During my years as a child through now, I have faced many challenges. As a child my father was always in and out of jail. Running from the police led him to more time. He was sent to jail for drugs, violence, stealing, and more. Often times the police would knock on the door and ask where he was. I lied to the police and said I hadn’t seen him. Police would ask to search the house; by then my dad would have already run off.
School was a struggle at times. My family would move around, so I would constantly switch schools. Switching schools made it difficult, because for example, I would be learning addition in one school and then multiplication in the next. A lot of times I had no idea what my teacher was trying to teach me. Eventually I had “caught up” with my classmates but as soon as I did, it seemed as if I would switch schools again. As I got older I learned to adjust and learn quickly.

Everything was going wrong in my family life, to where my mom and dad had separated. I never quite knew exactly why, just knew that they had. I figured it was because my dad was in jail and couldn’t support our family very well. Mom met a new man. He was alright; he came to live with us. Also a teenager came to live with us. He was kicked out of his house and my mom let him stay as long as he would baby-sit my siblings and I. His name was Kyle. While my mom was off to work Kyle would abuse us. He duck taped me to a tree, and tied us to chairs. Kyle would always be drunk and high. When my mom would come home from work we told, but she wouldn’t believe us.

My school knew something was wrong with my family. Soon us kids were put in Foster Care. Foster Care wasn’t so bad. I really liked the other children who lived there and have very good memories. I was adopted when I was thirteen years old into a nice home with them. They treated me well, with respect, and gave me much love. It was very tough on me, and was hard for me to adjust to calling someone else mom and dad. I fought all the time with them. I didn’t want them to replace my actual mom and dad. I would do everything in my mind to stay away from them. In my mind I hated them.

My adopted parents didn’t know what to do, so they sent me to a place called Job Corps. I am doing very well here. I am working on getting my diploma, and becoming a Certified Nursing Assistant. I am very happy with this chapter of life. I still keep in touch with my family and they are very proud of me.