I’ve been here for 10 months. This is my first conviction. The wrong place at the wrong time with a couple of friends, New Years, ’99. We was having fun. I goes over his house. I’m sick from drinking or whatever. So I falls asleep. I woke up to gunshots. They was shooting guns out the window. So I tried to walk out because I didn’t want to be a part of it. By the time I tried to get out, the SWAT team was coming in. I was facing like attempted murder, aggravated assault, all types of gun charges, like charges that I don’t even know about. I was 17. I was scared. I never been in no trouble. Whatever, I was downtown in the Youth study center. They charged me as an adult. My lawyer got me a deal for 3 years probation.

When I got locked up, I was on the run from assault on my mom boyfriend for beating on her. He had reported me to the cops. When I had got caught, I had possession of marijuana. It wasn’t like bad or nothing, it was just weed. I used to smoke marijuana or whatever. That’s what I got convicted with.

There’s a reason why I’m here. I’m Islam, I’m Muslim. I think my God got me here for a reason, for the things I was doing in the past. Even though I was progressing doing them, it was still wrong. I could have been dead. Anything could happen to me out there. This was written in my life to come here. It was a bad experience, but it was a good experience too, because I needed to go through this and see how the prison system is. I got a lot out of it.

I got to take care of my daughter. Like, you know, my baby mom, she was like unfit. She was in a foster home all her life. She’s from like foster care. So before I started doing negative things, I was doing positive things, like I was going to school, I was playing ball, I was running track, I had 2 jobs, whatever. My life was going right. Then it got switched around. Things started getting hard on me. Predicament with my family, they all drug addicts. The only one that ain’t no drug addict is my grandma. She raised me. Like things was getting hard. I was going house to house. I had my daughter the whole time. She’s 3 years old. I was struggling but I was a good provider.

I haven’t seen my daughter in 9 months. Nine months I haven’t seen my daughter. It is tough. I just talked to her yesterday. She’s getting big. She’s getting smart too. I’ll be happy when I leave here. So there’s no worries. I’m not worrying. I’m not stressing. I’m just waiting. I’m not doing life. The longest I can do is 23 flat. And that’s 7 more months. So it’s all down hill. Everything will work out with me. There’s a couple jobs I can go to, because I’ve been working there and I’m a good worker.