The pages that follow contain descriptions of addiction, violence, gang activity, loss, trauma, self-destructive behavior, and other difficult life experiences. Some readers may find portions of this memoir emotionally challenging or disturbing.
This book also contains strong and sometimes explicit language. The language has not been cleaned up or softened for publication. In many places, those words are part of how I spoke, how the people around me spoke, or the only honest way I know to describe what I was thinking and feeling at the time. The profanity is not there for shock value any more than the darker events are. Sanitizing the language would mean sanitizing the life being described.
This story is told as honestly as memory allows. While some names and identifying details have been changed to protect privacy, the events, emotions, and consequences described are real. Where memory is uncertain, I have tried to leave that uncertainty intact rather than replace it with a cleaner version of the story.
Writing this book was often as difficult as living it. Many of these chapters required revisiting moments I spent years trying to forget. There were times I laughed while writing, times I cried, and times I had to walk away from the keyboard altogether.
These stories are not included for shock value. They are included because they happened, because they shaped the person I became, and because healing begins with honesty.
If parts of this memoir are difficult to read, please know they were equally difficult to write.
The ghosts in these pages are real. Sharing them is part of laying them to rest.
— Clint Wilson