The Letter

Letter to My Younger Self

The night I write this, the wind outside my window sounds like a memory, restless, alive, a voice from the past whispering through the cracks. I can almost see him again: the kid I used to be. Baggy pants, flannel open, eyes full of bravado and pain. He thought he was untouchable, thought the block would last forever. We used to post up under flickering streetlights like kings of concrete, young and reckless, ready to die for streets that never wrote back.

I wish I could pull him aside, that seventeen-year-old me, before the cops, before the bullets, before the funerals. I’d sit him down somewhere quiet, maybe behind the liquor store where we used to tag the walls, and hand him this letter.


---

“Hey Tiny,”

You don’t know it yet, but that anger you wear like a jacket isn’t armor, it’s weight. You’re carrying your father’s silence, your mother’s tears, the echoes of every homie who said they’d never leave but did. You think respect comes from fear. You think love is something you earn by taking hits and standing tall. But listen, there’s a different kind of power waiting for you, the kind that comes from mercy.

There’s a night coming when you’ll be lying in the street, blood running toward the gutter, headlights flashing across your face. You’ll hear your name being yelled — “Big Mike’s alive!” — and you’ll see that thin line between this world and the next. That night will change everything, though it’ll take years for you to understand why you were spared.

You’ll chase that old life for a while, through dope houses, county jails, back alleys, and motel rooms. You’ll try to drown the noise with powder and pride, but nothing will quiet the ache. Then one day, you’ll wake up and realize the people you used to roll with are gone, some buried, some locked up, some just ghosts walking around in daylight. That’s when it’ll hit you: you’re still here for a reason.


---

You’ll find brothers again, not the kind who ride for the hood, but the kind who stand with you when you’re trying to rebuild. You’ll find mentors who remind you that you’re more than your rap sheet. You’ll find work that fills your soul instead of your pockets. And you’ll learn that the streets didn’t ruin you, they prepared you to reach the ones who are still lost in them.

One day you’ll be standing in front of a class, or at a city meeting, or out by the encampments in West Texas, and you’ll realize that every scar you’ve got became someone else’s roadmap. You’ll hand out Narcan and hygiene kits instead of vengeance. You’ll pray with men who remind you of yourself, and you’ll call them “brother” and mean it.

You’ll still carry the ghosts, but they won’t haunt you anymore, they’ll guide you.
You’ll talk about Felipe, Derek, Danny, and the others with tears in your eyes, but this time, the tears won’t be about guilt. They’ll be about gratitude, because their stories still breathe through you.

And when people ask what changed, you’ll tell them: Love did.

“Keep that fire, kid.”

The same spark that made you fight will make you heal.
The same mouth that used to curse the world will one day bless it.
You’ll still walk with swagger, but it’ll be a different kind, born from peace instead of pride.

When you finally forgive yourself, it won’t come in a single moment. It’ll come slowly, through the hands you help up, the people you feed, the lives you save. That’s how redemption works: not as a flash of light, but as a steady flame you keep alive day after day.

So keep your head up, little homie.
You’ll lose battles, but you’ll win your soul back.
And when you finally look in the mirror, you’ll see not a gangster, not a victim, but a survivor, a bridge, a man of purpose.

With love and respect,
Big Mike


The letter ends, but I can still feel that kid staring back at me. Maybe he doesn’t believe it yet. Maybe he’s still got to take the long road, through pain, through fire, to become who I am now. But if this letter finds him, maybe it’ll make the journey a little lighter.

Because the truth is, I didn’t just survive for me.
I survived so I could go back and talk to him, and every other kid still standing under a streetlight,
thinking the world forgot his name

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Guns n Roses

We used to hoop every day after school at Winter Gardens Elementary. That blacktop was our ritual, our peace, even though we were deep in enemy territory. Winter Gardens 13 ran that neighborhood—a rival gang and a mortal enemy of Ford Maravilla. Still, we played ball there every day until the sun dipped behind the rooftops, the sky melting into orange and purple. It wasn’t smart, but we were young and didn’t care. We always came strapped, just in case. We'd blaze between games, post up on the edge of the court, then jump right back in. For three months, nothing ever popped off. Just basketball, weed, and trash talk. But then one day, everything shifted. Someone's cousin called out from the side, "Hey, watch out—Felipe’s getting into it with some fool from Winter Gardens." I ran over and saw Felipe squared up, yelling at this guy, telling him this wasn’t his neighborhood anymore. That he better get the fuck out. The dude looked like he wanted to test it—until Felipe fl...
Read more

The Long fight

Chapter: The Long Fight I’ve been fighting for as long as I can remember. Not the kind of fighting you see in movies where someone throws a punch and the music swells. I’m talking about the kind of fight that starts before you even know you’re in one. The kind where the neighborhood itself feels like a test you have to pass just to walk down the street. I was born into that world. In East Los Angeles, respect wasn’t some abstract idea. It was currency. It was armor. It was survival. Every block had its own gravity, pulling people into loyalties, rivalries, and lines that you didn’t cross unless you were ready for consequences. There were other neighborhoods, other football players, jocks, Tigers, gang members—people watching, measuring you, waiting to see what you were made of. You learned early that reputation traveled faster than you did. If someone heard your name, it meant something. Maybe good, maybe bad, but it meant something. And if you didn’t stand up for yourself, that ...
Read more

CRACK

CRACK I've been surrounded by addiction my whole life. It’s in my bloodline—grandma, grandpa, uncles, aunts, my father, my mother. Heroin. Cocaine. Marijuana. Alcohol. Pills. PCP. You name it, someone in my family used it. I didn’t just stumble into addiction—I was born into it. My first tastes were alcohol and weed, the usual suspects. They were always around, always easy to reach. But those were just the warm-up acts before I met my true poison: heroin. Still, before heroin ever wrapped its cold grip around my soul, I had a full-blown affair with crack cocaine. In the early 1990s, crack hit East Los Angeles like a plague. Just like it did in every Chicano neighborhood across the city, it tore through our community like fire. I was still in high school, already knee-deep in an addiction that had me breaking into cars on the weekends to keep up with my cravings. I wasn’t a kid anymore—I was a fiend in a classroom. I’ll never forget one night in '94, taking a fat hit and suddenl...
Read more