I was the saddest kid. The tears finally slowed when I started writing

There was a time when the one emotion I knew better than the rest was sadness.

I have never met a kid as sad as I was.

I cried at school, at the Boys and Girls Club, at home, at my cousins' house — everywhere. It wasn't until I started writing that the tears slowed down.

"You were a cry baby," my mom, Tamera Cook, told me. "You were a fussy toddler. You would just have fall outs, crying and throwing tantrums at school."

My closest friends agreed. Chanz, my friend since kindergarten, said I was a sensitive and anti-social kid. My friend Dakari said he saw me as insecure and someone you had to get to know.

I got laughed at a lot. I got talked about by all the other kids at school, teachers, family members, and even strangers.

"I remember in Fred Meyer in Tacoma," my mom said, "you was acting up in the store. This older white woman told me, 'Oh, I feel so sorry for you.' I remember leaving that store, I was so angry at that woman."

I never really had a reason to cry. I just did it to do it.

When my dad lived with me and mom, I felt like my family would stay together forever. But then things changed.

When I was seven, dad left for Atlanta. I don't remember saying goodbye, and I never saw the plane take off. I thought he was never coming back.

A few days after he left, I had this huge meltdown. I was in first grade. I was crying really loud and distracting the class, so my teacher sent me out. I had to go to my old kindergarten classroom.

I felt like I was being put down because I was sensitive. It was embarrassing.

In third grade, things started to change. We had this poet come to our class. They handed out those pens with the four different colors and notebooks that had a monkey riding a bike on the cover.

When I got that notebook, I really got into writing. The crying slowly started to stop.

One day, in sixth grade, I made a decision within myself that would change me forever. I was at the Boys and Girls Club, and I felt myself about to cry. I ran to the bathroom because I didn't want anyone to see.

While I was in there, I thought about all the people who made fun of me, and all the male role models I looked up to. They never cried like this.

I thought to myself, you've been crying like this your whole life, but no more. It's time to grow up and be strong.

So that's what I did.

Chanz said I'm more confident and social with people now, and that I'm not as sensitive.

"I see growth," my mom said. "I seen a lot of growth, and it's pretty awesome."

She read the Facebook post she made about me on my 15th birthday: "My shy crybaby transitioned into a confident, slick-talking young man. If nothing else, I can truly say I have raised an awesome, amazing, honorable, respectful, responsible man child."

I don't like to cry, but as humans, we all do it. It's the best way to let things out sometimes. I've mostly learned to control my emotions rather than hold things in and have huge meltdowns.

Now, instead of writing poems, I write songs. And the songs help me to talk about my sadness, but they also show my strength. As I say in one of my songs, "I’m stressin', feel depression as the days go by, / but I’m a black soldier so my limit is the sky."

This story was created in KUOW's RadioActive Intro to Journalism Workshop for 15- to 18-year-olds at Jack Straw Cultural Center, with production support from Ann Kane. Edited by Jenny Asarnow.

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