I was born on April 16th, 1976.515Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡq4rv4X7lnt
That much I know for sure.
The rest? The early years? That’s mostly secondhand. Stories passed down from family who lived it while I was still too young to understand. What I do know is this: when I was three years old, everything changed.
That was the year my parents found out I was visually impaired.
My mother—bless her—struggled with that. She didn’t think she had what it took to raise a blind child. Maybe it scared her. Maybe it overwhelmed her. I don’t hold it against her.
She and my father split up not long after. And from then on, I lived with my dad.
It’s strange to think about it now—how the course of a person’s life can bend before they even know how to spell their name. But even then, even in that moment I don’t remember... God was already writing my story.515Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw81T0A2ZZa
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My dad was a Marine.515Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWzfRsYvpJQ
And that meant he was gone a lot—months at a time. Long stretches where I wouldn’t see him at all.515Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgUhw8ewQxs
Duty first. Country first. Me... somewhere down the list.
Later that same year, he got arrested.515Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyl7Nu89yY2
Selling cocaine while in the service.515Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5I7UhjdKxH
Yeah. That happened.
He tried to use me as his get-out-of-jail-free card—told the courts he couldn’t go to prison because he had a blind son to take care of.515Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3x2fkk9pcy
As if he had been doing that in the first place.515Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7jg2XlpGOB
It didn’t work.
While all that was happening, I was stuck. Literally.515Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnjuO6X0yyI
Stuck in a playpen, day after day. The people he left me with weren’t real caregivers. Not nannies. Not relatives. Just folks meant to watch me while he was gone.515Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4ZxbCZmq07
But they didn’t raise me. They parked me.
I didn’t even walk until I was four.
That’s not the kind of thing most people admit out loud. But I’m not writing this to impress anyone. I’m writing this because it’s true.515Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfXNPWCmAt6
And the truth is: from the very start, life was uphill.
But God...515Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlkGOxaCPPS
He was already climbing it with me.
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and then Add to home screen.