Greek and Latin Root Word Chart

Innocence Project research assignment

Sample student My Turn 1

   This will be my last column, in the last issue of the year so I wanted to do something a little different. For that reason I wanted to write about a more personal topic, and let you in on my life a little bit. This column is about overcoming hardships to get to where you want to be.  I have overcome all the obstacles in my life to get to where I am today, and know that I never have to look back. This is what I like to call my testimony.

   Most of my closet friends here know very little of my life that I left behind. Now I want to share it with anybody who cares to read it for the simple hope that it will light a candle in some unexpected person and give him or her hope; it is purely and hopefully meant to be inspirational.

   Up until the fourth grade, I had the perfect life, well, at least perfect for a nine year old. I had a lot of friends, I liked school at Monroe Elementary, my sister and brother were only mildly annoying, my best friend lived right next store, and I always had friends over because I was the kid with the big yard, the swing set, and all the new Barbies and girly movies. It’s easy enough to say that my perfect childhood stopped here.

   My parents began fighting uncontrollably and I even remember times when I had to take my siblings to the neighbors for dinner when things had become too bad, too often. Yet, I was still a child.  Did it make me sad to see my parents fight? Absolutely, but it was easy enough to jump on top of the monkey bars, swing, or jump on our four wheeler and get lost in the woods.

   I am sure you would have guessed that a separation was not far off, so we moved from our house, and my sanctuary in New Richmond, to a small town house in Amelia with my mom, while my dad moved around from place to place. Sometimes when we went to visit him he was at Grandma’s, Aunt Nicole and Uncle Mark’s, or sometimes it would be a friend of his that we did not know. None of this mattered to us, as long as we got to see our dad, and he never missed a visit.

   On the other hand we hated our new school and our new house. What we hated most were the people who mom brought home.  Some were strange men who stayed a night or a maybe a week, some were friends from her job at Golden Corral; when they came to stay they always stayed for weeks at a time, sometimes even months. We hated for her friends to come over because that meant that we couldn’t sleep with her in the only bed in the house. We were kicked out to camp on the floor with blankets and pillows, sometimes with her friends’ kids.

   One particular friend was Sue who had two boys, Patrick, who was my age, and Adam, who was two years younger than me but two years older than my brother. At first, it was fun having the boys around; it gave us someone to hang out with other than the kids in the complex. By this time, I was the full time mother, although I did not look at it like that. We spent many nights eating macaroni and cheese and fish sticks because I knew how to cook them the best. Most nights we ate Pb & j’s or a bowl of cereal, but we didn’t care about that. 

    I was in charge of giving the kids a bath and getting them ready for school. We were always on the go, swimming in a neighbor’s pool, playing tag, or beating each other at self made obstacle courses; all  the fun aspects of doing whatever we pleased while the adults were at work or sleeping or had “guests” over was irrelevant to us.

   The boys and Sue became permanent fixtures in our house, and sometimes I enjoyed it, but most of the time I didn’t. We had moved past that stage of being friends, we became enemies. I quickly realized that the more that they went to their dad’s, the meaner they would be become. It’s safe to say that the boys’ father should have been thrown in jail for child abuse and molestation. It’s even safer to say that the oldest carried some of the same traits and became “curious,” in ways that I personally hated. I never told anyone but my cousin and she said I was lying.   I guess I built a complex and never told any body about it again until one year at church camp, but that was only part of the story.  Maybe I just felt sorry because I knew their father was a really rotten man.

   My dad became very angry when he heard about the way we were behaving and getting away with what ever we pleased, so my mom got us a babysitter. Some babysitter she was; she got paid to watch us do exactly what we had been doing long before she ever came along. I still made dinners, only now I had two more plates to fix, one for her and one for her rotten boy friend.  He got “curious”, too, and I got crazy.

   One time I called the cops and tried to run away but the babysitter wouldn’t let me; she had unplugged the phone form the wall making it impossible for the cops to get back through. So they came out to investigate but I was locked in the restroom while she answered the door and told them of my ‘misbehaving’ and her boyfriend had long been gone. He never came back, which was an answer to my prayers, too bad he wasn’t the last.

   When my mom first started doing hard drugs it was not a surprise when we were evicted and I was living with my dad and grandparents. That lasted all of eleven months. We went back to New Richmond; my teachers once again liked me. I still remember Mrs. Paul. I even have a small yearbook picture of her in a diary tucked away that she traded me for one of mine. I was comfortable here, and although I was able to do a lot less and get away with little, it felt like home again.

   Then the worst happened. My dad disappeared, although this was the second time he had left but he came back that time after a month or two.  This time, it was at lot worse. He left with my Aunt Nicole.   Talk about breaking a lot of already broken hearts.   There were six children unable to put the shreds of their lives back together and one broken man who couldn’t understand his brother’s motives with his wife. That was the day after Christmas and it was short lived a holiday.

    For three months we were clueless to where they were; angry, hurt, but wanting things to be fixed more than anything. Then we were shipped of to Newport with my mom again. That was a slap in the face; even at our young age we knew that this was not a life for a child.

   Mom’s new roommate was named Brandy and she was a stripper whom we had known for quite some time; her son was 19 and weird. I remember he used to make me watch movies with him, movies I didn’t like and I know mom would have been angry. He said that his “curiosity” was normal, and if I ever told, no one would ever believe me anyway/ I never told. I acted out, yet I have never told anybody again about my painful secrets. Till this day I have never told anybody all my secrets, never until now.

   After a while my dad came back with my aunt at his side.  To top it all off, they moved in with us, our mom and her friends.  They lived upstairs, we lived downstairs. I was angry, stubborn, and hurt, and refused to speak to them. After living with someone you learn to give in, no matter how hard and hurtful it is.  I had a real hatred for my aunt and my cousins and uncle had the same kind of hatred for my dad. They got out of it;  I had to live with them and face it every day. My mom had started taking the rent money from my dad and buying drugs from the people at the bar she worked at. There would be days at a time I wouldn’t see her, and then she would show back up and act as if nothing was wrong. Soon she stopped coming back at all.

   I took to the life in the city, and I felt that I had to keep up with the older people I hung out with. That meant sneaking out just about every night and attending parties. I have seen things that I still cannot believe. My so called best friend jumped out of the car on the way to the party one night and beat this girl up and left her on the side walk in a fetal position, all for fun. She thought it was hilarious. I don’t think I will ever stop regretting sitting there and watching. There was never a party with out alcohol, and drugs, some worse than the others. I am glad to this day that drugs never became part of my experiences; I guess I was just a little smarter, plus, I had already lost my mother to them, not me, too. Depression was the way I lived my life, and I had suicidal thoughts and cuts to prove it. I took a lot of bad turns and walked down paths that no one should ever walk down.

   Then four years ago something amazing happened;  it was called Faith Chapel.  The pastor, Jamie Taylor, was my cousin and my grandparents took me whenever I was with them. I wavered in and out of the church life for a few years, never feeling like I had found my place. Although I drastically calmed down, I was still living with a lot of my old ways. It felt good to have someone to lean on, the church.  I had good friends who really cared but it was hard for me to leave the life behind that was hidden from all these people. I felt none of them really understood, in a way I still feel that way, but it’s okay because no one can never fully understand unless he or she has been in those shoes.

   Eventually everything fell into place, all that was left was to leave Newport schools and move in with the grandparents (by this time I had forgiven my dad and mostly forgiven my aunt.   It took five years but I still wanted to get out more than anything, this wasn’t my home).

   Things started slowly;  after years of begging my dad to transfer us to New Richmond,  he finally did my junior year.  Although many students take New Richmond for granted and can’t wait to get away,  I fought my whole life to come back. This was huge for me, it meant getting up at 5:30 every morning to get ready and drive to New Richmond and back to Newport, which was okay. It didn’t matter to me that I was nowhere near as popular here as I was there, the work was a lot harder and my honor roll grades and effort for Newport no longer worked, or that I lost a lot of friends in Newport.   I was back on track. I still had battles to fight, such as getting to church (my dad did everything in his power to keep us away) which had become my strong hold. God had become my stronghold and I wanted to be in His house every day all day. Then there was dealing with my mom being gone, but I had already won the largest battle. Senior year was the ultimate, I moved in with my grandparents in September and everything just felt right.   I had finally found my home again, no matter that it took nine years to do so.

   After I found my place, I started turning the bad into good.  My mom’s disappearance no longer held me back  nor was she an excuse for my failures, but she was the presence in my head pushing  me forward.  She had become my inspiration in a way I have never known. I knew that I wanted to become everything  that she was not. I was an overcomer.

   All the same that didn’t stop me from missing my mom.  I wanted someone to help me get ready for dances and braid my hair, someone to cheer me on, but that was no longer an anchor holding me back. It had been four years since we heard from her.  I mean, every once in a while we would get something in the mail where she had used our address, but that was it.

   In 2006 the woman that use to be the mother above all others reached an all time low, even in my eyes.  She was flashed across all the news stations for multiple reasons, among them she had stolen a cop car in Anderson township.  She got away, she was put on the Wheel of Justice, and became one of the most wanted women in Ohio.  Hey, at least we knew she was alive. Then she was flashed across the news again in April of 2009.  After six years of running, she has been caught. First, she will spend some time in jail in Tennessee, then she will be sent back here to do her time for her crimes in 2006. That’s what inspired me to write this;  a burden that I thought I let go of is just now being lifted. I hope that she will come out of jail the person that she used to be, but I am prepared if she doesn’t. I no longer feel like I have to hold things in that are painful.

   I have overcome, and I continue to do so each and every day. In August, I am off to college at Shawnee State University to become a child psychologist. I want to help the kids who have had a poor childhood.   I hope that I will be able to help them talk about their fears and leave them behind, instead of living in them every day. I have overcome and I want to continue to help others overcome for the rest of my life.

   When you look at me now, there maybe something that you can’t place, a past that you may not understand, nor would you have guessed. The simple fact is that I am a changed person, I am quiet when I used to be loud, happy when I use to be hurt, whole where I used to be empty. I honestly believe that I would never have found my place if I would not have kept fighting, but I overcame the odds, and I believe I have triumphed.

   The moral of my story in is that when you set your mind to something you have to press forward to achieve it, defeat all the odds and obstacles set before you. Have confidence in yourself when no one else can. Set your goal high and don’t you dare stop until you get there. Leave your past behind and set your future in front of you and you can achieve anything.

   Overcome!

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