PREFACE

Heavy laughter continues in conversations I’m pretending to be engaged in. The display of joy and excitement comes easily when you’re naturally eccentric. 

As the conversation ends, I walk back into my haven, and the smile that drew across my face so perfectly and beautifully disappears the further I move away from people. My distorted face returns to its normal terrified but lugubrious state when I’m alone. The mysterious guy wears a hat to cover his enormously large, bald head that he’s been hiding since he was ten years old because of that one bully who changed his life. Tormented him and made him feel like nobody could ever love such a hideous creature. 

I won’t look up; I won’t look this mysterious guy in the eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul.

When you look into mine, you won’t see anything. Just darkness. You know when you’re underwater and can’t hear anything clearly but your thoughts? You know when you’re in a crowded room, and the only voice you can’t hear is your own? 

You can try to converse with someone, but it feels forced as soon as you start talking. You’re always thinking about how you got to that place and what brought you there. You’re nothing like the people around you. They are happy; you are sad. They are beautiful.

Beautiful isn’t close to what you feel. 

When someone begins to instill love in you, you wonder if it is accurate. You don’t know exactly what to feel because the love is new and unknown. Your silence is your hell, and your emotions are the demons who rule it. Your inability to fathom a life full of happiness and sunshine will be your biggest downfall. 

So you stay. Drowning in silence. Drowning in sadness. You feel like the world, as big as it is, is so tiny, and all the walls are coming together to suffocate you. 

But you smile anyway.

“I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, kicked, and trampled on.”

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Chapter 1: TIME

Dear Time,

You’ve kept me in line for so long, and although I’ve not always been aware of you, you still creep up in front of me when I look into a mirror. I’ve kept you away from me so I won’t have to face you. I sleep more so I won’t have to look into you. You sometimes scare me because you make me afraid when push comes to shove. I used to think that once I got older I’d become much wiser, and I’d thank you for allowing me to exist. The older I became, the more miserable I was. The people around me make me feel like I’m wasting you. They’ve accomplished so much in their lives, and I’m still living in my trauma. I don’t want to waste you away, but I’ve felt nothing but pain since you introduced yourself to me. Like I’m the only person I know stuck in the past. When I notice your existence, I become more insecure because you are proof that I’m wasting myself. If I avoid you, I can live day by day and hope I make it to the next one instead of actually trying to prepare myself for my hopes and dreams. Sometimes I purposely ignore you because paying attention to you just means feeling more guilty. I understand that you don’t wait for anyone, and I know that you’re busy ruling the world, but can you make an exception and pay better attention to me? Can we work together, please?

*

It’s so easy to get lost in a world ruled by heartless people. People that only care about societal views and societal opinions. At least, that’s the opinion of someone who’s already left the world. 

My name is Samuel, and I ended my life when I was twenty-three. 

I only had four months before I would have turned twenty-four. I know what you’re thinking: why should you care that I ended my life? Why is it a significant thing? Yes, “thing.” Should the fact that I’m Black make a difference? Should the fact that I’m a black man dealing with mental illness make a difference? I know what my black community would think when they read this book. Like, “what the fuck was this nigga thinking?”

We’ll get into that. But first, my backstory. 

I’ve been fighting mental illness my entire life—I didn’t even know it when I was young. My upbringing wasn’t the most beautiful, but it wasn’t the worst. I just didn’t have the things a child needs in order to become someone with courage and sanity. Someone with peace of mind. I was raised by a woman who hated me and my entire existence. She didn’t say it out loud, but she showed it every day when I was just a child and as I grew into a young adult. How she treated me versus her own children showed it all.

Going back to my beginning, it was 2000 in Mogadishu, Somalia. It’s all a blur. The first thing I remember is I was about two years old and sitting in my mother’s lap with not a clue in the world of what was yet to be my untold story on this somewhat despicable planet we call Earth.

As my uncle Mohamed told the story so many times, he sent about 10,000 Kenyan shillings ($83.38 US dollars) to transport my mother, my father, and me out of Somalia because of the war that was taking place with Ali Shahab. My mother decided it was best that she stayed with my grandmother, so my father took me, and the two of us left. I’m not sure exactly where we were headed (I should probably do my research), but my uncle called it “Kakuma.” It’s a country or state (I’m not sure), but all its cities were named after the letters of the English alphabet. For example, the small town we lived in was called “Town J.” It was raining as we were traveling out of Somalia to get to Kakuma, and I don’t remember much from that moment on, but I do remember flashes of the accident we got into. I may be overexaggerating, but the car flipped over. Try not to laugh. 

Two years later, my father left me with my uncle. I’m not sure why, but he did.

He opened a restaurant in Kakuma and got remarried. He used to come and take me to his restaurant sometimes. One day he decided to leave me with my stepmother, Halima. She traumatized me to the core, grabbed me by my neck, and held a knife to my throat. She said if I ever came between her and my father, she’d make sure I met my maker sooner than expected. Then she and my father were handpicked to live in America, so he left me again with my uncle—permanently this time. That was the beginning of my sob story of abandonment.

I got used to my father’s absence, and my uncle moved me from place to place to stay with my so-called aunts and uncles. Mostly everyone said they didn’t want anything to do with me. They made me feel like an abomination. I felt like I was passed around like an empty plate, and no one wanted it.

As time passed, my uncle eventually decided it was best if I just stayed with him and his wife. At the time, he had one child and a baby on the way. My aunt wasn’t intrigued by my existence under her roof, so feeling unwanted became routine. 

As a child, I ate sand because I used to starve. A parent who loves their child worries about their eating habits, but I didn’t have anyone worrying about whether I ate or not. I was fed when it was convenient for my aunt and uncle, sometimes less often. There weren’t any shelters that could have provided for me instead, so as a frightened child, I did the best I could, trying to keep my head down and survive.

My uncle’s first child, Samuel, died when he was three, and my uncle decided to put me in his place when I was four. Instead of saying he was dead, my uncle gave me his name. And that’s how I came to be known as Samuel. 

If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

After two years of being on the waiting list to move to America, we were finally chosen to start a new life there. I’m not sure by whom, but it didn’t matter then. All that mattered was that we were saved because, according to most Africans, America is the great savior. 

We got dressed up like we were going to a celebration or church. We were first dropped off in New York, and after New York, we landed in South Dakota. We lived there for six months until our family members in Nebraska came for us and brought us to Omaha: “ TheGood Life.” Or so said the state welcome sign. 

I’d wanted my aunt to accept me as one of her own. I wanted her to love me like she loved her own children. But no matter how hard I tried to please her, I could only see her hatred for me. It was never said out loud, but her body language revealed everything. She was always glaring at me like I was a disgusting creature, someone to look down on. 

By the age of eight, I didn’t want to be alive. There was an incident where my “siblings” (under my adopted identity since they were actually cousins) and I were playing, and one of them, Laban, got hurt. My aunt ran down the stairs to check on her “precious” child. She thought that I’d hit him. She shoved me so hard that I slid under a table, hitting my head on edge on the way down. I went blank, and for a second, my vision got blurry. My head immediately started to ache, and I burst into tears. She took her actual kids and left me there to cry on my own. I cried so loudly for someone to help me, but all I got was silence. Eventually, after being in tears for hours, I fell asleep under the table. When I woke up, I felt a massive knot with some dried blood on the back of my head.

One day my uncle was beating Laban with a television cord, and I couldn’t stand by and watch, so I grabbed my little brother and went outside. I was looking to call the police. My aunt and uncle didn’t like that I was trying to call the cops on them. They feared their children being taken by the state, so they kicked me out of their home. 

I lived with my dad for one full year when I was fourteen, until my first suicide attempt. Nobody knew about it—not my friends, not my close family members, no one. 

I stood on the highway at night and was hit by a car. Unluckily, the vehicle was braking and didn’t cause significant damage. I was just bruised with a broken collarbone and a fractured rib. The police didn’t want to let me go home, and when they questioned me, I told them the truth. I felt so alone. I didn’t want to feel that way anymore. If they took me back to my father’s house, I would try again. And the next time I tried; I was going to succeed. 

My social worker understood that if I was left alone, I’d make a second attempt, so I was placed in foster care. They also put me through an intense amount of therapy. Eventually, they concluded that in addition to insomnia, I was dealing with bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and borderline personality disorder. A LOT OF FUCKING DISORDERS, RIGHT? 

From reading this book, you can already pick them all out. 

My time in foster care was probably the best time of my life. I felt a little at peace, like I was getting somewhere in life. Then when I turned eighteen, I had to go back to the hell where I was raised since I was aging out of the system. My foster mother visited my dad while I was at school to tell him that I was headed to college, but I needed to stay with him for the summer. She wouldn’t have minded having me for the summer, but she was planning to leave the country after that. My dad said he would pay her to continue caring for me. 

That broke my heart completely. I can’t say that I hated my life because, honestly, it could’ve been worse. Things can always be much worse. 

I just hated my mind, which played tricks on me out of nowhere. Like I’d see a child with its mother, tears would fall like rain, but one second later, I’m back to being angry again. I didn’t know what emotion to hold on to. I was afraid to be around people since I’d grown up thinking they wouldn’t like me or my presence. I also hated my reflection more than anything in the world. There were some days I wouldn’t even want to wake up and leave the apartment and days when I wouldn’t want to talk to anyone. 

Which made me feel even lonelier. 

The hate for my reflection started when I started losing my hair as a fourteen-year-old. Most people would say it’s just hair, and yes, that may be true, but it’s a feature people use to identify you. I was already insecure about my body and everything else that came with it, but when I lost my hair, I felt utterly hideous. The people around me would laugh and make jokes. I started hiding away. I started wearing hats. I started hating myself more than anything in the world. I hated my very existence. 

I don’t know how I even made it to twenty-three when I spent every minute of my life so miserable. 

I learned to bottle my misery. I kept a straight face when others were around, smiling when I needed to stop them from worrying about me. I hated when they asked me if I was okay, why I was quiet, or why I didn’t talk. Everyone has a story to tell, something to talk about. What was I supposed to talk about? My self-hatred? The fact that I spent an entire youth dreading my existence and wishing I was anyone else but myself? 

People don’t understand the power of their words until they see they have taken someone’s life. Society refuses to accept that just because someone’s different, it doesn’t give everyone the right to make them feel less worthy. People who are different just want the same things as you—we want to be happy and loved. 

Helping others became a passion of mine when I was alive because it made me feel complete. When I was nineteen, I started working with individuals with intellectual disabilities. In my four years working with these individuals, I learned that people are more than their disabilities. Also, people with disabilities are human beings. I can’t fathom why people would ever see them as any less. Hearing their stories of people treating them like they weren’t enough broke my heart. 

I never felt more at home and with family than when I was at work. Time has become a shadow that follows me everywhere, whether I acknowledge it or not. I see the years of abandonment in the hollowness of my cheeks. I see the stress of never knowing my home in the wrinkles on my forehead. I feel its passage in constant pain. 

I can’t believe I even made it to twenty-three.