“Have you ever had a gun held to your head, Elijah?” My father's question bit into the cold night. The dark-indigo clouds above us seemed to press closer with every step we took on the walk back to his apartment. “I didn’t think so, Elijah. When I was just a little older than you, I faced that.” The falcate clouds crept lower and seemed to be on top of us when we finally got to the red brick apartment building he called home; I slumped on the couch whose arms were peppered with ash. The clouds from outside now felt as if they were pressing in onto the building from all sides. The question came after I realized that the man in the other room, my father, had taken me to a drug deal. Twelve-year-old me realized it wasn’t the first either. Twelve-year-old me realized why we went to what seemed like a new apartment building every other weekend when I went …show more content…
I resented him for being the child support evader whose apartments always had three locks. I resented him because I was a bastard. I resented him for making me hate myself. In the neighborhoods where he lived, I never fit in; my mother made me half white. In the neighborhoods where my mother lived, I never fit in; my father made me half black. However, that night he revealed that he looked down the barrel of a gun at the same age I looked down at my Gameboy. He learned the threat of death at the age I learned the threat of detention. I was privileged far beyond what I knew, privilege that I needed to acknowledge in order to forgive the man who has two felonies under his name, a man whose dreams were neutered by circumstance while mine had been nourished and allowed to grow. By not forgiving him for his shortcomings, I became trapped in a cycle of hatred toward the man who gave me life. Not only that, but I would continue living in ignorance of the immense privilege of even knowing my