Everyone knows when you hear a gunshot, you duck and run away.

For me, gunshots were lullabies to fall asleep to. I could even tell the difference between a .32 and a 9mm versus a backfire from an old beat up truck that belonged to the neighbors at the corner, (who usually had music blasting into the late nights). But I guess the adage is true, you never realize how bad your old neighborhood was until you have left it behind.

I was raised in a rough neighborhood in Oak Cliff, Texas. Many around here will, when hearing those two words for a city name, question how I got here, in Rockwall, Texas, the home of the McMansion. Well, it has never been easy to predict me, much less start to predict my lifestyle based on my geographic locale. Little do most know how I actually am, and how I behave, much less where I have come from and where I am going.

I was raised in my mother’s childhood home, which was a small three-bedroom abode which housed my grandparents, my sister, myself and my resplendent mother. I lived there from the day my parent’s got a divorce until I was 15 years old. Thankfully, I was surrounded by a loving, very close, strong, hardworking family, who believed in an education in order to succeed. My mother always tried to provide us with more than she received, as when she grew up. She has reminded me that what she wants is for us kids to do the same for our kids, too. Well, I still have that protective promise in my mind.

I never experienced having a father as a father figure; but, I had a grandfather who played the role for him. He still does. My two uncles, too, are who watch out for and help my sister and I when we need guidance. I used to attend a public school but after the divorce, my mother decided to put me in a low-income, private Catholic academy, in order that I receive a better education and be immersed a fatherly love of a whole different type. As I excelled academically, I also discovered myself. As years went by, the school's neighborhood kept getting worse, and though I had this bubble-like force field that followed me around and protected me from the evil in my home.

I recognize that I was privileged to have someone always watching my back as I left and entered the house; someone to wonder where I was when I was not yet home, and because I now see that protection, without it, I do not know how I would have turned out. I can guarantee it would not have been for the better. Puberty in a unsafe neighborhood was even more troubling than it already can get. Every time I left home for a local store, I had to watch for potential creeps. Making sure no one was following me became a way of life, and avoiding catcalls was like brushing my teeth: if they did not do it, it felt like I had forgotten something. I had to learn to ignore a lot of things growing up.

In Latin culture, a majority of men act “como nacos,” as my mother used to say, or like low-lives. Ironically, my dad's name rhymes closely to that pejorative Spanish slang. "What a coincidence," I have thought to myself. Now, as time went on and I grew older, I learned about many malicious things my Papa "Nacos" did mentally, emotionally and physically to my dear mother, and as more information has hit me, the more I have burned with resentment for him and  grown desperately and intentionally away from him. It was not just about stories; it is his character in public and at home.

So, though I never had that father-daughter relationship most may get, and though I got a humorless and despondent derelict, (I often could not even read what a good mood looked like in him), I have stopped being scared of his answers or shying away from his way of talking to people. He may be-little everyone, he may rants rave unbearably, but I have decided that I am at capacity for the stress of him in my life. I chose to reject his psychological ambiguity, and when his demoralizing me began to include commentary about my stellar academic performance, I acted. Specifically, on a day in November of 2017, I made the executive decision to disconnect myself officially from the poisoned relationship. He has made attempts since then to call, but now I let the phone ring.

Until the day he takes ownership for his abusive behavior and stops playing some victim of circumstance, I will continue to shield myself from his degradations. I am allowed to believe what I think is best for me, I am able to be who I am, and excel without him breathing down my neck, and; I am in control of the decisions I make with my own best interests in mind.

Though I have encountered some obstacles, like jumping from a big, scary city to a city the size of a fish tank, or dealing with the sordid chaos and trouble of a drunk father, I am thankful for my mother and family who have seen me through it all, and I know I have become the best I can be and that my future is expecting me to win it, too. All in all, I think that I have been intensely shaped by my life but also profoundly self-made into this exact version of myself: I am Alyssa C., an Hispanic scholar with a loving heart who will work diligently for what is needed, and just like her mother, turn what she has received into something more.