I am a mere 19 years old but I have learned a lot during the past five years to know that I have made a lot of mistakes in my life.
I am not one of those children who come from a broken home where parents do not get along and there is no emotional, financial or other support. On the contrary, I am from a decent home. My parents are married and I have a younger loving brother and sister.
I grew up in a home where there was always lots of love; where if we had any disagreements we knew as a family how to kiss and make up.
My grandparents have also been supportive and even though I only got to spend weekends at their homes, they were always around to provide my parents and me with any assistance we needed.
In short, I cannot say there was ever any lack of love for me from my family. It’s just that I could not see this. I thought my parents loved my younger brother and sister more than they loved me and so I developed a sense of low self-esteem and value.
By the time I was 14, I started to mix with the wrong crowd. I would go to school – where I was doing quite well – but leave school on mornings to hang out with a boy whom my family detested.
Many times when my parents thought I was at school, I would be at this boy’s house. As a result, I was introduced to sex at an early age. But that was not all. My friend, who I always told everyone I was going to marry, was not a one-woman man, even though he swore that he loved me.
Of course, I was craving love and acceptance. One reason being that I was extremely slim for my age and felt I was not attractive enough. Apart from having to put up with his lifestyle of dealing with other girls, he was also a drug dealer – or more so, a drug user. He did both.
Before long, he had me smoking the “spliffs” and cigarettes. Mind you, I was still at school and my parents thought I was just rebelling when I started to act up. They never knew it was a mixture of the drugs and alcohol. I could down any amount of alcohol and still appear okay.
I started getting angry with my family who I knew loved me dearly. I knew I was hurting my parents, grandparents and other relatives, but I just did not care. The sex and drugs were the “in thing”.
I also started partying hard and would stay out until the wee hours of the morning most Friday and Saturday nights. By that time I was 16 and felt my parents could not tell me how long I should stay out if I went partying. My schoolwork continued to be good but I had long lost real interest in going to school.
I kept up this lifestyle until I was 17 years old and finally got the green light to leave school – albeit with six CXCs. My teachers felt I was an “A” student, but I was just playing along with their expectations of who they wanted me to be.
Once out of school, I felt I was now an adult. The partying continued – despite my parents’ objection and my drug use increased. I was taking drugs more often, smoking lots of cigarettes and drinking like drinking was going out of style. I also started sleeping away from home – spending nights at my boyfriend’s house, while telling my parents I was with girlfriends.
My parents cried often and begged me to change, but I just wanted to live the life, enjoy the sex and party – even though I knew my parents had instilled in me from an early age the importance of going church. One day I just stopped.
Today, I am paying for my life of destruction.
I am three months pregnant, have a sexually transmitted disease and my boyfriend has up and gone because he does not want to be a father.
I am left with regrets, heartbreak and pain. I am also slowly making my way back to church and trying to be the daughter my parents want me to be. It is not easy, but I know I can do it.
I want to warn teenagers not to be fooled by the so-called attractions that life offers – the men, sex, drugs, and so on. They are actually distractions.
I am learning from my mistakes, but I am also learning not to rush life and to understand that all that glitters is not gold.
