A long time ago I got into a fight. A fight where a couple people representing a gang wanted to take the money of me and my friend. The lights were painting everything a sickly orange and I just lost my cool because for the umpteenth time someone thought that because they were part of a gang or a group or a clique or had more money or something else that they were better than me.

I am not better than anyone, and no one is better than me. It has taken countless pints of spilled blood, dozens of scars, a handful of broken teeth, and another of broken bones to learn that because moment to moment we only have we are in that moment. All we have one way or the other is defined in a single moment, and that is it.

Back to the street me and my friend took a fair beating, but that was when we learned that was their best shot. They figured it out about three seconds after us and tried pulling out some little switches. It may be a bad snapshot of me at the moment, but it was then that I felt free to do whatever I want because without a weapon I had to defend myself. Our opponents wouldn’t want to be heading back saying the got beat AFTER they pulled their blades. It just does not stand well in the grand scheme when you are always worried about looking weak.

I took a small nick next to my hairline, and if you squint you can still see where it started on the right side. Those blades never got another chance to do damage to us. It felt like hours when it really was minutes, but every second counted to them because every drop of blood they had let to the air I made sure to get out of them. One guy had a busted nose and jaw and to this day will not be in the same building as me, and he still has a limp to the left.

I bring this up because this was in an area that people would go out and bleed for what they wanted, for what they believed. I bled buckets and to see anything after wearing a crimson mask is difficult for the experienced and impossible for the first timer. Hearing the small things people get up in arms over micro transgressions or trying to enforce a backwards policy or deem something discriminatory without any evidence makes me sad. Those gangbangers and me and my friend fought and bled and it wasn’t unheard of for a kid in the grade to die to a botched drug deal or a meth house explosion or just because a fight went too far. Nearly a decade off and on over and over of fighting for what you think is right.

When I read things like how grammar, as it stands, is racist because according to the university, everything is racist which I disagree with wholeheartedly, but that is not the point of this writing. Those guys fought and bled and scratched and pulled every trick in the book, and those girls did the same to survive. I respect those people who had to fight a thousand times, no a million times more than the overly sensitive group of people that is making so much noise it should be a crime in itself. These criers only want something for them, they don’t care about anyone else as long as it proves their own case a little easier. The world is not perfect, not even close. I would rather take the time and look at a situation and gauge the evidence to actually help those who found themselves working against an unfairly stacked deck. Most of those people I beat down and beat the crap out of me. Well, they would too.

I wonder where all of this negative energy will fester in the world because eventually, it will set something alight that cannon be extinguished. Now that my venting is over, however, I am going to try and make the world the better place it can be, and hope I am good enough to do it.