Change Is Real (Auto-Biography) Part 4

But after some prayer my faith was strong again and I felt God's presence and I told Chiante and Theresa what i did and left Jeff not involved with it and just pretended like it never happened. I did feel extremely horrible for it but I never stole anything from him again and I was one of his great friends. One time Lynda's computer was acting up and Comcast was coming to install the internet, so i went absent without lead (AWOL) from Family Links and walked over forty streets down town than i had a bus ticket so i took the bus back home. Lynda had no idea i was coming over to help fix the computer or anything but luckily she didn't report me for doing that because i agreed to go back after fixing it. I fixed her computer and Comcast installed the internet, I called the placement and told them what I did than Lynda gave me about five dollars than i went back and accepted my consequences.

I was able to get home visits every weekend with a supervisor watching me.That was so boring, I would just go into my room and sleep for five hours until she takes me back to Lawrenceville. I told them i would much rather not go because its to boring. I finally got non supervised home visits for the weekend and i would just go from home to Phil's and i would spend the weekend hanging out there than on Sunday I would go back home and wait to be picked up and taken back to Lawrenceville.

I remember us having a party because of the Steeler's being in the super bowl and i was just playing my Gamecube while they were watching it because i hated sports. I enjoyed the food they ordered for the party and enjoyed just the free time to do what ever, but I just still wished that things would simply change for me. I really needed a change in my life, I was just so tired of being placed and it seemed like nobody cared about me. I spent nine long months in Family Links Lawrenceville than I was back home to the same thing as i left.

Being back home was a weird change because I was once again in a new environment and was about to go to a new school called Duquesne.Duquesne was like Barrett all over again. I started my eleventh grade there and the first day I was waiting for the bell to ring so I could go into the school and go through the metal detector. I heard a very familiar voice and i knew exactly who it was instantly. It was Liliya Agafanova at Duquesne High School. I had butterflies in my stomach and i kept my eyes on her as we were walking though the hallway. She didn't even notice me at all, till the end of the day. I walked over to her and I was like, "do you remember me?", and she replied by saying "No, who are you?". I told her that i met her in Western Psych and she said she remembered, I also told her that from the moment I seen her I couldn't help but to stare. I wanted to have sex with her so bad,she is so beautiful.

She invited me over her house and all I could think was, yes maybe she likes me, maybe we will have sex but she wanted to introduce me to her friend.I didn't have the slightest interest in her friend at all, than her sister Elana came home and she thought something was going on. Elana is about four years younger than me and nothing was going on. I didn't get lucky with her that dad but I didn't give up until she told she she had a boyfriend and that hurt my heart. Duquesne High is a horrible school,the teachers didn't teach, students were allowed to do anything, there were students in classes that they weren't even scheduled for. People did drugs and had sex in the school, and used profanity and there was no dress code. By that point i had the intelligence level of an eighth grader because i missed so much normal curriculum. I went to Steel Center Area Vocational Technical School for Computer Programming.

At Steel Center i met some great people who had interests like me and that I could fit in with. I bet some fat black guy named Aaron Patton, he is a year a head of me but we were like best friends from the moment we met each other, it was so unreal. I met this very beautiful girl named Lucinda Dodds, both her and Aaron were from Thomas Jefferson School District. My friend Tiffany was in my class and was from Duquesne. Ben McElroy, and Nick Donnely's were from West Mifflin, and Joel, Tony, and this guy named Chris were from South Park.

I randomly signed on to AOL Instant Messenger and i seen that Lisa was online so i gave her an I.M and she asked how i was doing and where i lived and she said she wanted to hang out some time. I told her i would like that so a few days later she came and picked me up and we went to Quaker Steak and Lube for all you can eat wing night and she paid. I had about thirty wings and i was full. She had pretty much the same amount. Lisa was the only therapist that actually kept in contact even after her services were up, she didn't just care about the money.She took me to Century 3 Mall and she told me to apply at some places,and i applied at this smoothie place called Orange Julius.

A week later Orange Julius called me and wanted to set up an interview. I got my hair cut and wore this nice shirt and nice pants there and i acted very professional and I got the job. I got my first over the table job, and I was proud of myself because with a little motivation can take you to big places. I started that next day for training and I didn't do so well. I didn't give up all of a sudden and I got a lot better. I basically had to memorize smoothies an keep the are a clean. I didn't get a lot of hours but i can't really complain because a job is a job. Good for the experience. I did something really stupid though, this girl lost her bag of chips so i took a little thirty cent bag of chips off of the rack and gave them to her. One of the employee's came out and said, "what about those chips" and i told her to please not tell the boss and I am going to pay for them.

Shortly after this place called Flamers opened up and this girl named France n who was working in the food court as a cleaner applied and she told me about it because i used to talk to her a lot. I applied there and got an interview the right on the spot and hired right on the spot.I got way more hours and the people we so much better. The management were Mexican people but they spoke English and were really nice people.They were like my family, just the way they communicated with us was good. I was working fryers to start with and i had a hard time because i was so new at it and i didn't want to over cook or under cook the fries. I eventually got the hang of using the fryers, i didn't even need the timer to time them. I was able to make chicken, fish, and fries in the fryers.

I worked a little over forty hours a week, any hours over forty was paid in cash just because of overtime and that type of business, they didn't want to pay overtime for anyone. I was okay with the pay i had,but i hated so many hours so i assumed that they would fire me if I told them that i didn't want to work all them hours, so i just told her son Marco to tell Alice i said thanks but i quit than i walked out and took the bus to Phil's house and i told him i quit my job. Phil asked me why and I just told him I wanted my life back, that I worked way to much and the pay was not even worth it. I told him I was going to find a new job.

It's been six years since i have seen anyone i grew up with from school so I was wondering who was still around. I was at Century 3 Mall majority of my days after i quit just to hang out with people and ghetto know employees at most of the stores there. Gamestop was my main place to just hang out all day and play the display Guitar Hero on the X box 360. Brandon was the manager there and he was cool as heck, he didn't care how long I was in the store and he let me buy M rated games without ID and had a sarcasm sense of humor, I know I annoyed the checkout of him because all i talked about was games and I never shut up at all. For some odd reason he never kicked me out of the store but I eventually calmed down on the annoyance scale. I met this cool guy named Brian, they called him Easter, some fat dude named Chris and this guy with Jesus long hair, Dangerfield, but we all called him Danger.The assistant manager was this awesome punk chick named Jen, she had a ton of tattoos and piercings and she tells me the craziest stories. She once told me how Jehovah's Witness' people came to her house and asked if she wanted to learn there religion, she had on this goth attire and she was holding her cat stroking it with a dagger than responded if they wanted to learn a thing or two about her religion than she runaway.

I would try to avoid Orange Julius in anyway possible because I pretty much was guilty but they didn't give me much hours anyway. I was more guilty for quitting Flamers but I mainly did it because Lynda was threatening to put me in a placement again because of the arguments. Ihad a new guy that replaced Tim Powell, his name was Chris Lloyd and also received services from turtle creek by a guy named Keith. Chris is a cool guy and he tried to help me by talking to me and giving me suggestions on how to cope with anger. Keith was awesome to, he had a great sense of humor and made all of his sarcasm funny.

I was in Keith's car once and he had this CD in his player called Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and i instantly knew it was that album once he turned it on, it was track 1 which is titled All Around the World and i responded to hearing it by saying, wow the Red Hot Chili Peppers i love them. Keith looked at me funny and smiled and said, yeah they are a great band than told me i could keep the CD and i don't like accepting stuff from people but all i could say was thank you. I remember watching the music video to Californication at my aunt Cindy's back in 99 but i could never understand the lyrics but always liked the song and loved how unique the video was; kind of like a video game. Also, in 2003 i remember hearing Can't Stop and By The Way on the radio all the time and i loved those songs. Stadium Arcadium just came out and i seen the video from Snow (Hey-Oh) and I was like, wow that is a beautiful song and I decided to check out there other songs and albums.

I read about the band and all of the band members lives and they really helped me to see live in a different way just because my life was horrible but so where there's, and there lives around and made something of there selves and it inspired me to do so. I listened to every single song they have recorded several times each and listened to the lyrics and the tone and it made me see a different side to a lot of things. Like the song Under The Bridge is about how Anthony Kiedis, the lead singer was a huge drug addict back in the eighty's and how he used to do drugs downtown in LA and basically was homeless, but he went to rehab and got his self cleaned up and out of that situation. It's not the fact that he got cleaned up, its the fact that he learned a lifelong lesson and it not only had a huge impact on himself, but it had a huge impact on millions of fans including myself. The song Otherside was about his depression and that you can change your life if you change the way you think on things, basically turn it around and take it on the other side. I found a lot of love for the band and the music,but mainly Anthony because of the struggles he has been through, it was like i knew him but never met him. They were officially my favorite band and i am down a die hard fan.

Keith said his farewells and he left Pittsburgh and moved to Florida with his wife and kids and that is where Dennis replaced him. Dennis is a smart man and he was into philosophy and he taught me new ways of thinking, he would tell me stories about various cultures and how they would meditate and do herbal therapy to sooth things. He would talk tome about religion but after all of the talking I had no idea what his faith was, but he didn't talk bad about any of them, i figured he is just agnostic. Dennis would always take me to McDonald's and get a few double cheese burgers and a small drink, occasionally french fries and we would just sit there and talk. Dennis didn't like Lynda, come to think of it, no body really did and even my CYF case worker Tracy said that these problems are not just my fault, the majority of them were caused by her bad parenting.

Dennis told me that i would have to do a psych evaluation in order to continue services, and even though he was a nice guy, all of my life i already know that most, if not all services; do it for the money, not the value of helping people. I told Dennis that i would not do the psych evaluation and he seemed a little upset and he just told me that he could no longer see me, and all i could say is thanks for trying and thanks for the few trips to McDonald's although you get reimbursed for what you spend anyway. I found Lisa online again and she came and visited me and on Christmas eve she came over and gave me all of these gifts that i had no idea she was going to give me, that was the best Christmas i had in a long time and I was kind of sad because I had nothing to give her. I remember she gave me a Bible for Christmas of2000 and i still to this day, have that Bible and open it up once and awhile. Shortly after Christmas Lynda and I were really arguing and arguing, i told her i hated her and i had so much anger in me because of all of the stuff she put me through but yeah, when you think its over it begins again and there i was back in placement.

So two weeks after hanging out at Century 3 Mall, hanging out with all of these children services, Chris decides to take me into another placement in Tarentum, PA. This place was the second place that had females on the floor with me and that made me feel a little better but sadly, I didn't like any of the girls that were there. This place was far and I had no idea where I was at but I knew from the first day I stepped my foot in the door that I hated it. The thing is, i had a choice if I wanted to sign myself in because I was not 302'd and I was over fourteen years old so I agreed to because I just wanted some time away from Lynda's and I could not live at Phil's. While being there I acted like a complete jerk, i was really annoying, I swore a lot and told everyone there i hated them and to just leave me alone. One time they were all in the living area and i was in the dining area sitting in a chair and the office has this window so you can look out of and it was opened a bit so while they were all in the living area trying to stay away from me, i run to the bathroom and grab the mop and i put it through the window and wrapped the cord of the phone around it and grabbed the phone and put the mop back in the bath room and called Lynda and told her that I would be good and to please let me come home and I was sorry. While being on the phone, the one staff member chick caught me and I quickly hung up the phone, She had to call the supervisor, and I told him that I wanted to sign myself out. He said that I could do that but I needed a place to go, and I told him that I would find a way but he said by law he was not allowed to let me simply walkout.

I told him to call Chris and he said that he will call Chris but I have to be good for a whole day. I went into my room and laid in the bed fora full twenty four hours without even using the bathroom or taking a shower just so I could get the heck out of there. Chris picked me up around noon and I was so happy to see him and I just walked out and he drove me back to Lynda's. Lynda and I got along for about two week sthan I went back to Flamers and I told Alice why I quit and that I was sorry and wish that I would of just told them the truth. She said she would give me a call if she needed any one to work. I continued to hangout at the mall everyday and hang at Gamestop a lot and try to make friends. I randomly seen Aly there and I was over her but she gave me her number even though she was still with Steve.

I call her that night and she said I should come visit her at her job so i agreed to but I didn't know what she wanted. She was working at Target down at the waterfront so i hopped on the 61C and went there and waiting forty five minutes there for her to get off work and she told me she would drive me home. I got in her car and we started talking and she pulled into Fu Lai China Buffet by Kennywood park and we started making out. She pulls out my dick and starts giving me oral sex and than we make our way to the back of her van and we started to have sexual intercourse in her warm van. She was cheating on Steve with me but i really didn't care, I was extremely horny and just wanted some.Than she drove me to Lynda's and she left. That next day Alice called me and offered me my job back, I was pretty happy to hear that and there i was working and going to school.

I didn't care to much about Duquesne so i would work everyday in the morning till about eleven than I would go on the bus to steal center because ironically there was this alternative school called Phase 4 and people from Duquesne got dropped off there right before he took the kids to Steel Center. I would simply go to the stop and as he would drop off the Phase 4 kids i would simply get on the bus and proceed to Steel Center than i would get off the bus when ever he would pick those kids from from Phase 4 and there i was back at Century 3 working till the mall closed. At Steel Center there was these annoying brothers who were obsessed with Pokemon, Kyle and Brett Wargo. They were such nerd sand every one picked on Brett because of his teeth and Kyle because hew as so nerdy. Kyle and I became friends though, and eventually Brett and I did. I was just an immature ass hole and I almost got kicked out of Steel Center for doing something stupid.