CHANGE FOR THE BETTER
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n that moment I finally felt free; I had decided to break the chains that were holding me down. After years of degradation and torment to my body and psyche, I was able to walk with my head held high for once. The experience of losing everything and being at an all-time low is ultimately the experience that brought a change for the better. As children we are at our most pure, while also being at our most vulnerable. During the day we imagine being many different things, nothing holds us back from our imagination. We are so free and unbothered in those moments. When night came, reality hit some of us more than others. Long school nights awake, hearing your mother and step-father yelling, sneaking out of the room to crawl on the floor to peek around the corner and watch. Sometimes hiding behind the wall to avoid glass that broke off one of the dishes being thrown. The early years alter our minds in ways we don’t understand, yet they can mold people into what they will one day be. There are even statistics saying who a person will be when they are older based on their childhood. The teenage years can be rough, with most barely even knowing who they are yet.
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There’s always some sort of competition between teens, someone wants to be cooler than the other or act like they’re better. There is also a lot of peer pressure in these years. Most think they would withstand peer pressure and make their own choices, but a lot of the time it’s harder than you’d think. I, for one, fell victim to peer pressure, and it sent me on years of bad decision-making, numbing myself, and avoiding things. It was July 2018 when I finally decided to end that cycle. I had hit rock-bottom that month and told myself I was going to do things differently. It’s sad that most people have to see what it’s like at the bottom to decide to aim for the top instead. It’s even more sad that some hit rock bottom and decide to stay there. Either way, I’m thankful for this realization I had early on in my life. It had been a year since high school graduation, I was working part time at Enterprise-Rent-a-Car, and I was just getting by enough to keep up my addiction and pay bills. It was the second week of July when my seemingly comfortable life changed. My girlfriend of two years at the time, Mia, had finally had enough. We had been living together with her parents for the last year, then I was told to move out because she was
Non fict ion by Kamryn Ke i t h
done with my way of living. That next night I decided to go spend it with an old friend at his parents’ house. I spent the entire night mixing different drugs, liquor, and substances. This was how I coped with things back then, but this was the final straw. I woke up the next morning in my car with two police officers knocking on the window. Everything was blurry and apparently I had fallen asleep standing up while the officers were talking to me. I slept through the entire first full day in jail. I was awakened to be told I was being transferred to a bigger facility, then was chauffeured over in a van. Throughout the week that I was in jail I had talked to several inmates. One man in particular was looking out for me; he had been a drug addict himself. He said if I didn’t quit with the pills and small stuff, then eventually I would be hooked on bigger drugs like heroin. He told me that’s how it happened to him. This stuck with me and I decided that when I got out of jail I was going to turn my life around. I realized after I had gotten out of jail that before I went in, my addiction was running my entire life. I was taking three Xanax bars almost every day before I went to jail. So I went home and got rid of them all. I called Mia to tell her I was sorry and to try and recon-
ROOTS & REFLECTIONS
