My life story is not exactly easy to tell, but I’ll start like this . . . I was born August 30, 1995. My mother was sixteen at the time.
All I really know about my father is that he was twenty-two at the time of my birth and that he is Hawaiian.
I lived with my mother until I was seven. That’s when all her self-abuse caught up to her. The only thing I can remember is waking up in the ER and men telling me that I could no longer see my mother again.
After her passing I began moving from home to home. By the time I turned eleven I had seen things a child probably should never have seen.
At one point in my childhood I was sent back to Hawaii. Here is where I met my first grandmaster and life mentor Itami Hayes Kealoha who taught me the ways of Lua a traditional Hawaiian fighting style.
I excelled at my training, and later moved on to earn two black belts.
Despite my excellence in fighting, Grandmaster Itami noticed the tension I still had pent up inside of me. He turned me on to writing my feelings down on paper, and thus my love of writing began.
Grandmaster Itami’s suggestion worked. I started to see that the more I wrote, the more I became at ease with myself.
I wrote all I could: stand-up routines, short films, and poetry. My life was full of positivity . . . then it happened. A phone call I would never forget. My soul broke down as the person on the other end of the receiver explained to me how my grandmaster was killed walking to our dojo.
After Grandmaster Itami’s death I was never the same. My life hit a wall . . . again. I stop writing. Stop training. I started smoking and having sex as if I was a grown man, not knowing that at the young age of fifteen life would hit back and hit hard.
I was hard headed; I tried to hit back.
Shortly after turning eighteen my cousin was shot in front of me. A month after his death my girl told me we were having a kid. Here I am an eighteen year old, broke. I dropped out of high school and now I’m going to be a father. Talk about a wake up call right!?
Well apparently not for me. I proceeded to hit back.
December 13, 2013 my son AJ Akoni Narvaez was born. Now normally this would have been one of, if not the most, happiest moments of my life. But there goes life hitting hard as it normally does. The doctor walked back into the room and told me my son only had four months to live. His words felt as if God himself had thrown a knife through my heart. I was by my son’s side until his very last breath.
On April 13, 2014 my son and the shell of my former-self passed away. I promised myself I would live the life I wanted for Akoni.
This is why I’m here at Youth Action YouthBuild, to be a better man in remembrance of my son.
I’m only twenty years old and my life is hard. Despite all the punches, my past has not broken me.
It has only made me stronger.
“Life is your story do not let anyone else be the author.” -Grandmaster Itami Hayes Kealoha