Welcome to The Jungle

Taylor Ximines

 

Welcome to the jungle. Where people here usually end up in jail, where they actually do look like animals inside of a cage. Welcome to Hell on Earth. Some days you feel as though Hell is a wonderful alternative then being in this place. Drug addicts and dealers are on every corner like clockwork. Welcome to the place that will make you or break you. Where if you do live past 21 then you will not accomplish anything. Either you are making babies or making drugs, there are no other options. Here we have no real mothers. Instead we have women who had to give up their childhood and dreams to raise their own children. Here babies have babies. Women who repeated the dreaded cycle of nothingness. Bitterness and regret run through their veins instead of blood. And fathers? Half the people here don’t even know the definition of this word. All they know is that 9 months before their birth dates their mothers had sex with some man. And the ones who do know their father only know him by a tombstone or an inmate number.

There are no houses on the hill in this place. Instead, we have houses so closed to each other that you can smell what your neighbors are cooking through your walls. No one here lives in a condo, instead they have apartment buildings whose hallways are filled with filth and urine and elevators are never in operation. Nope, there are no backyards here, alleyways are what we have. And in these alleyways there are no Mercedes or BMW cars with the top down.

The streets are covered in nothing but filthy trash, so much people can’t even tell you what color the concrete on the ground is. There is a foul smell here also, not so much an actual stinky smell; but the smell of failure. A smell that once you’re here you are here forever.

College? The kids here can’t even spell that word. Most people dropout by age 15 or 16, or just stop going. You see education means absolutely nothing. The only “higher learning” that gets done here is the high people get from smoking drugs. Only a few people have gotten out of here and got an education and better life. And the ones that did get out? Oh trust me, they have no thought of coming back. Quite honestly I don’t blame them. I mean why come back? People here think of you as a sellout or snobby, because you did what they never could.

Welcome to the place where the sun don’t shine. Only good days here are the days when no gunshots are heard. And the funniest thing of all is that this is never going to change. Poverty is always going to be the driving force that keeps people here. Something that this place never had and never will is hope.

You see I am what causes all of this, I am the reason why these people will never know or do any better. I am what keeps these people from living a better life. I am Ignorance.

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