Finding Hope - Despite the Tragedies

I had a crazy life as a young boy. My mother was living la vida loca, and I was along for the ride. She was a very beautiful lady and never experienced a shortage of men in her life. She also loved to drink and party.

As a result, a parade of men passed in and out of our home, and my home life consisted of a lot of fighting, screaming, and hitting.

But instead of having deep depression through all of this, I strangely had hope that one day things would get better.

I don’t really know why I felt that way. There was nothing to indicate that things would get better. In many ways, they actually got worse when I became a teenager. I started making a lot of bad decisions that sent my life in an even worse direction.

At school no one was saying, “Greg, hang in there. You’re going to go out there and accomplish something in the world.”

In fact, most of the schools I went to wanted to expel me, and for good reason. I would make trouble in class. I would disrupt the class. And the only reason I wasn’t expelled was that my mother threatened to sue.

That was the life I lived, and somehow I thought my life would get better.