Orlando Fallout: Cried Out, Prayed Up And Ready To Fight

Never had much time for crying. Never had patience for tears, mine or yours. Where I’m from, tears might get you hit harder, or bullied, or worse. Tears made you a target for all types of horrors you wanted to avoid. So no matter what devastation happened in my house, eyes stayed dry.

When a bullet tore through my father’s brain on a North Philly street, I never saw my mother cry. I’m sure she did, though. Left with three small kids and barely a high school education at the time. I’m sure she did. We just never witnessed it.

When we moved to a new apartment and the project bullies would chase me down after school threatening to bash my head in because I “acted better than them”, I would run home, crying. But mommy would threaten to beat my a— herself if I didn’t go back outside and fight my tormentors. She even taught me how to punch and look for any object I could find to hit someone over the head with if things got too heated.

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