Pulled from Drug Dealing by an Unexpected Encounter

I need to be honest about where I was before I can tell this story properly. I was twenty-two years old, selling drugs in North Philadelphia, and I was good at it in the way that makes you comfortable and that should have scared me. One afternoon I was walking back from a transaction and an old man sitting on a stoop said to me, out of nowhere, using my full first name — which he should not have known — "Elijah. This is not your life." I stopped. I looked at him. He held my gaze. I did not know him. I had never seen him on that block. I walked away quickly. I kept thinking about it for days. A week later I walked into a church I had passed a hundred times and sat in the back. I did not respond to an altar call. I just sat there. Then I went back the next week. And the week after. I have not been involved in anything illegal since that afternoon. I finished my GED, completed a trade program, and now work in HVAC. I went back to find that old man within a month of that day. No one on that block knew who I was describing.