From the Streets To Million Dollar Peaks

By Michael Labrecque

This is an influential book that brings poetry and philosophy to life. It is a true-life story that demonstrates the human experience by looking into a young boy's journey riddled with immense trials and tribulations, forcing him into manhood at a very young age, and against all odds. Living on his own at sixteen, homeless and loveless, Michael navigated his way through life to become a multi-millionaire in just over a decade later. Over the years, he has continued with this positive momentum to obtain great wealth. This book exemplifies an impossible journey against insurmountable odds that perfectly melds the perspective of one's journey, choices, and hardships, into blossoming potential and rewards. From the Streets to Million Dollar Peaks is a remarkable story that feeds truth on how to attract and control your destiny. Unequivocally, this book both teaches and reaffirms your ability to control all outcomes of life, regardless of difficult circumstances. Filled with tales of excitement, fear, violence, destitution, and resilience; this novel is a breath of confidence to those lacking. This memoire brings hope to all readers, even if they feel hopeless, regardless of the situation. Above all, this is a self-help story that reaffirms personal truths and love's importance in our lives while demonstrating a path forward that is true, raw, and inspiring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889607038

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From the Streets To Million Dollar Peaks

Michael Labrecque

Copyright © 2023 Michael Labrecque

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88960-693-2 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-89157-400-7 (hc)

ISBN 979-8-88960-703-8 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

The Cycle of Rebirth

Give and Take

A Dog's Life

Depths of Despair

The Baby Was Made of Clay

A Better Day

Lost

Fly

Love Is

I've Dipped My Mind in Ink

The Sculpture

The Poem of Perspective

About the Author

This book is dedicated to:

My good friend; Santiago and his family

My Grandma; Adeline Janveaux

My wife; Cecilia Ramos

My Children; Isabelle Labrecque, Andre Labrecque, and Joseph Labrecque

And all the people out there feeling hopeless at times who are just looking for some hope.

Every end starts with a beginning, so let's start with mine.

With the light shining through the window, I opened my eyes to see the day. But as my body rose, I noticed the sun did not rise, and I realized that the light shining through was from the streetlamp outside.

So I guess things are not always as they seem. It was not long before I fell back into my dream.

I love you, Michael, said the beautiful figure from afar, running toward me. And as she grew larger in my sight, I could almost feel her touch. I thought of my luck to receive such a fate. I felt her warm breath as she leaned in for an embrace. She was breathing on my neck while greeting me with a hug. I knew, however, that I was just dreaming, but I loved it. Those are the types of dreams that give some people life and make others feel like falling into an eternal sleep.

I finally awoke to voices on the street. It was 6:54 a.m. Lucky for me, because I would be on time for school. I missed the last week, so I needed to catch up. I could not rely on my friends at school to call me with updates because they missed more school than me.

Sometimes, I find it hard to wake up so early, but it's not like I have anything keeping me home. My bed is a hand-me-down from a hand-me-down, and the sheets are too. There's not much to eat and little to do. My place has very little, except for a strange feeling of comfort. Sometimes, comfort takes the place of confidence, but when it does, that's not good.

As I was cleaning up for school, I was startled a bit as I looked into the mirror, startled to see what was staring back at me. I was still not comfortable with my shaved head. I had no choice, though, because it seemed as though the stress in my life was attacking my hair, even at my young age. I was only nineteen. Everyone said that my razor-shaved head made me look tougher anyway, especially with my goatee. Well, at least I still had my blue eyes for the girls. Anyway, I usually covered my head with a hat or blue bandanna, so hair or no hair, it didn't matter much.

After I quickly ate and showered, I was ready to put on my clothes. I don't have a lot of clothing selection, but I always wore my clothes with style.

I put on my khaki pants and matched it with a checkered blue and black short-sleeve shirt. I was told I had muscular arms, so any excuse to show them off was welcome. As I stepped outside, I was pleasantly greeted by the feeling of the warmth of the morning sun. Sometimes, even if it was cold outside, under my jacket, I'd only wear a short-sleeve shirt. My warm blood rarely got cold. Maybe it was because I lived for about five years in a northern town where -20 was a typical day in the winter.

As I approached the bus stop, I reached in my pocket to grab a ticket. Bus tickets are like money for me, and I only had a limited few. That was one of the barriers to attending school, finding the bus fare. I only had a certain amount, and so I could not waste them. This meant that if I missed school, I saved tickets. As that red and silver bus pulled up to the stop, I got on to realize how crowded the bus was. We were all shoulder to shoulder from the front to the back. The early bus was always a mixture of people going to work and people going to school. I did a quick scan as I always did to check and see if there were any pretty girls on board the bus. Nope, not today. I quickly noticed that I could mostly see the backs of heads, and the backs of heads I had seen didn't look too attractive either. After looking at all the unattractive backs of heads, I determined that there was no girl on the bus for me.

I was almost at school when I started to feel as though I was being bumped from behind. I looked behind me and noticed that there were four teenagers around my age playing around, jokingly pushing each other. Each time they pushed each other, I would get bumped into. Although it was not on purpose, they were still hitting me. So I turned around, upset with anger in my eyes. I was about to forcefully tell them that there would be a problem if they continued. As soon as they looked into my eyes, they stopped. I noticed my school was the next stop, rang the bell, and purposely walked in between the four of them and got off the bus.

The walk to my school from the bus was at least a few minutes, and most of it was alongside a cemetery. As I walked, I looked at the cemetery over my right shoulder and thought about the problem on the bus. I was always like that. When I felt disrespected, I would always get angry, a calm angry, but always ready to fight. I did not care if it was me versus one person or me versus more than one. I never cared if they had a gun, knife, or any weapon. It was ironic that I thought like this while I walked beside a cemetery.

Nothing to lose, I said to myself out loud. I have got nothing to lose.

Walking by the cemetery reminded me of the three choices I had in life at the young age of sixteen. Jail, death, or fail—those were my choices. Just like what happened to my brother. When I was sixteen years old, my father and stepmother told me to leave home. So I moved back to Toronto from the rural northern town where I lived for the last five years. I was born in Toronto and lived there until we moved to that rural northern town, four hours north of Toronto. Now like a ping-pong ball, I am back to Toronto.

My plan was to continue high school. I figured I would go on Welfare. But as I was sixteen, Welfare needed my parents' consent to get it, and for some reason, my father and stepmother refused to allow this. I am not sure why because it would not have affected them at all.

My father told me, Instead of asking for a handout, you should just quit school and pump gas. Their refusal impacted me drastically. I did not know what to do. At that time, I was left with three choices in life. I could choose death because everyone has that choice. I could do what my dad told me to do and just drop out of school and get a job pumping gas. So in other words, fail. But I wanted to at least graduate high school. So I thought that my only option was to either move into a homeless shelter or a group home (like a jail) for homeless youth.

I thought if I moved to a shelter or group home, I would meet social workers. Eventually, the social worker could help me get on to Welfare and find a place to stay. A shelter would be more of a temporary stay. A group home offered a longer stay, but with many more very restrictive rules. In many ways, group homes are similar to jails. The group home also housed seriously mentally ill teens. But both options had me living in unpleasant environments. Regardless, I chose to live in the group home. From there, I could attend school full time. The group home promised that if they thought I could be independent, they would advocate for me to apply for Welfare, regardless of my dad and stepmom. I moved out of that group home two years ago. I was so happy to move. It really was a crazy experience.

I walked through the main set of school doors and straight down the dimly lit halls to my locker. As I was closing my locker door, I heard the first warning bell, asking students to get to class. Just as I closed the locker door, I noticed a smiling woman's face. It was my friend Mary.

Oh, hello there, stranger, she said with a grin. Where have you been?

Everywhere but here, I guess, I replied as I grabbed some of my books and closed my locker door. I said, I better go though as I heard the morning bell ring.

When I went to school, I tried really hard just to focus on school. A lot of people I know would miss class just to hang out somewhere else in the school, but I never understood that. Why would they go to school just to skip class? Why not just stay at home? Then I realized they probably had parents at home that cared about them, so they just were not able to stay home.

As for me, I had to push myself. The only time I would fool around in school was at lunch or break. But sometimes, I just didn't care. At that time, I would usually either smoke some weed, drink, play sports, or just hang around with my friends.

All the drama of moving out at sixteen caused me to lose about a year of school. I not only had to transfer schools but also school districts. This was my fourth different high school and fifth time switching high schools. But believe it or not, I still had a chance to graduate, but only if everything went perfect. Often, if I was in the right mood, I would occasionally just go to the library alone. I definitely wanted to graduate high school after all, and as such, I needed to get all the marks I could get because I would always get a zero for attendance.

Lucky for me, the first class of the day was world religion. Lucky for me, because every class in world religion was the same. The teacher would turn off the lights, and we would watch a forty-five-minute film about different religions. Then after the film was done, we would do a short multiple-choice test. That's it. Basically, that was the class. And I usually slept through class when I was there.

As I entered the classroom, the teacher gave me a surprised Hello, Michael. Nice to see you today.

I just smiled and sat down beside my friend Steve. Just as I predicted, nothing had changed. The class started like every other day. Class started, the TV came on, the lights were turned off, and the film came on. This film was about Buddhist monks in China who would be able to do unimaginable things, even walk on fiery red hot coals. Five minutes after the film started, I fell asleep. Too bad, though, because the film and subject looked interesting. I had a deal with Steve. I told him he could elbow me to wake me up if I started to snore in class. He never did this time, so I guess I never snored.

You know, it's funny as I look back at this class. World religion was a class I slept through most of the time. However, it is one of the classes that I remember the most material from. Maybe because I like philosophy. Anyway, Steve woke me up after the film. I took the short multiple-choice test and passed.

Even though it was early in the morning, the hallways of the school were already bursting with energy. Young girls were giggling, and homeboys were shaking hands. A few of my boys were listening to music while break-dancing in the hallway.

Yo, Mike. Santiago has been looking around for you, Juan said.

All right, bro, I replied. Santiago was a longtime friend I had since I was in grade 4. We even remained friends after I moved out of the city and into the northern countryside for a few years. Everyone thought of Santiago as a real gangster, not just because of his intimidating style and size but also because he was arrested for chasing five guys down the street with a machete.

I was a member of a gang called Los Diablos, but Santiago was just my friend. Los Diablos was made up of approximately thirty-five Latin Americans. I was the only White guy in the crew. This meant that I had to be twice as tough to be respected. Twice as hard, I earned my placa (meaning tattoo) on my hand. I was the first in the crew to get my gang name tattooed on my hand. To me, it was a sign of respect. A simple black cross with three dots under it, pushed into my hand by a sewing needle with Indian ink. Belonging to this gang and this tattoo gave me a real sense of pride, a sense of belonging, a family, a feeling. This was something I never experienced before.

So I was a Los Diablos, but I was also part of the four gangs we associated with. We all hung out together like one huge 130-plus-member gang. There was the Los Diablos, Los Soldados, Latin Royals, and Latin Locos.

Anyway, I hurried to grab my books for the next class, English. I was anxious to get to the class because today, Ms. Stevens was handing back our book reports. I always looked forward to getting my marks either from tests, scores, or reports.

As I entered the class, Ms. Stevens welcomed me, saying, Hello, Michael. I'm glad you made it today.

I gave a simple shy smile and replied, Thank you.

She started handing out the marked assignments with a speech. After reading this class report, I have to say that I was not impressed by the effort and understanding this class displayed.

Her hands were over her desk. She was leaning forward, black hair tied back, red lips moving. Her piercing eyes had dark circles from an obvious lack of sleep. She said, The majority of this class scored no better than a C, and many failed.

Ms. Stevens was known to be one of the toughest teachers in the school. She was very vocal and opinionated. She had been teaching English at this school for almost twenty years. At the beginning of the year, she said, Class, I have seen everything as a teacher, and I truly hope that one of you surprises me this year.

She started handing out the marked reports to what seemed to be a sea of frowns and grumbling. She didn't hand me back mine. Instead, she said, Michael.

I nervously stood up to get my paper ready for the worst, but she gave me nothing.

See me after class, she snapped.

Oh, okay, I softly said, sitting back in my seat.

The whole class looked at me while I looked down on my desk. I could barely stand it. My mind was racing over the next thirty minutes until the class was over and I would be off for lunch.

The bell rang, and I staggered toward the front of the class, displaying a nervous smile.

Hi, Ms. Stevens, I greeted her.

You're rarely here, Michael. Why?

It's just hard to come sometimes, I replied.

I know, she said. Most of the school knew that I was living on my own and on government assistance. Try to make it more often. Since the beginning of the year until now, you come in here strutting into my class with a swagger, a swagger of a gangster. Someone with a tough attitude. A real toughie, I like to call them. At the beginning of the year, I said that I really hope that one of you surprises me this year, because I have been teaching for a long time, and I have seen it all.

Ms. Stevens was silent as she handed me my report. I immediately noticed the big A+ written in red on the front page. Then she continued while smiling, If you came here more, then you would probably get more of those. And in my twenty years of teaching, Michael, you have surprised me the most.

Shocked, I looked at her while she was still smiling.

You walk around here with your I-don't-care tough attitude, rarely articulating yourself to be eloquent or intelligent, and you hand me this. Michael, this is one of the best reports I have ever read in my many, many, many years of teaching. You should be more respectful of your mind. Michael, I want to tell you that you are one of the smartest kids in this class. I think all you may just need is direction. With good direction, the sky is the limit for you. Michael, you are something and someone special. I just wanted to let you know.

She stunned me. What could I say? Should I cry? Should I tell her that she had just said nicer things about me in one sentence than my family had all my whole life? Should I hug her? It was sad. I knew how to react to aggression, negativity, and insults, but not to compliments. I just felt different and unworthy. It was an unbelievable feeling.

Oh, thank you, Ms. Stevens, I shyly replied. Thanks, I repeated.

Never give up, Michael, no matter what, because you proved to me that you can achieve anything. Thanks for showing me who you are. I better let you go have lunch. Visit me anytime, Michael, she said as I left.

The truth was I wanted to leave because I didn't think I could take any more compliments without giving her a big hug and telling her how hard life was, and the compound factor that a lack of love had taken from me.

A lot of people and the great philosophers have tried to define love usually by comparing love to another feeling or object. But I am sure most truly did not know how it felt to not be loved. Personally, I believe the definition of love is best described by understanding the feeling of what a lack of love feels like. You need to permanently experience a lack of love to understand and appreciate what you are missing. From this, you will see what you are missing from others. I would describe the absence of love to be an unquenchable thirst. A numb feeling. A cool feeling even on the hottest day. A feeling of being alone and being personally disconnected from others. An indescribable piece of your mind, body, soul, and spirit missing. An everlasting feeling of loss, emptiness. An undeniable and everlasting urge to want and to take. Simply put, it is something natural missing.

The definition of love is the opposite of that, the opposite of what love is not. It is an everlasting satisfaction, a constant sense of beauty, the ability to see peace in the confusion of life.

A lot of people I know really don't understand how blessed and wealthy they are because they really cannot or do not see the true value of the love they have in their life. They don't appreciate true love, unconditional love. Sadly, not until people could really grasp and understand the wealth that love provides, love will be unrecognized, which will make the achievement of any goal harder to obtain. If a lack of love is an absolute absence, then obviously love is an absolute presence.

I have always looked at nature in an attempt to understand love. That's the problem with always having something. It gets devalued, and people take it for granted. The most important thing in this world is love.

One thing I learned for certain from Ms. Stevens and my conversation was that I definitely preferred that kind of conversation compared to the many other not so successful conversations I have had with teachers over the years. That's because many of my prior conversations either ended up with me being suspended from school or the teacher physically assaulting me.

I still remember the time when my teacher in grade 6 became upset with me and grabbed the front of my desk, which was attached to my chair. He looked blankly at me, gave me an evil grin, squinted his eyes, and said out loud, I will show you. And he did.

He forcefully and aggressively picked up the front of my desk and flipped the desk and me sitting in the chair upside down, with me landing on my head. Lucky for me, I always had a hard head, so it did not really hurt. I got up, went outside with the teacher, and spoke to him. The result of our conversation was, he re-entered the classroom with tear-filled eyes, apologizing to the class for his actions, confirming and professing that I really was a nice kid. Well, I guess I have always had a strong mind, and making this teacher cry proves it. I was approximately eleven years old, and this must have been one of my premier displays of problem-solving and great speaking abilities. These were talents I've been developing since a very young age.

It was twenty minutes into lunch now as I entered the crowded hallway, which was a sea of people walking, smiling, and talking to their friends with not a