My Name is Isaac Bent, and I grew up in the ghetto parts of a country-far enough from hope that ambition felt like a rumor.
I learnt early enough that I didn't fit in anywhere. At school I was the ghetto boy- the wrong background, the wrong story. At home I was the wanna be rich kid. They mistook my silence for arrogance, as if wanting more meant I thought I was more.
I got stuck in two realities at once before I ever had the chance to figure out who I was. I learned how to choose who I needed to be. Every room demanded a different version of Isaac: soften here, harden there, hide this, exaggerate that. I shaped myself to fit others' perspectives, not my own understanding. Somewhere between the ghetto and the walls of a private school. By the time I realized I was pretending, the pretending had become Isaac Bent.
The streets that I grew up on were narrow, twisting, and loud, pressing in on me from every side—emotionally ally. Sounds collided: laughter, arguing, sirens repeated like a fresh beat, and gunshots rung like a hell-bound bell. In this chaos, I found peace by moving silent and speaking carefully. I had to see, hear, and act like I had lost all my God-given sense. It felt like there was no love in this world, and I wondered if God listened when I prayed. A place where jail wasn't any strategy to make this stop, I learned to live by the code, shaped into a boy I didn't even know.
Private School—The fading sun hung in a dark sky. As graduation approached, the thought of change grasped my neck and held me in a chokehold, firm and unyielding. Memories buried deep down resurfaced like a rubber duck tossed into sharp, jagged water—and it all hit at once: the pain of being left out, laughed at, standing on the sidelines, slipping through the cracks. I kept walking, counting my steps with my head held high and a smile on my face to meet their standards, trying to carry the burden lightly, like it wasn't mine to hold.
Graduation was here, and I walked the polished halls and manicured lawns of a world that never felt mine. Behind me, the ghetto streets I'd grown up on twisted in memory, shouting and leaning in, and I realized I'd been carrying both realities long before I knew who I really was.
I GRADUATED🎓.