I believe that you shouldn’t let your past determine your future

I believe that you shouldn’t let your past determine your future.

Everybody makes mistakes, and I am certainly no different. During my sophomore and junior years of high school I was led down a path that could never lead to anything good. My whole life started going in a downward spiral and I was too caught up to realize it. My friends tried to show me what was happening, but I just thought that they would never be able to understand because they hadn’t experienced everything I had. Slowly but surely they began to walk away from me because I would not accept their advice, and they could not accept my lifestyle. It got to the point where I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to stay enrolled in school, why would I? I never went anyway.

It took my boyfriend getting arrested two times for me to realize exactly where I was headed, and the affects that my lifestyle would have on both me, and all of those who cared enough to still be sticking around. I began to understand that no one was going to change my life for me, and that if I truly wanted a better future, then I was going to have to work for it. There will always be people who judge me for who I was, not who I am. I feel sorry for them because they will never know what it’s like to leave something behind and begin again.

Now here I am, in college, a place where no one could have seen me going two years ago. If I had listened to the people who wrote me off as a failure and as someone who would go nowhere in life, then I probably wouldn’t be here. But I believe that you shouldn’t let your past determine your future. Every day is a blessing and every moment is a new opportunity to prove that I am no longer the same person that I once was.