Good, no one had robbed me of my pain pills. I pulled out my trusty relievers and tossed a handful back. I could be without a home...

It was a dream that I’d been chasing since I was a child. But sometimes, the dreams we have can’t last forever...

Maybe it would have been a lot different if life had stayed peaceful and carefree like when I first came into this world...

I was born in 1982, grew up in and around Raleigh, North Carolina, and was raised by a mother who lived and breathed drugs...

I can still remember the smell of the city streets before there were cars. Trams and horse-drawn carts trundled past...

I shouldn’t have taken all those pills, I didn’t want to die. I needed to get to a phone to call 911, but it was so hard to move...

Growing up, I spent countless hours playing the game, “Operation,” meticulously navigating the clip to avoid touching the metal...

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. This sentence pretty much sums up my whole life...

I know she loved me, deep down, but she loved drugs more. When I was little, she tried selling me for $1,000 to fund her addiction...

I lay in the hospital bed, pain racking my body as chemicals and super-science ran through my blood...

In the early 1990s, my father and his brother left their home in Macedonia to pursue their dream of opening a restaurant together...

Luckily, one of the performers noticed me trailing behind them and took me to the police station where I was reunited with my parents...

I was a very reclusive child and a runaway kid. There was already so much going on inside my head and I couldn’t handle the overload...

I remember one time my brothers and I had to avoid drops of blood splattered on the pavement that followed our path to school...

My childhood was simple, as is most of life in our community. And for many years, it was all I knew, all I needed...

We had many adventures and shenanigans together. Unfortunately, both Stephen and I were influenced easily by peers...

Sometimes, your dream doesn’t line up with how your life is going, and other times, your dream can mold with you...

I was born in 1994 in Lucena, a city situated in the province of Quezon, Philippines...My family was poor, but despite our losses...

That’s when she married my stepfather who served in the US Military. Because of his job, we moved to the US...

They raised me in one of the fiercest neighborhoods in Lagos where petty thieves and prospective armed robbers were groomed...