When someone says “Our past defines us.” Are they telling us that we are what our past makes us, or are they telling us that we are caught in the oh so elegantly spun web of life, and our past is the spider preparing to suck the light right out of us as we lie there helpless and watching?

Because in the span of my ever growing 17 years of life, things have been said and crimes committed that I am not particularly proud of. But as I sit here in the bed scarred by the names and cries of past “Delinquents”, I reflect on the last 3 years of my incarceration, and I notice a subtle change within the crevices of my mind and soul. I am not the same lost and confused teenager that was suddenly plagued by an overwhelming state of hatred and depression. But instead I am a confident and intelligent young man ready to pursue a career in psychology. But it seems as though the odds are against me. The people that have the most control of what happens to me don’t see me as I am. They see me as a crime I committed, as a piece of paper that says “Delinquent”; they see me as a statistic. As a statistic that says that I am more likely than not condemned to a life in prison. And that statistic’s ability to fulfill its destiny is equal to the gravitational pull the sun has on the Earth. But I will prevail. I won’t let my past define me. The past is the past, and the future is mine.