Book 1; Guns, Love, Roses

Chapter 1 - Love

Love. An emotion described as being almost as addictive as any other drug in the world. Since the beginning of time, love is an feeling described as being complex and unpredictable. The only feeling in the world that can cause happiness, and the only time the feeling of love reminds you that emotions exist. When you can't control the emotion itself, it can create sadness, anger, passion, jealousy, and in some cases, chaos. It's an emotional state of being vulnerable, and a constant surprise of not knowing what's in store when it comes to this particular emotion.

So why is it that love becomes an emotion that we strive to understand and figure out, yet when some of us explore and experience it, it places unprepared souls in a dark and terrible place. As human beings, strive to find purpose, and being in love gives you that exact reason. Love doesn't exist without friends and family, two key elements viable to cope with life's obstacles, and having the ability to connect with friends and family makes life just that bit easier.

The people you hang out with defines who you are, the people you trust paving the pathway for you, and being vulnerable when meeting new people can create opportunities for people to truly show you what they think of you. You will truly know when the person trusts you when they entrust you with their personal secrets and problems occurring in their life.

Without trust, there is no foundation to any type of relationship. Everyone has different expectations and methods to prove how one can be trusted. The way I grew up in Melbourne, Australia, I quickly learnt to understand and value the code of loyalty, honour, and respect in order to thrive, and demonstrated it to those worthy of being called my friends. Coming from me, by following a set of codes and principles that's personal to you, can really help show how trustworthy you are, separating yourself from those who show and value nothing.

Stay true to your words, and keep promises that you make, because actions speak volumes and if you hold accountability to what you say and do, people won't dare to challenge your ideals and what you believe in. Life's pleasures is being able to enjoy your time while your heart is beating and your body is healthy without having to prove much; if at all, and to only reveal your true potential through certain circumstances when deemed necessary, otherwise why stress?

For the people we love, we hold three separate masks. One mask for your family, one mask for your friends, and one mask for yourself. In this chapter, I'm putting on a mask for the friends who have made me who I am today. I'm going to take you back to the city of Melbourne where it all started. More specifically, the inner suburbs of the west labelled one of the toughest sides in the state where I ironically learnt what brotherhood love truly was.

If you grew up in the western suburbs of Melbourne, YKB (Abbreviation: Young Kings Park Boys) was a well known troubled Asian youth gang that originated from the suburbs of Kings Park, filled with nothing but Vietnamese families who immigrated here back in the early 1970s. If you didn't have enough money to live in Boxhill or Springvale, or any other populated area of the eastern suburbs, you wounded up here in the west, which was filled with a higher rate of crime. Yes, you guessed it- Kings Park being one of those suburbs.

Playgrounds would be filled with used syringes and cockroaches, house burglaries and car thefts were common, poor families turned to drugs as a way of escape and transforming their homes to trap houses when drugs became their only source of income. Being bullied for being Asian was common in school, and it was no surprise that joining YKB became a solution for this issue; but I'll stop you there, because I'll be totally honest with you, we didn't label ourselves a gang and till this day don't consider ourselves that; but we never turned down a brawl to those that had it coming.

Our story begins when we were just high school friends, consisting of only sixteen of us within our friendship circle who caused nothing but trouble in Year 12 at a school called Copperfield College, a school located in the heart of Kings Park. We honestly just attended school for social reasons and always talked about girls and what we were planning on doing afterschool but man I had to say, the teachers and principal hated us.