Okay so my story is, I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks all my life, with everything typically going wrong, being poor and living in poverty, handling everything typically alone, not having really any friends, taking responsibility for things even out of my control or stepping up into a parental role since I was a young age. I grew up with no dad, only an alcoholic single mom, and an extremely loving grandmother. I grew up really fast after my grandmother unfortunately passed when I was 13 and it took a huge toll on me and my family. After she passed, my family completely split ways. But fast forward to high school, my mom’s alcohol addiction grew stronger as we started struggling more financially from age 14 to 17, she started abusing me more then, then she ever did before in her life, she pushed me around everyday, ignored me, beat on me, treated me like I was just dirt on the side of her shoe, and I truly tried helping her I really did but her addiction only got worse, her abuse only got worse and it was only a matter of time until I snapped the summer before my senior year and I packed my stuff when she left to go to her friends, didn’t say anything to her and I left immediately without saying a word. I dealt with her and her abuse towards me for way too long and I was struggling in high school for the first 3 years because I was trying to keep up with her, with all the stress at home and with working while in school to help her pay the bills, I severely lost myself in keeping up with my studies and my grades and my extracurriculars which gave me the purpose to keep going, I almost flunked high school and then when I ran away I was able to pick myself up completely in my senior year and triumph with an extremely high gpa all year for senior year with A’s and B’s, do extracurriculars, volunteer, visit my grandmother from my dad’s side, be peaceful for once without worrying that someone is gonna hurt me at any moment, and without worrying that I will get evicted every single day. Being able to focus on my studies gave me not only purpose but also gave me motivation for life and my goals again, it gave me more than just an escape from the terrors that were my reality. I graduated and got into college, it may not be the college I first chose but it’s the college that chose me and that makes me really happy to go into everyday and leaves me motivated for each goal I set and my future goal of becoming a surgical technologist where I get to help those who help save lives and eventually even branch out into becoming a surgical first assistant. For once not being a responsible parent to my parent but actually feeling like I can make something of myself and feeling like myself which for a while, I never knew who that was until I got to where I am today.
