Homelessness Through the Eyes of a Child, The Brother’s Story

By Robert Roland III

I’m right here – standing beside my sister, STRONG! A year younger than her, I am like a soldier in Iraq whose general just died and made me the next in line to step up and take command. I had to be a man at a young age when the cats at school thought about ball and girls. I had no time to get caught up in the imagination of a real childhood. Life didn’t slow down, so I had to get in the fast lane as hard times sped up. I thought that if my father ain’t man enough to be a real man, then I gotta do what I gotta do to make it. So, I shifted gears and sped up into life. I have been blessed with the slight humor of having no hatred in my heart for my father. I thought that, at least he’s here when nobody else is. I show nobody what I really think. I am a chameleon in the grounds of life, but I know what I think. I think, dang, dudes my age are running around acting like they know what hard times are. Some dudes don’t even have a clue about being a man. I look at them with disgust and sympathy because I wish no one had to go through what I’m going through. I am so past the stage of playing. I gotta be the man that I was forced to be. I was thrown into the responsibility of having a family; but I stood up and took charge of this responsibility. The fact that he can’t teach me how to be a man and that he can’t be my role model, all that is sad. The only thing he can teach me is what not to be, and yet, my heart does not plant the seed of hatred towards him. I am a self-taught man with self-taught love for others who don’t show it back. In this journey of being a man, I could have fallen into the steps and cracks of many other self-taught men trying to get fast money in the fast lane of drugs, jacking, and selling pills. But no, I choose to walk in the steps of the many God-loving self taught men – and, for that reason alone, I know that we will be alright.