I'm not particularly sure how to approach this subject, and honestly I've been meaning to write to you for about 12 years now. I just have something I want to tell you, and it's a bit of a story but I hope you don't mind. I grew up in what I remember to be a very terrible place. I am African American (Relevant) and was raised on the "streets" and in a very disturbing environment.
Children always fighting, surrounded by drugs, neighborhoods vying for strength and power, not very much unlike Menzoberranzan. I was raised in a firm belief that the world was wrought of ill intent and that the people around you strove to gain and edge and take advantage of every weakness that you ever showed. It is in my nature to feel as though everyone has something good in them and something to offer me. Needless to say I did not fit in where I was born and where I was raised. It was at a very early age that I experienced the very distinct difference between my peers and I. I will not go into details about specific events, but I suppose you could imagine considering you've sure to have seen how well "friends" and "family" get along in Drow society. I just mean to point out that there are parallels, many of which I have lived myself.
When I was a kid, I don't remember which age specifically because those years just blend together for me, I was given Homeland by my abusive stepfather. After reading the book I later found it ironic that he gave it to me, but then I found that he gave it to me because he thought I was smart enough to grasp it and he wanted to drag me into Drow ideology. My stepfather is insane. He is abusive. He thought himself a matron mother of sorts. All of this is besides the point though I suppose, I merely mean to say that I was shown your books by someone who couldn't even grasp the meaning or intent behind the words you had written and in a place and society that could never appreciate the true value of becoming something more in the world.
I remember reading through that book and the only thing I could feel was that I was not insane. Here, somewhere in the world, whether it be my imagination or some made up fairytale, there was someone who was as hard pressed by the life he lived that I was. Here was someone being abused, and someone being forced into a life that stained the very fabric of his existence and being. I was confused by the sheer reality of the situations that he had to overcome and the relations in which I had with them. I did not feel as though I could "relate" or that Drizzt was "like me." I merely felt as if there was someone who had been and is strong enough to overcome all of these things that plagued and drew me into the abyss that I thought I might forever been enveloped in.
I remember very vividly how my eyes were opened by the mere fact that Drizzt had accomplished the very thing I had thought I might never accomplish myself. Having watched people die, having watched gunshots be fired for no reason other than words, having seen people kidnapped, having been beaten, having been verbally abused, and there I was crying and wondering how I might overcome these things. I was still alive, and life had yet to be lived.
I just wanted to say to you that Drizzt Do'Urden, to me, has been like an older brother. For as long as I can remember, having been born in 1990, and for as long as I will remember and perhaps as long as you continue writing he has been and will always be an inspiration for the ventures of my life. Drizzt Do'Urden did not teach me how to live, no, he showed me that there was nothing, not the hood, not a drug dealer, not abusive parents, not a meek outlook, not a forlorn hope and dream, that could stop me from aspiring and reaching for more than what was set out before me.
I picked up fighting, I have become great. I picked up writing, I hear that what I say and what I tell people helps everyone that I speak to. I have joined the army and escaped the life that I thought I might be bound to. I am in fact writing this to you now because on August 8th I will see you here on Fort Lewis, and wasn't sure if I would have enough time to say this to you in person. I have evolved from the small helpless black child in the ghettos of America to a Computer Information Systems Management student who loves to write, fight, game, and play the bass. I can exist wholly as a person who embraces, not hides and cowers for fear of death or punishment, himself.
I am contrary to everything I have ever been taught by the people I consider my seniors. I am contrary to the very existence of the environment I was raised in. I have moved past and overcome the ghettos and I have brought with me all the knowledge and the ways of my people not as they taught me, but as I took from them. I have learned well to live my life on my own terms and with the joy, fun, and the breeze of the wind in my hair and I walk the road of adventure.
R.A. Salvatore if you take nothing else from this life please remember this.
You saved me from the person I may have been forced to become in order to survive. You helped me turn into the man that I am today by creating a child that you grew and molded like any other being on this planet might have been grown and tutored. You showed me through your son the way that life could lived, regardless of the hardship and regardless of the seriousness of the adversity you face. Sir, you kept me alive through the worst of it all.
I hope that when I get to shake your hand and thank you that you can fully understand and appreciate that you, single handedly, turned me from the life that much of my family and friends are still living and kept me alive all these years.
I thank you for the passion in life that burns through every fiber of my being and for every second I get to live realizing and remembering that life is not about walking or in the wake of ourselves. Life is about walking in the present, and becoming what we were always intended to be. Something of our hearts and something that we can be proud and happy with.
I hope you get the opportunity to see this, and when you come to FT Lewis on the 8th I will be there, Specialist Lamont Arrington, to shake your hand and thank you for all that you have done for me, and the world.
** I apologize for how scatterbrained and ill grammared this is, I was a bit flustered writing this.
MotsawaArri29 karma
R.A. Salvatore.
I'm not particularly sure how to approach this subject, and honestly I've been meaning to write to you for about 12 years now. I just have something I want to tell you, and it's a bit of a story but I hope you don't mind. I grew up in what I remember to be a very terrible place. I am African American (Relevant) and was raised on the "streets" and in a very disturbing environment.
Children always fighting, surrounded by drugs, neighborhoods vying for strength and power, not very much unlike Menzoberranzan. I was raised in a firm belief that the world was wrought of ill intent and that the people around you strove to gain and edge and take advantage of every weakness that you ever showed. It is in my nature to feel as though everyone has something good in them and something to offer me. Needless to say I did not fit in where I was born and where I was raised. It was at a very early age that I experienced the very distinct difference between my peers and I. I will not go into details about specific events, but I suppose you could imagine considering you've sure to have seen how well "friends" and "family" get along in Drow society. I just mean to point out that there are parallels, many of which I have lived myself.
When I was a kid, I don't remember which age specifically because those years just blend together for me, I was given Homeland by my abusive stepfather. After reading the book I later found it ironic that he gave it to me, but then I found that he gave it to me because he thought I was smart enough to grasp it and he wanted to drag me into Drow ideology. My stepfather is insane. He is abusive. He thought himself a matron mother of sorts. All of this is besides the point though I suppose, I merely mean to say that I was shown your books by someone who couldn't even grasp the meaning or intent behind the words you had written and in a place and society that could never appreciate the true value of becoming something more in the world.
I remember reading through that book and the only thing I could feel was that I was not insane. Here, somewhere in the world, whether it be my imagination or some made up fairytale, there was someone who was as hard pressed by the life he lived that I was. Here was someone being abused, and someone being forced into a life that stained the very fabric of his existence and being. I was confused by the sheer reality of the situations that he had to overcome and the relations in which I had with them. I did not feel as though I could "relate" or that Drizzt was "like me." I merely felt as if there was someone who had been and is strong enough to overcome all of these things that plagued and drew me into the abyss that I thought I might forever been enveloped in.
I remember very vividly how my eyes were opened by the mere fact that Drizzt had accomplished the very thing I had thought I might never accomplish myself. Having watched people die, having watched gunshots be fired for no reason other than words, having seen people kidnapped, having been beaten, having been verbally abused, and there I was crying and wondering how I might overcome these things. I was still alive, and life had yet to be lived.
I just wanted to say to you that Drizzt Do'Urden, to me, has been like an older brother. For as long as I can remember, having been born in 1990, and for as long as I will remember and perhaps as long as you continue writing he has been and will always be an inspiration for the ventures of my life. Drizzt Do'Urden did not teach me how to live, no, he showed me that there was nothing, not the hood, not a drug dealer, not abusive parents, not a meek outlook, not a forlorn hope and dream, that could stop me from aspiring and reaching for more than what was set out before me.
I picked up fighting, I have become great. I picked up writing, I hear that what I say and what I tell people helps everyone that I speak to. I have joined the army and escaped the life that I thought I might be bound to. I am in fact writing this to you now because on August 8th I will see you here on Fort Lewis, and wasn't sure if I would have enough time to say this to you in person. I have evolved from the small helpless black child in the ghettos of America to a Computer Information Systems Management student who loves to write, fight, game, and play the bass. I can exist wholly as a person who embraces, not hides and cowers for fear of death or punishment, himself.
I am contrary to everything I have ever been taught by the people I consider my seniors. I am contrary to the very existence of the environment I was raised in. I have moved past and overcome the ghettos and I have brought with me all the knowledge and the ways of my people not as they taught me, but as I took from them. I have learned well to live my life on my own terms and with the joy, fun, and the breeze of the wind in my hair and I walk the road of adventure.
R.A. Salvatore if you take nothing else from this life please remember this.
You saved me from the person I may have been forced to become in order to survive. You helped me turn into the man that I am today by creating a child that you grew and molded like any other being on this planet might have been grown and tutored. You showed me through your son the way that life could lived, regardless of the hardship and regardless of the seriousness of the adversity you face. Sir, you kept me alive through the worst of it all.
I hope that when I get to shake your hand and thank you that you can fully understand and appreciate that you, single handedly, turned me from the life that much of my family and friends are still living and kept me alive all these years.
I thank you for the passion in life that burns through every fiber of my being and for every second I get to live realizing and remembering that life is not about walking or in the wake of ourselves. Life is about walking in the present, and becoming what we were always intended to be. Something of our hearts and something that we can be proud and happy with.
I hope you get the opportunity to see this, and when you come to FT Lewis on the 8th I will be there, Specialist Lamont Arrington, to shake your hand and thank you for all that you have done for me, and the world.
** I apologize for how scatterbrained and ill grammared this is, I was a bit flustered writing this.
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