|
Close your eyes. Imagine yourself as sixteen years old. You just got your license, your parents let you drive their nice car, and they semi-trust you. You are about to turn seventeen and have not done anything, in your parents eyes, that have lead them to believe you are not going to turn out to be a good kid. You choose to take on a boyfriend that you know your parents are going to hate, and you choose the friends your parents would tell you not to hang around. You decide to stop going to school, but not tell your parents, and this is where our story begins. I will paint the picture of the good and bad choices that I made, and by the end there will be a better understanding of how I got where I am today. I have chosen two main events that occurred in my life that mark huge changing points. I will attempt to show how I overcame these trials and have become the woman I am today.
I was a smart child. Always labeled as never as smart as your brother or sister, and I was the middle child. In my senior year of high school I dated the rebel in the school. The guy I knew, and every one else knew, was never going to make it anywhere in his life. I was determined to change him and make him a better person. I started hanging around a group of "bad girls." You know the girls that drink under age, cuss, and hang out with the "popular" crowd. I am sure I am no different than anyone else, in that, peer pressure was tough. I wanted to be popular, but I wanted to fit in and have people like me. I made most of the dumbest decisions of my whole life in one year.
I told you that I started hanging out with the wrong crowd. We had a nickname for our pack of friends, "the VC (Vultron Crew)." This pack was so significant in my life that I cannot even remember what the VC crew meant. We spent days, nights, hours, together. We never left each other's sight. One day we decided to skip school and head to the mall, yes Arden Mall. Now if you think back to when you were seventeen you never had any money, you only had the small change your parents gave you when they knew where you were headed (the movies, store, etc.). We decided we would shop lift all of the items at the mall that we wanted. We took everything, clothes, jewelry, underwear, etc. We were kids in a candy store. We thought at the time that the reason we got caught was because we got greedy, and went back to the same store again and again, but the real reason we got caught was to teach us a lesson.
My family is very religious. I was raised in a very strong church. With a strong church background I was expected to always make the right choices. Church and religion teach and give you a good background of who you are, where you came from, and how to get to where you want to go. The stuff it does not teach you is that we all have to go through trials to learn from mistakes to make us better people. As a teenager surrounded by peer pressure I let these values go.
The wrath of my father when you did something wrong was 100 times stronger than my Mothers. The police called my house to have someone come and pick me up. My sister answered the phone and a voice came on, "Sacramento Police department, we need to speak to the parents of Katie Faulkner." My sister screamed, "Dad, phone!" My Dad was at Nordstrom's in probably fifteen minutes, which felt like an eternity. Two of the girls who were caught with us had their Mother's show up, and they said, "Now honey, we will work this out." My Dad walked in and did not say a word. He signed the paper and said, "Get your things". We got into his truck and he asked me for my license. When I handed it to him, (oh, and he had brought a pair of scissors) he cut it up.
I had to pay back the store for all of the clothes and fines we had accumulated. I also had a father that would not speak to me. It is not that my Dad got mad and yelled; it was that for a VERY long time I would have him not trust me. Loosing my fathers trust was worse than being put in jail. It took a good three years to earn my fathers trust back, but I worked hard at it and eventually got it. Still to this day my family gives me a hard time about it and says, "imagine yourself shoplifting now."
From this point on I vowed to become a good person again. Now if you remember back to the beginning of the story where I told you I had a boyfriend, you will soon learn otherwise that I stuck to this promise. He was the type of guy who never attended school, could sweet talk his way out of anything, and who had all of the girls going crazy over him. He was also a different race then me, which posed as a problem for my family. He did not like the same things as me, he did not have the same goals in life as me, and he sure was not a sweet guy to me. I dated him behind my parents back. I told them I was going out with friends, and went out with him. He controlled my life, he told me what to do, he told me where I could go, who I could be friends with, etc. It got old really quick. The problem in a relationship is that you do not see the bad things that are consuming your life, because humans are so dependent on the whole idea of companionship. Bad relationships make you feel like you cannot do any better.
An incident that I will never forget with this guy was when he forgot my birthday. I am not one that thinks you have to know everything, but a birthday? He picked me up from school and all of my friends were asking him what we were doing. He kept telling them nothing he was tired. Then he dropped me off at home and told me he wanted to go out with his friends tonight, so I put a smile on my face and went into my house. From that point on my eyes were opened to the person he was, thoughtless, unkind and obviously forgetful. This showed me that he probably did not value me or care about us in a relationship. When you are a teenager you are so consumed with getting a boyfriend that you do not stop to wait for the right guy.
I got a job working at the local McDonald's. I was happy to be labeled as, "The Fry Queen!" All of the kids at school thought I was cool, and of course I never gave them free food! I have never believed in love at first sight, but when I walked in I thought I saw the most gorgeous guy in the world. He was my Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, etc. Just the way he presented himself, and he was a manager! We became good friends, co-worker friends. I always told him he was gorgeous, and he said the same about me. Oh course both of us had significant others.
After about six months of brushing each other off we decided to break up with our significant others and get together. It is weird how once you ditch the dead beat in your life; your parents can change your phone number in about 30 seconds. He was the man of my dreams. He changed my life forever. He was polite to me, asked my opinion, opened the door for me, paid for everything, and took me out on dates.
I reflect on my adolescent years, and know I did not have it any worse than any one else. But I learned that life is too short to waste time on people who are going to bring you down in life. Life is too good to waste a single moment. My life has been changed forever because of this one person.
I signed up for college the semester after I graduated high school, and am now a graduating senior at Sacramento State University. I am the Director of an after school program, and am the boss to twenty-five employees. I have made many of my dreams come true. I will be teaching a second grade class in the fall. I believe that because of this person coming into my life, my dreams are coming true. . I re-opened my eyes to all of my childhood dreams. We hear people talk about teenagers who are not going to aspire to anything, but I made the change in my life and did a three sixty turn to make my life better.
My relationship with my father is wonderful. He taught me honor, courage, commitment and most of all integrity (obviously my father is a Marine). He instilled the core values in my life that pulled me through my rough adolescent years. Today we have a very strong and loving relationship, and I feel him being proud of the woman I have become each day.
There will always be milestones we will need to overcome in life, but if we find true love, true friends, true examples I believe we can pull through any situation, and become better people because of it. In my life, a man changed my outlook on life and this year has asked me to marry him. Together now for 5 and a ½ years we have grown to show others what a positive and loving relationship can look like. I have become the woman I am today because of my family and this sweet man.
|
|