Definition of Seredipity by D Floyd

The ConTextos Authors Circle was developed in collaboration with young people at-risk of, victims of, or perpetrators of violence in El Salvador. In 2017 this innovative program expanded into Chicago to create tangible, high quality opportunities that nourish the minds,,expand the voices and share the personal truths of individuals who have long been underserved and underestimated. Through the process of drafting, revising and publishing memoirs, participants develop self-reflection, critical thinking, camaraderie and positive selfprojection to author new life narratives.

Since January 2017 ConTextos has partnered with Cook County Sheriff's Office to implement Authors Circle in Cook County Department of Corrections as part of a vision for reform that recognizes the value of mental health, rehabilitation and reflection. These powerful memoirs complicate the narratives of violence and peace building, and help author a hopeful future for human beings behind walls, their families and our collective communities.

While each author’s text is solely the work of the Author, the image used to create this book’s illustrations have been sourced by various print publications. Authors curate these images and then, using only their hands, manipulate the images through tearing, folding, layering and careful positioning. By applying these collage techniques, Authors transform their written memoirs into illustrated books.

This project is being supported, in whole or in part, by federal award number ALN 21.027 awarded to Cook County by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Serendipity D. Floyd

For as long as I can remember since a child, I have always been trying to figure out my niche or what my identity is.

Growing up in an environment where I felt like I came out of the womb right into a disaster without knowing it. as a child, you're not aware of what's going on around you and how toxic your household or community may be until you're old enough to grasp your own perception of reality.

You might be embracing the wrong things without knowing it. It takes a supreme level of focus and strong will to succeed to not succumb to pressures and unfortunate circumstances that comes with being in the hood. I feel like it's imperative to not only have a goal but try your hardest to eliminate any amount of extra free time. As a youth I was told that an idle mind is the Devil's Playground.

It took me to grow up to realize how true that actually is when the only thing I had was time on my hands.

I was always told that I was smart and that I had potential, yet I just didn't know exactly what I wanted to do or be. Most kids always said they wanted to be a firefighter, police officer, doctor or play sports. Most kids from around my way might even tell you they wanted to be like the dude on the Block with money, nice clothes and fancy cars. But I never aspired to be any of those things.

By the bar not being set too high for me from who I would expect to be my first to role models, I always felt like being something my parents could be proud of never really mattered. But on another hand a part of me had this sense of wanting to overachieve and exceed all expectations. With being the last of five children even with me being the baby I've always felt like it was all on me to save my family and be the one. I realized, in hindsight, that was some pressure I added on top of myself only because I seen that I was the only one that truly cared about the happiness of my loved ones. With me giving myself that kind of responsibility at a young age it made me kind of stay away from trouble and danger but also gave me more pressure to find my calling or purpose for being here. Sometimes I feel like I was cursed with being too passionate because I couldn't do anything if my heart wasn't in it or if I didn't have a connection to it.

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My mother was really my introduction to unconditional love. Through it all she never left.

Even with her battling her drug addiction secretly, she still managed to make sure me and my sister didn't want anything. It took me a while to realize my mom's weird behavior where cries out for help. she wasn't the emotional type so rarely ever expressed any vulnerability so I didn't understand what the things that she wasn't saying, along with her actions were louder than the things that were actually coming out of her mouth. I began to realize the drugs and poor habits were feeling a void in a way to replace loneliness and whatever other trauma she didn't speak on.

I remember being a kid riding on my bike in the neighborhood with my friend on what seemed to be a sunny day. I recall seeing my mom walking on the opposite side of the street. She was aware that most of the kids played together on the same block, and we had an understanding that as long as we stayed on the block, we were OK to play there.

As soon as I called my mom to get her attention she looked over at me she waved at me. I asked her where she was she going? She told me that she was going to a friend's house and instructed me to not leave off the block. A part of me wishes I had listened but me wanting to know, and making sure my mom was safe, I followed her but I stayed so far behind that she didn’t know I was behind her. As soon as I began to reach her destination, with me trailing behind on my Huffy, I noticed her enter a housing complex of the stairs where all the local feins hung out and got high at.

I remember thinking to myself like what the hell is my mom doing over here with these hypes? So she disappeared into the smokey and crowded hallway. I inched closer up to the complex and yelled out “Mama”. She heard my voice and came back down the stairs to see me there on my bike as tears began to form inside my eyes. I immediately turned my bike around and paddled as hard as I could.

As I got further and further away, I could hear my mom calling my name “Danny ”. And in my head is like what went from a nice day, turned into a real thunderstorm. Me and my mom never talked about that day and honestly at that moment in the back of my mind after that day, everything began to make sense. It was always for me to confront my mother about the obvious abuse my mother was doing to herself, and frankly, that’s why I never turned to selling drugs. I tried, but every time I look at one of the feins, I saw my mom.

I wish growing up I had a dad to really instill a certain foundation in me on how to be a man but my father was a pimp so it kind of had me questioning whether or not if that's who I wanted to be learning from. Don’t get me wrong, I love my father and I also realize even though we don't speak, I'm a lot like him in a lot of ways. Not to mention that I look just like him, plus I learned as I grew up that my father wasn't as lucky as I was growing up. By growing up in the streets he learned certain skills that he had to in order to survive. He also didn't finish high school so to be honest he set the bar was pretty low academic wise. He used to say if I didn't see the things I seen in the house then I would learn it from the streets. So he never tried to hide what he did or who he was and he never apologized for who he was. Even if that meant him being stuck in his ways would be the main reason why we don't speak now.

I remember as a teen traveling from the southside of Chicago to the Westside to visit my dad.

During one of my visits, I was conversing with him about what I wanted to do career wise. I told him that I was interested in being an auto technician because I enjoy cars and wanted to learn everything there was to know about them, only to be rudely interrupted. “Forget that.

What you should really look into is going to the military. They’ll pay for all of your schooling and some other stuff.” That went into one ear and out the other.

It might’ve been good advice, but the fact that he didn’t even try to hear me out on something that I was passionate about fueled me with the rebellious teenager. May have caused me to completely dismiss his advice. After that convo, I never really talked to him again about possible career opportunities and I didn’t have the guts to tell my dad that hey that’s not something I’m interested in plus I was really learning how to be a man on my own, so why should I listen to him anyway?

The loving wisdom that I didn't get from my dad caused me to cling to older guys in the hood in order to learn how to navigate through life. Seeing my mother struggle with her vices subconsciously made me adapt and escapist behavior and also fall for girls who struggle with addiction and Trauma from coming from a broken home as well. My advice to anyone looking for genuine love, the worst place to look for it is in the streets.

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I like basketball but by the time I got good enough, I wasn't tall enough to go all the way. I also love football but once I broke my foot playing in the street One Summer I said forget that.

Another one of my passions was cars so as I entertained the idea of one day becoming a mechanic I was kind of discouraged by how expensive it was to attend Auto Tech School.

Another talent I possessed that I slept on was my ability to write, tell stories or even being able to express myself in a form of writing.

I remember this time in elementary school our teacher Ms Dennis asked us to write about a moment in our lives. Long story short, Miss Dennis was so impressed by my story that she asked me if she could read it in front of the whole class. I gave her the permission to do so even though I was extremely shy. Another part of me was flattered that she thought that I did such a good job.

That might have been the initial time where I realized that I had possessed the ability.

Words flow naturally from the pen to the paper and even though I had a glimpse of the potential career path it still took me a while to really take it seriously.

It even landed me and honors creative writing class in high school my freshman year. All upperclassmen and me, first period. At that time I didn’t appreciate it.

As I came of age, I felt like I had to go through my trial and error phase of life. Noone knew me growing up as a bad kid, I just hung out with a not so overachieving crowd.

Being an honor student in the art of peer pressure, I found myself sort of vibrating at a lower frequency to match my peers.

So instead of making the crowd catch up to me, I often caught myself trying to catch up with the crowd. My same teacher, Miss Dennis wrote in my 8th grade graduation autograph book and said basically I think you are a very smart young man but you should stop dumbing yourself down to be around certain people. Don't dumb down any longer. It was like she was giving me a crucial piece to what I would call a survivor's guide.

So back to my trial and error phase of life, I didn't embrace opportunities, things or people that would help me grow. Instead I did what most teenage boys did when they came of age inside of the inner city chase skirts. Do dumb shit and waste time. Ahhh…The trifecta.

I knew I wasn't a dummy but if I'm being honest, I never really aspired to be a scholar. Plus I was a loner so I didn't really care to interact with other kids nor attend school for that matter. Also I believe that it was kind of hard to be focused on world studies or biology when your swag wasn't up to par with the rest of the class.

In hindsight of course it seems silly but I went to a school where fashion made you popular. So it was kind of a confidence killer when the girls weren't checking for you cuz you weren't a fly as you wanted to be.

Plus it was kind of dangerous in Chicago from 2011 to 2014, with 2012 being one of the most violent years in the city.

From the rest of the world having their eyes on us for the music or just because so many kids were being murdered I would say it was pretty difficult to navigate through the chaos and stay out of trouble on top of staying safe.

I did somewhat of a good job staying out of trouble I should say. But it was pretty easy for trouble to find you when you don't have resources to distract you or keep you busy. As I said that idle time is what the devil thrives on and I can say I've been a victim of it quite a few times.

During my juvenile years I spent a lot of time in the streets, I remembered my first time being arrested for something I could have easily avoided. I remember feeling like I let my mom down. This was around the time I was desperately looking for work, but because I was not old enough to work legally I had to get a workers permit from my guidance counselor at school. I told her my financial situation.

She said that I needed to get better grades in order for her to issue me a permit. I left her office feeling discouraged because at that time most young men my age weren't trying to earn a wage.

Even my peers in classmates were satisfied with hustling or asking for it. I felt like the least she could do was give me a break. Also, it would have allowed me to worry about one less thing in order to focus on my grades. So I attempted to try and get better grades but that time I was struck with some kind of depression where I began to feel like nothing mattered. It kind of caused my attendance at school to drop causing me to have free time to waste.

So I used to get up and pretend that I was going to school and went straight to the hood. Using unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with this sickness that was foreign to me at the time. I often found myself feeling lost with no one to talk to about how I felt and not even knowing how to articulate how I was even feeling. After feeling lost and drained from the pressure and stress that came with being in the streets, I always noticed when I was down every time I looked around, I was by myself. No luck at trying to find an actual guidance or a sense of direction, I just knew I wasn't headed in the right direction. I felt like I was at rock bottom.

One day I was at the park, I was around 17 years old. I had an out-of-body experience, like an epiphany. It was like something told me that it was time to transition if I wanted to change my life. In a way it was kind of like I wrote my way out of darkness. I used to sit in my room and write about how I felt and what was going on in my life because I learned early on is good to write certain things out and that was good for me saying that I had trouble expressing myself verbally.

To this day it's a saying that stuck with me: Focus on direction over speed because a lot of people headed nowhere fast. I never really cared to be a street dude but it seemed like the only place I could get acceptance at the time. I somehow felt out of place like a fish out of water.

Eventually things began to get better and as I graduated high school I felt like that's when life really began. so I was back looking for a career and bounced from one drive to another but at one point I actually had a job working for a newspaper company Downtown. But it wasn't a future in the dying newspaper industry so I was back to looking for something that made me feel whole. So I started to take another route to get my CDL. No matter what avenue I ventured into I always wrote about my experiences and what I learned. Plus always kept a note pad to use as an outlet and to jot down ideas for possible novels.

Unlike other careers I had actually enjoyed driving trucks and for once in my life I felt like I was doing honest work and plus my mom was proud of me. I was actually doing pretty good but I just had to stay focused and separate myself from people who weren't on what I was on. Out of my crowd I'm actually the only one that works a job and doesn't mind and actually takes pride in an honest day's work.

I'm the only one out of the crowd who isn't a felon as well which made me realize even though these guys were my friends it's okay to want different things out of life than them and also your product of who you surround yourself with. I take full accountability for the direction my life is going, yet I also feel being too loyal can have you blind morally in a way. I have reached another point in my life where I feel like it's time to make another transition and be the man I'm supposed to be and in order to do that I have to, stop straddling the fence about hanging out wasting time and really focus on what really matters.

In retrospect I honestly just wish I was strong enough to realize it was okay to walk alone and do my own thing, instead of playing it safe and staying within the confines of my own comfort zone.

Present day, here I am daydreaming out of the window of my cell thinking how I managed to stay out of this place all this time just to end up here at 27. As I began to dwell on feeling like I lost it all on a sunny Monday morning I got called into the hallway to speak with a lady by the name of Miss Hailly. She tells me about her giving me an opportunity to express myself in a form of writing.

At first I was skeptical and hesitant, but a guy named Gudda that I was being housed with overheard the convo, whispered in my ear and said “What is there to think about, tell her you'll do it.” I was also told by Ms Hailly that I would have to move to another tier but after brief consideration of the possibilities that would come with this,I agreed to do it.

Once I made my decision, I realized how serendipitous it was. Writing has always been something that I used as an outlet and always came easy to me once I put my mind to it.

In a way it's like God brought me here to sit me down to allow me to readjust my focus and remind me that I had the right mindset. I just had to block out the distractions and fall in love with the process of becoming great.

Ultimately I have a new appreciation for life and even more I aspire to be a better brother to my siblings and a better son to my parents. I will also be a better role model to the children of my community who look up to me including my nieces and nephews.

I am a better father and most importantly a better man. I feel like ConTextos is a good jump start and aiding that. Also, this is a good opportunity to explore the possibilities of becoming an author.

Since I was a kid I noticed I transitioned from different levels. In order to keep growing you have to make a transition. Bring complacent, being stuck in one level for too long.

Universe gives you signs when it’s time to level up. Here I am leveling up again.

D. Floyd I Am From I am from Leclaire Courts and the Lowden Homes From Midway Airport and black gates I am from s-curl spray, pink lotion, Phat Farm and Fubu I am from water, birds flying high, sounds of the lake I’m from Jacqueline and Paris From family get togethers And from having a dark sense of humor And two crazy people I’m from think before you act And look both ways before you cross I’m from no organized religion But belief in a higher power I’m from Chi City From Og’s Thanksgiving dressing and Grandma’s potato salad From Jackie and Scorpio I am from happiness to pain to glory

Until the lion learns to write their own story, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter - African Proverb Copyright

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