My brother Mike grew up having an awful childhood. Everyone who surrounded him failed him. He was so deep into the game, he couldn’t drag himself out. People always talked, it was their specialty. They knew how to get under someone’s skin just as they cut the person deeply. The famous quote, “You’re a product of your environment.” Ah yes, the quote makes us feel degraded and ashamed of who we are. We didn’t ask to struggle, and neither did Sonja Livingston. Sonja didn’t grow up seeing the beautiful sunset, or the smell of the newly fallen leaves of autumn. She didn’t grow up hearing the birds chirping with excitement, but rather the sound of the dead. The glooming Tuesday afternoon, and dirt-smudged bodies. No laughter, no smiles, but the needle tip gave them a grin. The lines are taken off the bottle cap. The people who grow up this way will never be anything, they’re a product of their environment.

Stereotypes are one of the hardest things anybody can face. Being told you’re going to become a drug addict because you live in a populated area full of them. Whose fault is that? The system. The system failed the children, it was becoming too late. As Sonja Livingston states, “But a poor boy’s righteousness can last only so long. He takes his first hit, his first puff, his very first snort.” Mike was a victim of his environment. At an early age, Mike was already using. He was smoking weed, and abusing any drugs he could find. This was just the tip of the iceberg. As he used, no one would tell or warn him what would happen next. The brutal names he would be called. The brutal trauma he went through as a child was being brought up. Sonja Livingston tells us the poor boys were a victim of degrading and vileness. “He is called animal. Hean  is called trash and scum and a total waste of space.” You weren’t ever going to become anything more than what you grew up in. When you get into these situations, no one will ever understand unless they’re you. You aren’t seen as anything until you make yourself seem like something. “They are shot up, locked down, held without bail, looted, and sacked. They are strung up, strung out, lifted from rivers, cut into, shooed away from porches, vestibules, and unlocked cars.” 

He was always known as Mike, but he was always known for running from the cops. Being on probation, going to jail. Not every poor boy is the same as they may seem to be. We do what we think will help us because we are so absorbed in our self-hatred. We are so absorbed by the awful events that nothing can save us. Mike had to numb it; he’s a product of his environment. Mike didn’t have to be like this forever though, and he wasn’t. They started to take him seriously, but that didn’t happen until he got older. He grew up with an awful influence, but he stopped becoming the man that his father raised him to be. Everyone knew him as Mike, but they started to know him as Michael. You cannot live up to the expectations everyone sets for you. As you may always be known as the Poor Boy, you won’t always be him. They finally saw him as Michael.