SECRET:Where's the innocence?

Youth, WTF is wrong?

Everyone’s life story is different. It isn't easy growing up with a mentally ill parent. Some kids don't have any support; all they know is their parent’s illness or addiction. We learn from our parents.

My friend, Rose, had a life surrounded by sex crimes and drugs. Rose's mother is bi-polar and when Rose was growing up, her mother didn’t take her medication. Rose’s mother physically and mentally abused her while her mother’s boyfriend sexually abused her.
Rose knew her father but he was addicted to crack and alcohol. Rose’s mother took her out of school before the 7th grade. Rose lived in a bad neighborhood and men twice her age tried to have sex with her, gave her drugs, and pressured her into other things.

When Rose was around 8, she started to experiment with sex and drugs because of the ADULTS and TEENAGERS around her showing her how.

I won't only blame Rose for doing drugs as a child because the irresponsible people, who pressured her into drugs including her father, the sexual physical and mental abuse she suffered, her being uneducated and surrounded by sex and drugs, affected her choice also.

It was my choice to experiment sexually and try drugs when I was 8-12 years old, but at the same time it was what I was taught, it was my life. In a way, it wasn't my choice because I was learning from adults and relatives I trusted. I didn't know I had a choice.

As we grow older, we learn and “know better”, understand the consequences of our actions, but neither Rose nor I started to know better before our 16th birthdays.
We both changed because we met someone, a responsible adult, who didn’t want to have sex or do drugs with us, instead she wanted to help us. She showed us our life wasn’t the only way we had to live, that we had a choice.

People judge and stereotype me, even though I JUDGE myself more harshly and have more guilt than anything else. I know how unfair life can be, that's why I try not to JUDGE anyone. The last thing anyone like the "old me" needed was to be judged.