I never had a childhood. I never knew about the child until I was charged as an adult. I never had an understanding of what a child is supposed to be. I was beaten, used as whatever others wanted to do with me, pulled in to and out of my self without a reference point. I was told to “shut up,” “die,” “cry louder.” I was called a bastard. Filius nullius – a nothing, a nobody. A son of a bitch. Those who gave their love by bruising me knew what I would mistake for affection. In order to love me, they abused me of my humanity and disabused me of any sense of childhood. I never thought that I was sick until I couldn’t understand anything. I always thought that pain was abnormal, not because it hurt, but because I couldn’t make sense of its infliction.
No. I never had a childhood. Or more exactly, I never knew I was a child, until I was arrested. Until the conversation of what to do with me began. When I began to pick my jury at the age of fifteen, my reference points were staggered. I demanded that my lawyer consult with me because I was an adult. It was my trial, and as an adult, I had a right to opine on who did or didn’t qualify. And so whenever he crossed examined a potential juror, he grudgingly walked over every time to ask me what I thought. The young woman who was dismissed by the court did not know what she was talking about. How could she not be impartial to a fifteen year old facing 120 years in prison? I was a man. An adult. What child was she shocked by when the prosecutor explained the facts of the case and the potential sentence? The whole juridical process seemed to be plotted and projected from too many different reference points. It presented a different kind of abuse I couldn’t identify, and this further buried the sense of the child within me. …
Read the remainder of this essay by Carlos on Minutes Before Six.
Freedom Braids by Carlos 