These are the first few steps on the longest journey

I may have only been alive for 18 years but let me fill you in on a little secret I've learned more in my 18 years than most people learn in a lifetime. As a child i struggled with being super awkward and really anti-social but i made friends only to hide stuff from them... the abuse i suffered was crippling most of it mental and emotional but there was physical and it only started the steady downfall of the broken man you see before you. I for the longest time hid my pain and suffering from people by learning to read them and take on there problems no matter what it cost me i did this until the fateful day came when i was diagnosed with diabetes and death came knocking on my door....i had died and the place i went to was so dark and so lonely but i felt at peace floating on that black water on that raft until those flashes of light brought me back to the world. I was put in a room with a kid who had cancer and in the time i spent at the hospital in Boston he died in the middle of the night that was the first time i never knew someone long but he had a profound effect on my life. over the next few years i faced discrimination and hatred from everyone it destroyed me to the point where i didnt even know who i was anymore. My father was in jail for the better part of my childhood and i was also taken away from my parents for a period of time. All of these events have messed with me so much and taken such a profound effect of how i am that i couldn't begin to explain the differences that have occurred. We have come to the first rest stop on my ever expanding journey