, and I didn’t have all that to back me up. I didn’t even know the language very well. Now that I only had my mother I was lonely and bored.

I got tired of sitting in the small room that my mother and I had to share. I also got tired of trying to tell myself that I had something, because I really had nothing. No family, no friends—no life.

A Chance to Fit In

One day as I was shooting baskets by myself a couple of kids came over. “Yo, you look like you play ball, you want to run a full court with us?” one of them asked.

I was scared, and I barely understood him because my English was so poor. But I knew the words “full court.” In my school kids would always say those words when they were playing ball.

I thought this could be a new way to meet friends. But I played horribly and barely even scored. I was angry at myself.

“I let the opportunity slide right by me,” I thought. “I played so badly nobody will even talk to me.”

But after the game one kid introduced himself, and I met all of them one by one. I was relieved to see that they weren’t going to rob me.

I started playing basketball and hanging out with those guys on a regular basis, and I started to feel more comfortable around them.

Finally, I had friends. They opened the door for me to the real world, outside of my room. I started to feel good about myself. I felt like I was finally fitting in in America.

I started to do the things my friends did, like smoke cigarettes, and steal small things like candy from the store. I thought, “It’s just candy. What’s the worst that could happen?”

The Crew

After a few months my mother and I moved to a nicer shelter in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and I made a new friend. Darren lived in my building, and hanging out with him made me feel comfortable about myself. I could relate to him because we’d both been through a lot of the same things. We both had single mothers and didn’t have a lot of money.

Darren introduced me to his crew. They were mad cool, and at first it felt good to be around them. Hanging out with them was like being part of a huge family. I felt protected. But the crew also got me involved in some bad stuff like smoking weed, fighting and stealing.

The first time I smoked weed I thought that it would make me cough, like cigarettes, but it felt smooth as I inhaled it. I felt that “chillin feelin” (as my friends used to call it) that the weed gives you after the first couple of pulls. That feeling took me to another world. I loved it.

Running Wild

After that I started to smoke daily and do stupid stuff with the crew. We’d pick on other kids and run from the police.

Sometimes it felt good to be reckless with them. I liked the excitement. And hurting others seemed to get my own pain off my shoulders. It still hurt to be away from my family, and I felt alone, even when I was with my crew. No friends of mine could give me the love that I’d left behind in Russia.

When I chilled with the crew we looked like a gang and lots of people were scared of us. Sometimes I didn’t like that, because I didn’t feel like myself. But it made me feel safe on the streets. After a while, I didn’t feel scared of anything.

My mom could see the crew was a bad influence and tried her best to prevent me from hanging out with them. She would lock me inside the house, or find other things for me to do after school like swimming or a soccer team. At first I listened and did everything that she asked me to do.

But as time went on I started to get bored, and I didn’t feel like following my mom’s rules anymore. It was fun being stupid and not caring about anything. For the first time of my life, I was a bad ass.

Besides, being high all the time stopped me from thinking too much. I stopped worrying about my mom, and every time I smoked weed I would remember my family in Russia less and less.

Losing Myself to Weed

One day my mom caught me smoking a cigarette and humiliated me right in front of my friends. First she slapped the cigarette out my hands and then she started to yell at me. I didn’t know whether to be mad at myself for not listening to my mom or at her for humiliating me in front of my friends like that. I decided to be mad at her.

I started coming home very late, and sometimes not coming home at all. My mother kept on giving me punishments, but they weren’t affecting my behavior. I wasn’t a little kid who was scared to get hit with a belt anymore. I started to steal money from my mother to get more weed.

I loved my mom with all my heart, and stealing from her felt like stealing from myself. It hurt. But when I bought and smoked weed with the money that I stole, the pain went away. That cycle continued. My relationship with my mother started to fade, while my relationship with my friends got stronger.

In Russia my life was peaceful, and I had always been the “perfect” child. But now I was getting into lots of fights and stealing stuff on a regular basis.

That weed that I was smoking was making my life miserable, but most of the time I was too high to notice. For me, smoking wasn’t the problem. The real problem was getting money.

Handcuffs

One of my friends and I started stealing collector cards from Toys “R” Us and selling them on eBay. I’d never stolen that much before, and for the first time something inside of me told me that stealing wasn’t the right thing to do. I wasn’t used to that feeling. But since I really needed the money, I didn’t let it bother me.

I started to steal more and more. Then one day I stole about $95 worth of cards and got caught. I started to cry because I thought it was the end of the world. I’d never in my life been handcuffed in a police car. I was terrified at the thought of going to jail.

When my mom picked me up from the precinct she looked so depressed. I didn’t know what to say. I thought she was going to yell at me and give me lots of punishments. But she wasn’t saying anything to me at all. She was just looking out the window and I could see on her face that she was thinking very hard about something.

Taking a Look at My Life

After we got home I told her that I was really sorry, and that my punishment should be very big. But she told me there wasn’t going to be a punishment.

“I’m not going to punish you because you are old enough to control yourself and to think about your life,” she said. “You are 14 years old, getting locked up and smoking weed.”

For some reason I couldn’t get those words out of my head: “You are old enough.” What did that mean? Was I becoming older and maturing? Was I supposed to know how to survive by myself?

“It’s like I’m becoming this monster,” I thought to myself. “My mom looks so stressed. It looks like she’s going through more pain than me.” I felt like everything started to change against me. My shoulders felt very heavy, and my conscience started to burn me alive.

Not Ready

I wish I could say that was the day I started to straighten my life out. But it was just the beginning of the bad side of my life.

It would take me about two years to come back to this world and find the real me that I’d been looking for for years. I would never be that same perfect kid from Russia, but I found out how to be someone who feels good about himself and the life he’s living in.

That night, I was really thinking about the person I had become, and how I wanted to change. But the next day I was too depressed to think about anything. So I dealt with it the way I always did—I got some weed, and got my mind out of this world.