November 2008

During my summer vacation I got a Job at Asian Media Access. My friends worked with me but later on we all got into a fight. Rumors started and things happen. Gang violence, drug abuse, drinking, and run away started became a habit for me. I thought all was against me but yhea things happen.

I started hanging around gang members and didn’t take it for a fact that I could have gotten gang related that way. People who even I don’t know knew of my name everywhere and said things that spread out to be known as wild rumors. I blamed it all on my friends and said yhea it was their fault because they were spreading the rumors about me but just to realize it now they warned me about it way before I started hanging out with my other friends.

I started smoking weed not so long ago. I thought maybe if I got high I could’ve forgot some of the pain. Maybe I’ll feel better. It didn’t, I just got tried faster and found out it was a total waste of time. Then I switched with cigarettes and yhea it helped a bit. Bad for your health but I thought it wasn’t so bad. I still smoke sometime but not too much anymore.

Drinking wasn’t a big issue for me. After my dad had left I felt good because I didn’t have to go to my cousins house no more and be forced to drink with them. Later on now I regret it. I tried getting drink every now and then just to see if I can get drunk and maybe forget the pain of living life. Yhea I know I’m kind of suicidal but yhea life is life no ones perfect.

I started running away from home cause of all the rumors and people around me and yhea things just got tiring for me. Whenever I got home it didn’t feel like home and it still doesn’t. So I ran off from places to places hoping to find what was right for me. I still don’t like staying at just one place but I have to for now.

I had serous issuer wrong with my life. Everything was chained together. I started smoking and hang out with smokers. Then I started drinking which I thought you know it could help you out some day by forgetting memories.

My name is Josh Yang. Here is my personal story of my journey. Now I am 17 years old. I was born on a Sunday – October 13, 1991. I have three brothers, one older and two younger, and an older sister that now is married. My baby brother is now living with my aunt and uncle because my mom couldn’t afford to keep him with us anymore. I am now single-parented and so I live with my mom who has always taken care of the family.

In my childhood I was a bit of a bad boy. When I was five I used to get into a lot of trouble. I picked out fights from the streets, then later got in trouble by my dad. As punishment, my dad would whip us with his favorite leather belt. Around the age of seven I pushed my sister out of the window and broke her arm by accident. Later on that year I started drinking because my cousins forced me whenever my parents weren’t there. At nine years old an uncle of mine on my dad side of the family introduced me to smoking. That time I wasn’t really addicted to smoking yet. Everything used to be fun and games with me until the year of 2008.

In the spring of 2008 I asked a young beautiful girl to be my girlfriend and she answered back with no hesitation with a bright and happy yes. A month later her dad found out I was going out with his daughter and was totally against it. We didn’t have any problems before when her dad didn’t know we were going out, but as soon as he did, damn, my life was stuck in hell. She was always like daddys little girl so when he told her to stop seeing me, she tried to let me go but in our hearts we couldn’t. I was really broken and I cried for her for nights even now I still do. During the time we first broke up I burn myself really bad because I thought everything was so unreal, like living a live nightmare. Later on close to the end of the school year we got back with each other and promise to be with each other thick and thin. We used a phrase called AZA AZA FIGHTING – in other words meaning NEVER GIVE UP to keep our promise, but after the school year ended my life drama started. First smoking, then drinking, and then running away.