Franklin Street

I was twenty-two years old when I landed on Franklin Street in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

I didn’t arrive with a plan. I arrived carrying the weight of everything that had already begun to fall apart. Somewhere between the person I had been and the person I was becoming, the road bent in a direction I never imagined I would follow.

Franklin Street became my world.

The neighborhood had its own rhythm, and once you learned it, it got inside you. Everyone on that block seemed to be looking for something or running from something, and most of the time those two things were the same.

Crack had taken over my life.

When I was using, everything else disappeared for a little while. The fear went quiet. The shame dissolved. But when I wasn’t using, reality crashed back all at once. That is how addiction works. It is not a moral failure. It is a trap with a lock on the inside that you built yourself without knowing you were building it.

But here is the thing nobody tells you about a place like Franklin Street:

The people were extraordinary.

The people I ran that block with — they taught me respect. They taught me love. They taught me a kind of honesty that I have rarely found anywhere else. You showed up for each other. You told the truth even when it was hard. You didn’t pretend.

I miss those people more than most people in my life will ever understand.