Like many teenagers I was troubled, I thought I could do what ever I wanted when I wanted. My mom was a single mom who worked and had a very social life when she wasn’t working, and I suppose I often felt that situation made it easy for me to get away with things. Of course there was also the fact that my mom and I didn’t agree about anything, and at the young age of 13 I started running away.

At first it was because I was mad at my mom, or her boy friend, then because I wouldn’t get my way and then the running away turned into a more selfish need. The more I left home and skipped school the more I got to bounce around from friend to friend, I suppose it made me want more independence. You see all my friends….were older and most had later curfews or none at all, most hung out at the arcade and partied and some didn’t even live at home. I began to see a life more appealing then school and home, more fun, more dangerous and more free. It became an addiction of sorts, a freedom I needed so badly an ach to grow up. But with friends like that it was more then just video games and ditching school, it was booze, drugs and criminal activity. By 15 I had two arrests and was to spend 2 months in Juvie, I guess I thought getting arrested would make me more adult like…..how wrong was I!

Running away certainly wasn’t the answer to any of my troubles, it only brought more troubles especially on nights when I didn’t want to go home and there was no where else to be, after all there can’t be a party every night. Some nights I would find myself wandering the streets of the city where I grew up young and alone. Often I would ride the buses till the busses came to an end, I have to admit those nights of stubborn selfishness I felt very alone and very scared. Some nights I longed for the people I called friends, and now that I look back at what a fool I had been, I realize I should have just gone home. Home was hard, it’s true…but it was safe and warm.

Those friends that I skipped school to hang with and scared my mom half to death by running away to see them, those friends I haven’t seen in 15 years….why? Because once I was released from juvie, a light finally clicked in. I went home and I did right, and my friends well I guess I wasn’t that cool after all because I haven’t spoke to any of them in as I said 15 years. I spent almost three years with those people, I thought they were my best friends, I was wrong….