High School: Poor Choices I made

     My mother left me at the age of three with my nanny in Ivory Coast, Africa, due to a civil war that put a financial strain on everyone in the country, so my mother decided to come to America in pursuit of a better life for us. I moved to New York City when I was six years old. My father's examples were not the best. My biological dad was never in my life and my stepdad was a drug addict who wasn't there for the family, all of which contributed to me choosing the wrong partners and seeking love in all the wrong people.

    My mother tried her best to make ends meet and provided a wonderful life for me, but I made poor choices. For example, I was “in love” with a boy who didn't even like me in middle school and decided to lose my virginity to him freshman year of high school as a way to prove my love for him...BAD IDEA! It took me until my freshman year of college to recover from this situation. Between the years, he did a lot of cruel and spiteful things to me that were never actually spoken about. I learned a long time ago to keep my sentiments and truth to myself since every man I've ever trusted basically has told me to stop complaining.

    Continuing on I experienced some more traumatic situations during my freshman year of high school. I was a freshman looking forward to all of the new experiences that a new school with new people would provide. I was hoping for a better school experience after a less than stellar middle school experience. In middle school, I was so depressed that I attempted suicide and ended up in the hospital and had to be in therapy for a year.

    

    Freshman year of high school, I met this boy through an associate who was a girl that I trusted too easily. A few months into knowing each other I decided to finally hang out with him after school. He took me to a staircase with 4-5 other young men and tried to force me to have sex with all of them. It was very difficult to get out of that situation, they all wanted to rape me, I had to beg the boy that I knew to take me home. Luckily nothing happened to me that day but I went home traumatized. I sat on the train and cried my whole way home. When I got home I tried to tell my parents but I didn't know exactly what to tell them because not only did I not know the boy that well but they didn't understand the situation either.