We all are fighting our own battles. Some may be physical while others may be emotional and mental. Either way we all have some type of battle we are dealing with. My battles are a bit of all three; emotional, physical and mental. My battle began when I was four years old. Looking back i realize that i didn't even know i was battling anything. I had just been adopted and moved all the way from Guatemala to Massachusetts. I went from being poor and living in the country to living in the city and being, well, rich, or what i thought was rich. Everything seemed to be going so well. My new family seemed pretty cool; i was fitting in nicely and getting used to this lifestyle. I started learning english and even attended kindergarten early. Everything seem to be going smoothly but little did i know that my whole world was about to crash down.

To me my adopted brother was the coolest person alive. He was six years old when i moved in so we were close. I remember coming home from preschool and waiting for him to come home from school so we could play with our toys together. I remember car rides home from maine, where he would lay his head on my lap and i would play with his hair. Hanging out with my brother was the coolest thing ever. That all soon would change. I was five years old when everything changed. My brother was 7 and started learning about what sex ed in health class.

Of course being seven he didn't really understand everything that was being taught to him, but he was curious to learn. I was about five and a half when he first experimented on me.

He was only seven so it was just looking and of course me being five i didn't have much for him to look at. As i got older though and started developing it went from looking to touching and feeling. I didn't really understand what was going on at the time. At night i would lay awake playing the whole thing over in my head. Questions running through my head. Some part of me somehow knew what he was doing was wrong, but another part of me was scared to tell anyone. Scared that i would be judged or even worse rejected. I was scared that i would get in trouble, that they would yell at me for allowing him to do that to me. For years i allowed him to keep doing this to me, for years i held that secret in. A ticking time bomb waiting to explode. I struggled with concealing this monster living inside me. I tried everything, brainwashing myself to believe it never happened, convincing myself it was just a bad dream. Around the age of eight i found my outlet, my way to conceal these questions and emotions without anyone knowing; self harm. Self harm to me at the time was my savior, my hero, my addiction. I cut to have control. I had no control over any of the events that happened in my life, but with self harm i had control, complete control. My self harm started off with innocent scratches and cuts. Injuries any eight year old would get from playing outside. I could easily say "oh a tree branch scratched me" or "it was my dog." The older i got though, the harder the excuses became. It went from innocent scratches to deep cuts and burns. My self harm was taking over me. It was becoming my own personal demon i couldn't get rid of. Self harm was my outlet for everything. I didn't know what else to turn to. Self harm was the only thing that worked for me, was the only thing that numbed the pain, the feelings, the confusion. I let out all the pain i felt from the verbal, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse, i was receiving everyday in my arms. My body became a canvas, my scars the drawings, and my razors the paintbrushes. For years i concealed this secret as well. The more i secluded my real self from the world, the more i bottled up my emotions and questions, the worse my demons grew. I soon started turning to drugs and alcohol because self harm was no longer numbing me the way i wanted it too. It was like my body was immune to self harm. I went crazy in my head, desperately trying to find a new outlet that would satisfy me the way self harm used too. I started hanging out with drug addicts and got introduced to some hard core scary drugs. Every drug you could possibly name i've done. Drugs were my new self harm. I could no longer numb my emotions with physical pain, i had to numb everything; my whole body, my mind. I struggled to balance my fake persona and my real persona. I struggled to not let my depressed, drug addicted, self harming self leak into my fake, happy person i showed the world. I struggled to keep my demons a secret, struggled to fight them on my own, but pretty soon it became too much for me. I realized i needed help, that if i kept going down the path i was going to end up dead. I finally mustered the courage to speak out. The crisis team was called and i was taken out of the home, finally. I was put into a residential program where i stayed for three months as i awaited what was going to happen next. I had made it clear to everyone that i WAS NOT going back to that house. My adoptive family filed for CHINS, which then got DCF involved. I stayed there for three months before they found me a foster home. Transitioning from a program life to foster home life was hard at first, but the foster family i had moved in were awesome. You would think that would be then end of my story. The happy ending, i get out of the house and live with a new family happily ever after, oh how i wished that was the end. Just because i left my adoptive house didn't mean i am free of my demons. They follow me where i go, wherever i stay. There’s no escaping them. Everyday i fight my demons and everyday i get a little closer to winning, but there are still those days when i take three steps back and my demons win. But i never let that bring me down.