Memoir

            I’ve been scared plenty times in my life, but nothing was scarier than the time I got in serious trouble for the first time. It wasn’t something small like getting caught cheating in school or coming home late after curfew. It was serious, like almost got arrested serious. It was my freshman year of high school, and I found myself along with all my close friends in the SRO’s office. We were all sitting, waiting to see the consequences to this retched decision we made only twenty minutes earlier. The room was so silent that the only thing that could be heard was the pounding of our hearts in fear. Glares shot across the room like spears every time someone knocked at the door to call the next person into the room for questioning. One by one the officers called us to the back to explain to them what was REALLY going on.

            Earlier that week my friends and I were doing things that normal teenagers would do. At the time MySpace was the best past time so we all sat and spent hours on the computer. We’d looking at each other’s pictures and rate each other’s social status according to how many friends we had. Looking back it sounds so lame and I notice all the precious time we wasted. But out of all that time we did spent online little did we know making a status on MySpace would lead us to sitting with actual police officers making statements about it. My friends and I found ourselves all speaking to the officer about an argument online that had nothing to do with us, well all except one.

            The argument was well known amongst us girls but we never knew it would bubble up to something so extreme like it did. It went from two girls trash talking each other fussing over a boy, to my friends and the enemies friends fussing amongst each other, to my friends and I traveling to these girls school to see if they were really about that life and everything they were saying online, to us getting arrested and sitting with officers trying to get the story correctly portrayed and explained. At the beginning of it all we didn’t think that the issue would be as bad as it turned out. For some odd reason we thought we were invincible and could get away with anything. We probably could but sadly we were told on and were brought up with the charges of trespassing and disturbing school. Thankfully we weren’t actually shackled and taken away, but we were released to our parents which was equally or maybe even worse than being in jail. All we heard from our parents for the next week or so was how bad a decision we made and how we wouldn’t have the luxury of a cell phone or computer for quite some time.

            I came to a point in my life where I was completely miserable because not only did I not have a phone or computer, but my parents looked at me differently because of my actions. I personally had NEVER been in any type of trouble before so I didn’t know how it worked. I thought that since this was my first offense I would be let off easily. I thought wrong. My parents if anything gave me the most headaches. They treated me as if I did the worst thing in the whole entire world. They also didn’t want me hanging with my friends that I have had for years because of what we did. It confused the crap out of me and left me at a state where I wrote and thought a lot about life. I found myself crying sometimes because I didn’t want to let go of my friends but if it was to get the life I had before I got in trouble back I would have done anything. But since I was so stubborn I sat and had to learn things on my own.

            Time went by and we all had court and got a list of things to do in order for this arrest to not be on our record. I found myself taking anger management courses and visiting the jail house along with community service all while trying to keep good grades. Every time we had a task to complete I found myself getting angry with my decision of sticking up for a friend. I found myself questioning why did I really go out and try to fight someone else’s fight. I found myself asking why I was being so strong and bold when my friend could have been strong and bold for herself. I found myself wondering why I did what I did and if she would do the same for me. Thankfully I didn’t ponder on that long. I came to the conclusion that this is a dog eat dog world and that you have to eat or get eaten. In other words I realized that there’s no taking up for someone. You have to do things for yourself. If you have people fighting your battles all the time you won’t be taken seriously. You have to do things for yourself, because not everyone has your best interest at heart.

            This epiphany traveled through time with me and still continues to hold true. It seems as though every time I confided in someone to help me out or do me a favor they let me down in some way. Even those who I trusted the most would let me down, but look for my help when it was needed. I would help them out at times but I would also let them know that if you want something done you have to do it for yourself. You cannot depend on others to do everything for you because as a person you are growing up and becoming more mature, which means that you have to start doing more and more things for yourself especially if you want things done right.