My life seemed to take a turn for the worst after my 16th birthday. I was always a good student in class, but my sophomore year in high school all my grades started to drop. For the longest time school was my safe place, a retreat from the everyday Hell that awaited me when I got off the bus. But I no longer yearned for the morning to come so I could get on the bus, I no longer cared about using the excuse I have to do my homework so I wouldn’t have to cook dinner, do loads of the laundry that was left on the basement floor, or take care of the 50 animals my mom and her boyfriend acquired over the past 3 years since we moved to Pennsylvania. I had stopped eating and weighed a whopping 75 lbs in 10th grade and piled on the makeup until I looked like a drug addict. Because my mother refused to get a job, her boyfriend was unemployed, and my father didn’t pay child support I wore the same cloths I had since I was 12, lucky enough for me I still fit in them. I was still too scared to stop going to my fathers, in fear that he would do something just awful to me or my mother. And as much as I hated my mother on the inside, she was still my mother and I felt like I needed to protect her. I felt like I need to save my brother and my sisters from a life they didn’t deserve, they should have had the world offered to them… my brother should have been able to do sports, and my sisters should have been able to have friends. I had this unnecessary need to help other people when I couldn’t even help myself.
Then one day, like the sun coming over the California Mountains in the morning, I found my white light. It was almost impossible to realize at first, but this light shined up over my wall like nothing I had ever seen before. It was my white light, my hope, my guardian angel the person I had been waiting for since that hot summer day, my 10th grade history teacher. She was the first person who was able to chip away at my thick cement wall I had been building for 8 years. Mrs. Adams was her name. She taught (and continues to teach) my 10th grade history class. And one day she pulled me aside and asked me to stay behind in class. She asked me about my bandaged up arm, about the bruises on my arms, why I wore long sleeved shirts all the time even on the hottest days of the year. We talked after class everyday for the rest of the year. I shared things with her I didn’t even know I could dig up again. And then one day I gathered up the strength and courage I had to tell her about the sexual abuse I had encountered; the time I was left crying in the shower, or the time I was left in the closet, the time when after it I thought about jumping out the 3rd story window, or the time when he lived in the basement before the divorce. Till this day I don’t know what made me stay after but I did and my life would change. That white light I found would slowly start to brighten up every aspect of my life and come the fall of ’07 I would have enough support to leave everything I knew behind.
“At the end of the day faith is a funny thing. It turns up when you don't really expect it. Its like one day you realize that the fairy tale may be slightly different than you dreamed. The castle, well, it may not be a castle. And its not so important happy ever after, just that its happy right now. See once in a while, once in a blue moon, people will surprise you , and once in a while people may even take your breath away.”-Meredith Grey “Grey’s Anatomy”
I encourage anyone who feels like they are stuck or lost or have let themselves disappear to reach out. The person you sit next to on the subway or that person you talk to everyday at the grocery store could be your white light. You don’t have to do it alone, no matter what age you are. It’s never too late. Visit www.rainn.org they have helped so many people like you get through difficult times, and given them the information that they needed to get their lives back on track, and regain control. You can do it too, there is always hope and there is always a way out.
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