There's a lot of people in my family, I have four older brothers and sisters and a younger sister. When I was growing up, I lived in small city, in a really nice neighborhood. I was six, I was in kindergarten. My mother was doing drugs at that time. She was working at a hotel and she got kicked out for selling drugs there. She was very abusive with me. She would beat me when she was high or not. I knew that wasn't right. She was abusive with my dad too. Now, she is abusive with my younger sister. SRS is dealing with that.

My mom divorced my real dad when I wasn't born yet. She married my stepfather and he was very abusive to me and my older brother. He got sent to prison when I was 10. When I was 15 my mom met my younger siblings' father and he was very abusive too. That resulted in us being placed in foster care.

My parents got divorced when I was in Kindergarten. Before they got divorced, my life was pretty normal. My dad was always an alcoholic, but my mom was better before the divorce. After my parents got divorced, I was bouncing back and forth between my parents. My dad did construction work and had to travel a lot, so I didn't get to see him as much. My mom worked all the time and dated a lot, so she wasn't around very much. It was like nobody was really there for me. When I was younger, my parents fought physically and the police would get called a lot. My dad drank a lot all the time. He drank everyday; it was like he never stopped. It got to be really normal to see him drinking.

When I was a young child, I lived in the country. I felt kind of isolated. I didn't really like school because I didn't have many friends. We lived in the country until I was thirteen, then we moved back into town. We moved around a lot when we moved back to town, then I went into foster care when I was 16. Being in foster care was difficult. I didn't like where I was living or how I was treated.

My mom was really young when she had me. I don't remember her being around much until I got older. My grandma and grandpa helped raise me. When I was young we always lived in big cities even though we moved around some. The neighbors right near our house were fine, but close by were some bad neighborhoods. There were always people outside. There were drug dealers and crack houses. My middle school was 3% white. The rest of the students were Hispanic or African-American. I'd say it was pretty rough school. There were always a lot of fights and drugs. My high school was pretty good. There was a magnet program within our high school so there were a lot of good kids that were bussed in. There were still gang fights though between different hoods.