The Streets Raised Me

by Ryan

I didn’t grow up. I survived. There’s a big difference.

My parents? They were both addicts. Chaos was my childhood.

At 13 years old, my dad didn’t warn me about drugs. He didn’t try to stop me from falling into that world. No, he introduced me to it—by injecting me with meth himself.

You want to talk about betrayal? Imagine the one man who’s supposed to protect you, be your example, your safe place—turning you into a mirror of his own destruction.

I was just a kid. A kid who should’ve been riding bikes and playing video games, not learning how to hit a vein.

Right before that, my parents split. And as sick as it sounds, I stayed with my dad. Because I knew if I didn’t, he’d die. I couldn’t walk away from him the way my mom walked away from me.

I walked in on him OD’d more times than I can count. In the bathroom. On the floor. Needle still in his neck. Cold. Blue. Barely hanging on.

And I was the one who had to pick him up. Keep him breathing. Clean the blood. Clean the mess.

That kind of trauma doesn’t leave you. It carves itself into your bones.

So I did what I had to do: I hustled. Not for Jordans or girls or clout—although the girls started coming in droves. But they were the wrong kind. The ones that only pulled me deeper into the street life, into the thrill, into the addiction. I hustled to survive. I hustled to keep the lights on. I hustled to keep a roof over our heads, food in our stomachs, and the dope flowing so my dad—and I—wouldn’t get sick.

I learned the streets before I ever learned algebra. I learned to lie. To move product. To manipulate. To watch my back.

By the time I hit 17, I was sent to max security prison in Missouri.

I had no business being around the kinds of men I was surrounded by. Lifers. Shot-callers. Cold, broken killers.

But that’s what the system does. It chews up broken boys and throws them into a pit and tells them, “Figure it out.”

So I did. I proved myself. I fought. I survived.

And when I got out? I went right back to my dad. Who didn’t call me “son” anymore—he called me “brother.” Like I was just another one of his junkie friends. Like I wasn’t his kid, but his co-defendant.

He still leaned on me. Still expected me to hold it all together.

That was my life. That was my normal.

Until now.

Now I see the truth of what I went through. Now I’m learning how to let go of the pain and rebuild something real—with someone who actually loves me for me.

Now, I’m not surviving. I’m learning how to live.