November 19th, 2018 might have just been a day to you. You may not even remember what you did, Or maybe something super eventful happened like, it was your birthday or it was the day your dog died, which sucks by the way cause dogs are like really great. But to me, it was the day i lost hope. The day I realized that all those things people had said to me that i had just brushed off were true. The  “It will catch up to you eventually”, “They never listen until their hit right in the face with it.”. All those little phrases you hear from crusty old adults that don't give you the sudden insight they think they're giving you but just piss you off. November 19th, was the day i was arrested. The day where i stepped foot into the place where i would pretty much call home for the next six months.

The place where things would go from worse to better then back to worse. The place where i cried myself to sleep. The place of endless white walls.  The place where misfortunate kids go to loose what little hope they had left.

Alright sorry that was quite dramatic. But really, JDC sucks. I got booked in around 12:34 a.m. I was wearing blue adidas sweatpants, an extremely oversized black shirt, white long socks, a black beanie, old red adidas shoes, and a coat because man was it cold. I remember how bad the ink they used to do my fingerprints smelled. I remember the stains all over the walls. I remember the girl that was in the holding cell next to me. Her name was Eden, she was nine. Her mom was a drug addict and her dad was dead. She told me her foster parents liked to beat on her then when she would retaliate they'd call the cops and get her arrested. But since she was so young JDC would just release her back to them within 24 hours. She'd always come back within a week. Until one day in snowy february when they finally made her wobble to the courtroom in the handcuffs and shackles that were way too big to fit her child sized hands and feet. Then when little Eden finally came back to her cell she was crying so hard i thought she might burst a blood vessel or something.                

When we finally got her to tell us what happened, she scooted her way up to the bottom crack of the heavy metal door that trapped us in our germ infested cells she told us that the judge was sending her away to the state hospital called Larue Carter. And the worst part is she was happy about it. She was crying because she was so relieved she wouldn't have to go back to the run down trap house that DCS somehow didn't notice was inhabited with child abusing foster parents. Little did she know what she Larue had in store for her. Eden left 6 days later.

I know this is supposed to be about me but it's my experience that i think makes this writing important, not my story.  So i'm not going to go into the juicy details about what led to me getting slammed on the hood of a cop car, or how the officer put my handcuffs on so tight i had bruises for weeks. Instead i'm going to tell you about reading all, Google says it's 816 pages but i'm like one hundred billion percent sure it's 1000 something, pages of Harry potter and the half-blood prince in like 5 hours. How every saturday i scrubbed my cell so hard with every kind of cleaner you could think of but i could never rid the smell of urine and something that honestly i don't even want to know what was. I'll tell you about how people would come out back to show us window love and play music until the guards called the cops and they got escorted off the premises. I'll even tell you about all the phone calls I never received. The court dates filled with anxiety so loud i couldn't even begin to understand what the judge was saying. The tears and screams that made the guards have to take my clothes and sheets in exchange for a green velcro suit and a heavy green blanket that were un noosable.

You never realize how sad the world is until you see some poor boy crying in his cell because he is withdrawing so bad he's lying in a puddle of his own bodily fluids without clothes on because he ripped them all of in a fit of anger. His name was A.J. Or the 16 year old boy who had just got his license and got in a head on collision with a 61 year old women who ended up dying and now, since he had THC in his system from almost 14 days before, he gets charged with reckless homicide and poof there goes any hope he had for the future. His name was Dalton. Or maybe the girl who kept running away from her step-dads house because at night he didn't sleep in the same bed as her moms, no instead he thought it would be okay to share a bed with a 14 year girl who tries to explain to her P.O why she keeps running away but can't get the words out because she feels so disgusting. Her name was Kenya. The girl who spent 166 days in a cell because her record was so messed up from all of the placements she was bounced around because her dad just doesn't feel the need to take care of her like he does with his other kids. So because her record is so messed up no residentials want her, so for now she's stuck. It's even sadder because everyday she prayed, prayed that something would happen and she would be able to just leave and go somewhere where things make sense. But no matter how many papers i write, stories i tell, or memories i have, all these kids, little Eden, A.J, Dalton, Kenya, Alexis, Aziz, Nick, Nate, Josh, Chloe, ect, will always be the kids with records. The kids who broke the law and got arrested. We aren't one decision, we are our memories, we are the toys we played with when we were kids, The apple juice we spilled on the floor, the bruises we got from thinking we were indestructible while climbing the trees in our front yard. We, you, are more than your mistakes. That's what i've learned. Oh and by the way, the girl who bounced around everywhere searching for someone who loved her enough to stay, The girl who took a hit off of anything that was passed her way. Who popped her dads prescription pills till she couldn't think straight. The girl who talks to her mom in her dreams every night because she'll never be able to talk to her in person again. The girl who learned that her past does not define her. That she is worth so much more than what she's done. Whos doing great now by the way. She lives in residential and will be there till a little past her 18th birthday. The girl who wakes up every morning and goes to school and does homework and has pimples and hates authority and rants about how nothing's fair. The girl that now knows that nothing is perfect and that LIFE GOES ON.

Yeah, she's me.