Change for the Better Kamryn Keith

In that moment I finally felt There’s always some sort of done with my way of living. free; I had decided to competition between teens, That next night I decided break the chains that were someone wants to be cool- to go spend it with an old holding me down. After er than the other or act like friend at his parents’ house. I years of degradation and they’re better. There is also a spent the entire night mixing torment to my body and psy- lot of peer pressure in these different drugs, liquor, and che, I was able to walk with years. Most think they would substances. This was how I my head held high for once. withstand peer pressure and coped with things back then,

The experience of losing make their own choices, but a but this was the final straw. I everything and being at an lot of the time it’s harder than woke up the next morning all-time low is ultimately the you’d think. I, for one, fell vic- in my car with two police ofexperience that brought a tim to peer pressure, and it ficers knocking on the winchange for the better. sent me on years of bad de- dow. Everything was blurry As children we are at our cision-making, numbing my- and apparently I had fallen most pure, while also be- self, and avoiding things. asleep standing up while the ing at our most vulnerable. It was July 2018 when I fi- officers were talking to me.

During the day we imagine nally decided to end that cy- I slept through the entire being many different things, cle. I had hit rock-bottom that first full day in jail. I was awaknothing holds us back from month and told myself I was ened to be told I was being our imagination. We are so going to do things different- transferred to a bigger facilifree and unbothered in those ly. It’s sad that most people ty, then was chauffeured over moments. When night came, have to see what it’s like at in a van. Throughout the week reality hit some of us more the bottom to decide to aim that I was in jail I had talked to than others. Long school for the top instead. It’s even several inmates. One man in nights awake, hearing your more sad that some hit rock particular was looking out for mother and step-father yell- bottom and decide to stay me; he had been a drug ading, sneaking out of the room there. Either way, I’m thankful dict himself. He said if I didn’t to crawl on the floor to peek for this realization I had early quit with the pills and small around the corner and watch. on in my life. stuff, then eventually I would

Sometimes hiding behind It had been a year since be hooked on bigger drugs the wall to avoid glass that high school graduation, I was like heroin. He told me that’s broke off one of the dishes working part time at Enter- how it happened to him. This being thrown. The early years prise-Rent-a-Car, and I was stuck with me and I decided alter our minds in ways we just getting by enough to that when I got out of jail I was don’t understand, yet they keep up my addiction and pay going to turn my life around. can mold people into what bills. It was the second week I realized after I had gotten they will one day be. There of July when my seeming- out of jail that before I went in, are even statistics saying ly comfortable life changed. my addiction was running my who a person will be when My girlfriend of two years at entire life. I was taking three they are older based on their the time, Mia, had finally had Xanax bars almost every day childhood. enough. We had been living before I went to jail. So I went The teenage years can be together with her parents for home and got rid of them all. rough, with most barely even the last year, then I was told I called Mia to tell her I was knowing who they are yet. to move out because she was sorry and to try and recon-

Nonfiction by Kamryn Keith