Drugs, prison, and teenage pregnancy are some of the things that shaped and molded my childhood. It started in a small Colorado mountain town, Kittredge. Then, everything took a turn for the worst and all our lives were changed forever.

My family and I believed our house in Kittredge was a place we were going to call home forever. I was about four when my dad left and my mom moved us to Denver, Colorado because she could not afford to take care of four kids and the house. At this time my older sister Brittney moved in with my grandparents, and my oldest brother started hanging out with the wrong crowd, got into drugs, and ended up in prison. I had found out shortly after that my dad and jerry had been hanging out together, and my dad was in prison too. I wrote the both of them every day.

My mom could not handle that our family was falling apart and fed her depression with drugs and alcohol. We lost our home and never went to school. It was my brother Daniel and I who had to take care of her now. We were about seven and eight years old, and we were living on the streets. If we were lucky, one of my mom’s friends would buy us a motel for the night which meant we could shower and go to school the next day. This lasted for about a year until social services stepped in; Daniel and I ended up at our grandparents’ house with my sister. My mom ended up robbing a bank and shortly after went to jail. Our family was falling apart.
Brittney was almost 16; she got pregnant and dropped out. She ran away and lived with one of her friends. Once again it was just Daniel and I. My grandmother had a heart attack when I was about 10 years old, so Daniel and I had to move out. He went to my aunt’s house in Arvada, and I ended up in Clear Creek County with my uncle. After a year of living there, Daniel and I switched places because I did not get along with my aunt at the time. I lived in Arvada for about a year until they decided they could not keep taking care of me, and I moved back up with my uncle in Clear Creek.

Now Daniel and I were together and happy. My mom and dad both got out of jail, and my dad instantly came to live with us. He slowly was getting back on his feet. He met a woman and got married six months later, and Daniel and I moved in with them. It was my first year of high school, and we were finally a family again. My mother is still on the road to recovery, and I have faith that someday when she is ready she will come home and want to do well.
I have lived with my father and stepmother for four years now, and I could ask for nothing more than a loving family. What I’ve learned so far in my life is that you will get challenges thrown at you, and you will go through hard times, but always think positive and work hard. I had to grow up at a very young age, but it just showed me that in order to succeed in life you have to make the right decisions and never give up no matter how hard life gets.