There is no hope here, you said.
You've been let down so much that now, it's all just a game
You don't care about how your actions, words, and punches affect other people
You don't care about the people you surround yourself with.

You're hurting, and I know you are.
I'm around you all the time and I want you to know I'm hurting, too, seeing how the world, how your people have betrayed you.
I want you to know that I'm going to stay, even though so many of the other people who have loved and cared for you haven't.
You're still going to be in pain. I can't take that away because I'm not Jesus and I'm not God.

You act like there's no future,
You navigate each day like every single day is your last, like our lives, are nothing but a video game and a joke.
And I can't blame you for feeling the way you do.
Because in your mind, there is no future.

I know it doesn't seem like it, but know there's a whole world out there.
That's something I didn't know a year ago. And here I am now.

I hear and read about mass shootings in the news, and they break my heart.
But I can't help but not pay attention to them, because the closer problem is here, at home, where we encounter and lose people to gun violence every day.

This is Baltimore. The Gods will not save us.
I believe my God has a plan for us, maybe not in this life, but the next.
I never believed in the notion that God saves those that save themselves.
But I do know that the greatest law is to love your neighbor as yourself.

So know there's a future out there,
And know that I will always love you like my neighbor, like my own brother, like my own son.
I know there's a future, and I know it's hard to see.

But make it to the other side of the fence, and you might be blinded by the light.
Ask me for anything. I'll do whatever it takes to get you there.