My mom is currently looking for a job and a place for us to live. The fact that she never attended school makes it difficult. She has applied to different restaurants and stores, but all have so far been rejecting her application. My dad plans to stay in the same house we've been living for the past six years.
I’ve seen the effects of not getting help for mental illness first hand and it's no joke. It's very sad to see. One day a friend may be behaving normally and the next they can fall apart. What makes it worse is that sometimes you don’t even know what's going on or how to help.
My foster home was not the best. It felt like they didn’t really care about me either. I had no clothes and had to wear their four-year-old daughters clothes.
Without a father figure I felt lost. I resorted to the street. Many young teens are in the same situation I’m in. Some go even deeper by turning to gangs for guidance.
I have confidence in my ability to do it. If you are really going to change something, you need to take action yourself. Don’t sell yourself short, don’t think because of your age or ethnicity that you can’t, you can.
Such behavior reinforces what we are bombarded with on streets and in stores everyday. Ads showing what both women and men “should aspire” to look like in order to be accepted and loved by others. These images of tall, thin, tan, women and chiseled men are photoshopped to false perfection and then shown to potential consumers who pay companies billions to try and look like what they see.
I also thought that the minimal anticipatory grief I had allowed myself to experience, when he was battling cancer, was sufficient. ‘I should be done. These tears are helping no one,’ I thought. But I simply wasn’t “done” and squelching my tears only allowed the depression to surface in more sinister ways. I couldn’t fall asleep, I would spend days eating only sweets, and, most damaging of all, I felt utterly alone.
Most bullying begins with a name or some feature that other kids can tease you about. Sometimes the teasing starts out verbal and, when the bullies get bored with it step up the teasing by hurting you physically.
The day I found out they were having problems, my dad told me he was going to leave the house for a while. “I need to leave, to stay away for a while,” were his exact words. That day I couldn't stop crying.
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