What A Strong Woman Is

When It Started

Simone's POV

Elisa,April, and I have been friends for a really long time. We did everything together, helping each other, and having each other's backs. But at the end of seventh grade things took a bad turn. My mom had left for the army, leaving my dad and my brother. For months my dad wouldn't eat anything. My brother cried everyday. We recieved calls everyday, tellng us that my brother refused to do work, he would cry constantly. All they thought was that something was 'wrong' with him. After my eigth grade year, I was done with my dad walking around like zombie all day. Soon, I started forcing him to eat,forcing him to go out with his friends. I started telling my brother to just come to me if he needed to talk and he did. Slowly we got less, and less phone calls until there was none. By tenth grade year it was like we were all back to normal, but she was still at war. Maybe every six months we would get call, but I didn't like to talk to her.I was afraid I was going to break down when Dad would hand me the phone.I didn't want her to think I wasn't the strong girl I wished I was. 

My situation was something a lot of people could relate to. Many parents go away and fight and it's sad to say that terrible things happen, but April's situation could be considered a lot worse then mine. During the summer, after we finished seventh grade, we were in Elisa's room just hanging out and chatting.We decided we wanted to go swimming in her pool. Quickly, April pulled her shirt off. She already had her bikini on below her shirt, but what horrified me was the huge blue and purple bruise on the side of her stomach.

"Oh my god, April. What the heck happened to you?", shriked Elisa.

An confused expression was on her face. She looked down to what we were looking at and immediatly attempted to cover herself up. I was about to ball my eyes out. I grabbed her arm and yanked it away from her stomach.

"Who did this, April. Who hurt you like this? Does your mom know?!?", I screamed.

We waited for her answer.Looking at her,pleading with our eyes. I would never had expected her answer.

"My dad. He got drunk last night.My mom was out doing who knows what. I came downstairs to get water,and then he took my arm.He threw me on the floor and then out of nowhere he started beating me. Zoey was asleep, she couldn't hear a thing. It hurt, it hurt so badly. I couldn'tdo anything about it.I was helpless! I'm worthless!", she cried. It seemed like buckets of water were falling from her pale,blue eyes.

All we could do was hug her telling her it was probably a one time thing. It shocked me a lot. Mr.Sanders was usually an extremely nice man. Mrs.Sanders was normally out all of the time, so when we came over to the house, he was always there. I never went back to April's house. In a way I felt bad. For a certain amount of time there were no more incidents until the first day of eight grade. April had come in with a black eye and I knew excatly who is was from. This went on to this very day. In ninth grade she had landed her first boyfriend. For two years they were good. No fights, no arguments, and most importantly no abuse. That sadly changed in eleventh grade. She had told us that she stayed the night with him. Obviously, it didn't go as planned. She claimed she loved Brian. I thought he was the biggest dipshit next to April's father. Elisa told her so many times to leave him. But she never listened. April was so caught up in this, that she payed no mind to her sister. Zoey was two years younger than April, so while we were in eleventh grade, Zoey had just started high school. Constantly Zoey was bullied. People would say she was ugly, fat, nerdy, and disgusting. Elisa and I did everything we could to help, her but we found out it wasn't enough. Elisa also had her own problems at home.

Elisa had big dreams every since I knew her. She would always tell us that we could be whatever we wanted. And I believed that. She wanted to become a baker. Open up her own little bakery and got to culinary school. Not excatly in that order though. When she started talking about collges her parents almost had a heart attack. Both her parents were from Columbia, and they believed should stay home and become a housewife. Elisa at first started fighting with her parents, but then she started to think lowly of herself. She started saying her business would never work, that she would never make it into college. Her negativity was enough to put everybody in a bad mood. At that point that's when I knew that I had to change something.

I decided that we needed to take charge in our lives. April needed to dump that good for nothing asshole, Brian and tell her mom about her dad. Elisa needed to tell her parents that she was going to make her decision to go to college and take control of her life. And I. Well I need to learn to become the confident girl I want to be.I need to become a strong,powerful woman. We need to become strong, powerful women. But just one question. What is a strong woman?

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Hey guys! I was super excited when I came up with this book idea. I wanted this to be something girls could relate to. I wanted to send I message about how to become an independent girl,to not let others tell you things that lower your confidence. Abuse, not having a female figure in your life, bullying, and parents making your life decisions are all problems, but when there are other girls that get excatly what's going we can help each other. And that's excatly what I'm trying to do. Please help others and maybe tell them about this book. I truly do want to help. Whoever reads this book know that I truly appreciate you. Above is one of my favorite songs by John Legend called You & I. I felt like just watching the video and connecting the lyrics to the video was something truly inspirational. Thanks guys and stay amazing. Peace out precious people!

-Cracracookie