A Christmas Tale (Princeton Story)

Ariel Michelle Coleman

Ariel- 22 years old

Alexia- 9 months

Christmas Eve

I wander the streets, hoping to find a decent place for my baby and I to stay tonight. All of the money that I had, which was ten dollars, is now spent on baby formula and a burger. I had to steal a blanket for us, because some other homeless person felt the need to steal mine.

The place that I was staying at, along with other homeless people, was burnt down, due to heartless teenagers who felt they could get a kick off that. It's a shame how cold-hearted people could be, especially during the most magical, heart-filled time of the year.

It makes me cry every time I think about my baby having to spend her first Christmas holiday homeless, on the streets. I go through a shock attack every time I think about food, because I don't know where our next meal will come from.

Some people walk past us and give us donations, while some walk by and say hurtful things, making me feel worse about myself. I love my baby girl with everything in me, despite how she was created, she is mine.

FLASHBACK

I was staying with my boyfriend, Kyle. This is the man that I went against my parents, family, and friends over. We lived in a nice neighborhood, in a small, but cozy apartment.

He was the man who I wanted to grow old with. Back then, I wouldn't mind going to war and taking a bullet for him.

One day, a friend of his came over while he was at work, I told him that Kyle wasn't there, but he insisted that he would wait on him. Me being so gullible, I trusted him enough to let him in right before I took my shower. Since he was a close friend of Kyle's, I didn't expect him to bother anything because he always seemed so trustworthy and hard-working, yet playful.

As I started my shower, I heard a bumping noise downstairs, but I paid it no attention. I soon heard the steps creak, but I shrugged that off, too. My grandmother always told me, "If you're listening for a noise, best believe you'll hear it."

I paid no attention to it, too, because I thought that he was down there, and he wouldn't let anyone in, unless it was Kyle.
I got excited when the bathroom door opened, because I thought my baby was home.

When the shower curtain opened, my smile fell as his grew. I instantly tried to cover myself, but it didn't work.

Right then and there, he took my innocence, the one I was saving for my honeymoon night.

After he finished his dirty deed, he left me there, bleeding from my area and bruised from my head to my toes.

Minutes later, Kyle came in looking pissed. His eyes were blooshot red, and his nose was flared to the max, I could just see the smoke coming outta his ears.
We argued for hours and hours, because his friend said that I had came on to him, and he believed every word. He told Kyle that I had bruised myself up and tried to frame him because he wouldn't have sex with me. Why, and how in the hell would I bruise myself? Honestly, I couldn't believe that he believed that lie, it was the oldest trick in the book, and a pre-schooler could come up with a better lie than that.

Soon, he grew tired of my "lying" and kicked me out. From there, I had nowhere to go because my family didn't have "room" for me and my parents wouldn't let me in because they was against me moving out in the first place. Though I'm twenty years old, and done with college, they still felt I wasn't "ready" for that kind of responsibility, which was complete bullshit. That was one of the reasons I wanted to leave, they always treated me like a child, even when I got grown and started to pay bills, they always found a way to baby me up.