When you’re a little kid, the biggest decisions you are faced with are which slide to go down first at the park or which color to make the little mermaid’s hair in your coloring book. The simple joys of hearing the cheerful jingle of the ice cream truck coming your way or your mom putting an extra cookie in your lunchbox are enough to brighten your day. When you slowly get older you start to realize there’s more to life than barbies, beanie babies and candy. It could be one day that changes your whole life, you go from milk and cookies to Bacardi and weed. Instead of going to the roller rink and having sleepovers with your girlfriends, you’re sneaking out and having sex.
It’s so much easier to get involved in the wrong things when you’re older, I mean, you’d never expect your 5 year old sister to be doing heroin and stealing, would you? When you’re older it’s so much different. Just by saying, “yeah, I’ll go” and getting in a car can get you into trouble, with your parents or even the police. Meeting the expectations given by your peers and adults around you is sometimes the most difficult goal you’ll ever encounter, but not when you’re little. When you’re little, just reciting a little cheer or sharing your crayons is enough to make everyone happy. When you’re older you’re expected to do good in school, get a job, help out your elders, stay out of trouble and even get accepted into multiple colleges.
You could ruin all of this in a split second. I did this when I was 13 years old, and continued to for the rest of my teenage life. It all started by hanging out with the wrong people, just going shopping and to the movies wasn’t enough anymore. I had to either get drunk or high to have a good time. A night without alcohol was a night without purpose. I lived like this for four years. Four years of smoking and drinking every night of the week. Four years of police and court fines to pay. Four years of meaningless sex. Four years of childhood wasted. I realized how terrible I was living my life and quickly ended the stupidity I was involving myself in. I thought it was all over just because I stopped drinking and doing drugs. It wasn’t, I was still putting myself in bad situations without even realizing it. I realized this when I was still being looked down upon and still getting myself into horrible predicaments. Honestly, I still haven’t extracted myself from this horrible environment of trouble, but I really have no clue how. I don’t know how it happened, or why it happened. But I went from being a pure, innocent child to being a sinful waste of life in a matter of seconds. It’s possibly the easiest thing you will ever do in your life.