Where do I start. I don’t even know but this has been my most difficult journey and experience yet. I have no pride. I have nothing left. My ego is empty. I lost it all. This is my last battle. I wanted to give up but I told myself let me let the world in. Maybe someone will care. Maybe they won’t. But who knows that’s the chance I’ll take. Many will view me as weak, many will have an opinion but these days I’ve learned to live a life of not trying to impress or be liked by others because if you only see how quickly the world forgets you when you’re gone then why care when you alive. This world is for people who take chances. I’ve played it safe my entire life. I can’t do that anymore. I got someone who needs me and I’ll do anything to be in his life no matter how much I lose in the process.
My name is Jonathan Love. I was born in the Bronx NY. I’m the son of a crack addict mother who tried to murder me as a baby. I’m the son of a father he has never met and a family I’ve have never experienced. No grandma. No aunts uncles. No cousins. Just me. For all it’s worth I ain’t never felt like I was supposed to be here. I’ve always felt different & misunderstood trying to find my place in this world. I was taken from my mom at 6 months. Never met or seen the woman again. I was given to a family along with my two younger brothers who were born after me. We’d later be adopted. Let’s start from the beginning. I was always a loner. I stayed to myself. I never really connected with anyone within the household. I was very artistic and a visionary. Growing up I had a very wild imagination. I would roll up paper and create imaginary people who I connected with. That was my only form of feeling I belonged. I was always treated different. So I began journaling at 5 years old and so on. I began to write poems and later create songs. Then I learned my love for music around 8. I was always smart and full of wonder but yet so misunderstood. My adoptive father I was never close to. He took a liking to my younger brother and would treat me different. He’d say things about me as a child which hurt my feelings and I’d just act like it didn’t bother but it broke me inside. When it would come to giving us a treat I wouldn’t get anything and my younger brother would be rewarded. So when my adoptive father died and everyone else cried, I didn’t. I didn’t feel anything. I was numb and couldn’t fake my emotions. I never felt connected to him in my 7/8 years of life. So once he passed my life began to change dramatically. My adoptive mother had 6 sons they were all about 20/30 years older than me and my younger brothers. She was getting older and her husband was no longer around and they’d begin to become the decision makers within the household. My adoptive mother would always keep me close to her and have me doing chores claiming “An idle mind made a devil’s workshop”. My brothers would get to chill and do whatever while I had to clean cook and always be a servant within the household. They got to have a childhood I didn’t. Mine was always spent cleaning and cooking and being humiliated and abused. My life changed when her son who was a correctional officer who was splitting with his wife and removed from his family came to live with us. He was a sick human being but hurt people hurt people. He thought of the most sick and sadistic ways to break a person’s spirit let alone an innocent child like myself. My adoptive family would cut my hair bald and send me to school for no reason at all just because the felt they could. They would buy my brother new clothes and send me to school with the same stuff for the entire year. Anything I’d do I’d be beat for and no one said nothing or did anything. The abuse was so bad. I would be woken out my sleep in the middle of the night before school to go in the basement strip and be beaten for hours naked. Sometimes I’d beat furiously in middle of the day with all kinds of electrical wires and switches. Time didn’t matter it just always was taken place. I would scream and holler for hours and when I would come upstairs my adoptive mother would look at me and say “go back downstairs and get some more”. I was a broken but strong child. Physically broken but mentally strong that one day I would escape this abuse.
I was always a smart child. I was accepted to every gifted school from elementary to High School but was told I couldn’t go because they had to keep me close to home cause they couldn’t trust me. My younger brother who was in no way as intelligent as me was allowed to go to school where he wanted and no one said anything. He was even allowed to have sex inside the household and treated in a way where he was viewed as my older brother. I didn’t even have a girlfriend until I moved out or let alone a friend come over to help with a project anything. My adoptive mother was extremely prejudice. I remember my friend Ashley wanted to come over from Far Rockaway all the way to Brooklyn to work on a homework project and my adoptive mother told me while was on her way “I don’t want any Puerto Ricans in my house”. Crazy thing is me and my brothers are Hispanic. I was always stigmatized and treated differently because of my mom’s drug use. They’d make comments like “you the one we gotta keep an eye on” or “if we don’t watch you; you’ll be dead”. I sometimes think it was cause of my beautiful dark skin they hated me. My adoptive mother’s family was former slaves. I was dark skin. My middle brother was brown skin and my youngest brother was a lighter shade than both of us. I think in totality she hated me because I looked like her and maybe she hated her black skin. I don’t know but it’s truly puzzling to how someone could treat a child in the ways they treated me and the evils they did to me. She’d say things to me like “You ugly with them pink ass lips”. Would cut my hair bald cause I had nice wavy hair. They’d do anything to break my spirit. The abuse would continue for years and years. I’d go to school bloody and in pain and pretend to be normal and act like I was ok but super broken inside and had to pretend to my friends like I was all good. Nothing was ok. I had so many nights growing up I wanted to murder my entire household. Always figured life would be better if I just stayed a ward of NY state. Sometimes I feel people adopt children for the money and benefits and not the actual love.
I’m 16 years old now. In High School. Still being abused day in and day out. Abuse marks all over my back and body from being beat countless hours to a bloody pulp for just being human and being a kid. Super hurt and super confused. Never wanting to leave because I was told growing up “if you leave here, you’ll be in a group home where you’ll be molested and abused worst”. For someone who didn’t have any of other family and no one staying felt like the safest option. This time I had enough I decided to run away only to be brought back home and the abuse would continue for two more years. I now come back home and I’m still being beat, controlled, and having my mental destroyed by people who didn’t love me. I was just a tool that boosted their egos and money from the government that payed their mortgage. I decided after finally getting my diploma after dropping out of school for 6 months to attend college. I start attending college and it’s the first time in my life I felt freedom. I’m able to go where I want and do what I want. But when I signed up my mother would make me take out my loans and give her the money. She would take my financial aid checks and keep the money. I couldn’t have nothing. I was labeled a thief from young because of her son who was addicted to crack who had robbed another son and of course that was put on me and was now my identity within the family. So every time I’d get a dollar it would be taken. So I remember going to college and just going for the girls and the socializing aspect that I lacked for most of my life. I felt free. I felt like I was becoming myself. I wasn’t really attending my classes; I was failing and one day I come home and my brother is asking where is my refund check. I tell him I didn’t get it. I really didn’t because anyone knows when you fail in school you don’t receive a refund check if your GPA is too low. So because I couldn’t produce a check or the money I had was thrown out the house at 18. I was kicked out on a summer night in the rain. All I had was a white tee shirt some adidas basketball shorts and some slippers. I’ll never forget that day. It changed my life.
I spent the first night sleeping on a park bench down the block from my house. I was so hungry I ate out a garbage can in the park. I had nothing. The second day I rode the train for hours and hours just messed up about it all. Day 3 I went to the shelter where I was given a bed but the little I possessed was stolen from me. So I went to my boy Shavez’s crib. He let me stay a night or two and gave me some money to stay afloat. After that I spent I couple night’s on my friend Larry’s floor and sometimes on his couch for almost a month. Then my boy Rashad and his moms (God rest her beautiful soul) allowed to sleep on their couch where I was able to get a job and find some stability in my life. I was homeless again because I had a room and couldn’t afford the weekly payments and my homie Cain and his moms allowed me to stay with them and took a chance on me. I’ll forever be in debted to them.
When you ain’t got no one it’s hard to find the light. So I began to hustle as well as work just to make ends meet to survive. I won’t speak on what I did but I didn’t sell any drugs or hurt anyone in the process. I was arrested a few times. Then I met my ex. We were young. We were 21. She got me out the streets. Even allowed me to live with her family. We loved each other but were two broken individuals. The relationship was extremely toxic. I did my best to love her as much as I could but nothing was enough. I made my mistakes. I realized in time the love I needed from my mother and my adoptive mother was the void I would now try to fill with a woman. I was a broken man. I had moments of being emotionally unavailable and didn’t understand why. I just always felt alone even I was around people. We were together 9 years. She helped me finally have a career and take a chance on myself. The breakup was so bad. I was hurt. So I took my time to heal. I was homeless again with nowhere to go so I decided to stay with my adoptive family because I had no other way to survive.
Stayed with my family during the pandemic and worked on myself to where I met my child’s mother. She was everything I wanted and more or at least I thought she was at that time. I made all the necessary steps as a man to help and provide for her and a child she had from a previous relationship. I decided to move to Tampa FL. Left my career and take a chance on the life we could build. She had family in Tampa and we agreed it would be the best help so we could have with my son. I was with her hand and foot for her entire pregnancy besides the first 3 months where I was in NY working. Flew in for every doctor’s appointment. Made sure she had her random cravings and just loved on her during the pregnancy. She had a criminal record and couldn’t work and I never looked down on her; I even invested in helping her expunge it so she could feel valued by the world. The day my son was born was one of the best experiences of my life. I’ve always wanted to be a father. Now I got the chance to actually have a little me. I loved her daughter like my own because blood doesn’t matter children need love. When Luxe was born my world changed. I was excited for his growth and his development. Cried like a baby because I experienced so much up until that point. About 4 months after he was born his mom decided she wanted to work again and she had an opportunity in Miami for a job. At first I didn’t agree but when you love someone you support them because you want to see them happy. I decided I’d give it a chance. We moved to Miami temporary to get situated in March of last year. Things didn’t work out for me there and I missed the kids so I decided to go back to Tampa. She decided she would stay which I felt was alarming. So I didn’t have a car. Couldn’t get to work and had no childcare for my newborn son and was supporting her 13 year old daughter only to find out she was in Miami working but also betraying me. She was having a full blown affair and didn’t even tell the guy she had kids or a man at home. Meanwhile I’m struggling to pay bills. Can’t work because I have to support two kids and eviction notices on my door every week she’s having the time of her life. In that time I’ve had to sell all my possessions. My MacBook in which I did my music on. My PS5 and anything of value just to survive and make a way and feed those kids. My family in NY even threw away all my possessions over $20,000 in clothes sneakers and items. The losses were piling up. At this time I was literally a stay at home dad raising a newborn baby alone and losing it. Going into deep debt and depression while the person I chose to share my life was trying to start her life with another. That broke me so deeply when I found out. I’m not going to say how I found out but the details destroyed me. I lost everything in the months to follow. Once I found out the details or what she did. She was exposed and no longer cared about me as a human. Typically narcissist behavior. She ended getting her dad to co-sign an apartment for her in the same community as mine. Moved out and took the kids while I was behind about $7,000 on the rent. She upped and left me. In January the state of Florida took the apartment. On a Friday I got the notice after getting off work had to pack everything and put it in a storage facility by Monday. I cried and was so broken. If it wasn’t for my homie Cain I don’t know how I would’ve done it. He came all the way from Houston to help me. If that’s not love I don’t know what is. We stayed in a hotel for a few nights while everything was in storage and until we could figure out next moves. I found this app where I was staying in a shared space in Tampa. Paying about 200 a week for a room and working at JP Morgan. Life was good. Until it wasn’t.
Then my life changed. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I was arrested for a crime I didn’t commit. My life changed dramatically. It was one of the hardest experiences of my life. Called some people and they didn’t even want to bail me out. I had to be bailed out of jail by people I didn’t want to call or know my situation. I was in county jail for three days. I met some really introspective humans while being locked up. I’m not ashamed of my experience it made me who I am. I’m sitting there facing a misdemeanor and there’s dudes who been in the system for almost their entire adolescent and adult lives. I’ve been living with my brother in the suburbs with no car. Had a job was fired from it just speaking up for myself. I’ve had no access to my son for months. Nothing. Just been trying to figure it out. Went into debt while trying to be a stay at home dad that I’m still tryna recover from. My life is a mess but this ain’t the end of me. This is just the beginning. For the first time in my life every job I apply to; I fail the background check for. Been paying legal fees out the ass and it’s been hard to get afloat. I’ve lived a life of helping so many people only to have those same backs turned on me in my darkest hour. My purpose is to teach and show people we can overcome any situation. It’s always like taking 10 steps forward 100 backwards. I strive to be better than the man I was yesterday. It’s been hard. I’ve suffered with suicidal thoughts these past few months. But I could never do it. I love my son too much. Though I haven’t been around I know he’s a young black boy and he needs his father because God knows I needed mine. I sometimes think if I had my dad my life would be different. But I didn’t. Didn’t even have my mom. I didn’t have anyone. My life has been trial and error. Lots of lessons from my own experiences. So I turned to women for healing. This time I took a break for me to find me. I couldn’t pour myself into another when I’m not complete myself. I’m at risk of being homeless at the end of the month and possibly going to jail for a year for something I’m innocent of if I can’t find a way. So this was my last resort. This is a moment of vulnerability for me. This is a moment of transparency and this is a moment of courage. It’s either speak or die inside.
So I’m deciding to be strong and say I need help. That’s always been the hardest thing for me to do is ask for help. I’ve had to climb out of so many dark spaces by myself since being a child that even as an adult I’ve continued to do the same. My plan is to reunite with my son. Be an amazing father. Overcome the adversities I’ve faced. To help others and give back and spread light on children being adopted and not loved or nurtured after the adoption is completed. I also want to be an advocate for people who face trauma and people who can’t find any stability in their lives. I just want to make a difference. I want to make music and art that heals. God hasn’t kept me for no reason. I have a purpose. I’m not a victim. I’m a survivor and a warrior. Just know it’s ok not to be ok. Sometimes you need to cry. Sometimes you need to feel. Sometimes in the darkness is where you can find your light. I’m not a victim I’m a survivor. If you find it in your heart to support me and my intuitive for hope, change, and a road to fatherhood I will not let you down or let your donation or support go in vain. Thank you for reading this. Prayers will suffice also.
Sincerely,
A man misunderstood…
https://instagram.com/jonathantlove
