A Story Of Another Black Girl (Chapter 3)

Expelled

She's 16 now, & in high school now. She doesn't stay in hammond Indiana anymore, her & her family are now in Lafayette a city about a hour away from hammond. This year was rough, because not only has she grown older but she's growing angrier, more resentful & falling deeper into depression. She can't explain why she's so mad, but she's filled with rage built up from over the years. She doesn't trust anymore, & love was long gone. She was cold now, & any hint of innocence she had left wasn't in her anymore. She was having problems in school, getting into fights every other day, & being disrespectful. She was now going to a school called McCutheon High School & what once was a young, traumatized,  bullied girl in school with no friends was now the aggressor. Although she was argumentatively one of the most meanest girls in school, she was liked. She had friends now, she was sociable & very likable but don't let you cross her bad side. She started to love to fight, & started getting into feuds amongst the other girls there that she once called friends. Time after time getting suspended for sometimes a week at a time begin to put a strain on her & her mother's relationship. It wasn't the fighting itself she fiend but the release of sadness & anger she got from doing it. She had no other outlet, & this was the only way she knew best to let it go. She couldn't fight back her abusers & oppressors before, she had no way of making them hurt like she did all these years so she took it out on people around her. Doing spiteful things & ruining friendships she had, trying to make anyone even those who were not deserving feel at least a little of how she felt. Getting into meaningless relationships from time to time, purposely hurting niggas, breaking their hearts, & feeding their minds bullshit. She couldn't help feeling wrong though, it felt better to release but worse after the aftermath. Because deep inside she was still sweet, & her heart still pure, she just didn't know how to channel it. 5 months into her new school she had already been suspended more then a dozen times & begin to isolate herself from other only keeping a selective few around. She began to lose most of her friends, making her feel unwanted, & lonely. It's like no one understood her, or why she felt & act they way she did & no one took to time to either. She never learned how to vent because her mother never taught her so she went on dealing with her depression silently to her mama, siblings & few friends. But should she just have asked for help? Maybe if she just said something maybe things would've gotten better. She began to blame other's for her problems feeling that maybe if they paid more attention, maybe if they loved her enough they would have saw the red flags. The way she stared into space with a look of sorrow on her face, her lost of appetite, or her slowly distancing herself from everyone she love. Maybe they would of noticed how she wasn't as talkative or the pills suddenly slowing going missing in the medicine cabinet or the cuts.... They never noticed the cuts on her arms, from where she started taking razors to them when things would began to feel too overwhelming. She would sit in her room door locked, music loud, & cut herself. It hurt at first but then she became numb, she didn't feel it physically anymore but mentally it seemed like it felt better. She never cut deep enough to slit the veins, but just deep enough to slice the top of her skin because she wasn't sure if she wanted to die yet. She wanted to be saved but couldn't ask for her, she wanted the sweet release of her pain but didn't want to end it all just yet. This went of for months until it didn't feel good anymore, it didn't faze her she began to get use to it. This is when she started back acting up in school this time worse. She was failing almost all her classes & started showing up just because her mama wouldn't let her stay at home. She continued to fall into a black hole & fighting with her rivals at school until the school gave her a contract. It was a contact for behavior stating that they would give her one more chance to change her act & that if she got one more suspendible offense she would be expelled. Her mama was pissed, it's bad enough she can't just go stay with her daddy but now she has to be here everyday? So her mama started looking into a place called job corps because even though her mama couldn't just drop her off at DCFS she could at least send her someone for few months to get her the fuck out the house. She walked on eggshells around the house, because any little thing set her mama off. & out of all the stuff she's gotten called in her life hearing the things come from her mama's mouth hurt worse, it was like a aching heart wrenching, stomach blow. Maybe because it was her mama or maybe it was because this is whom she needed love from all these years. A week passes & she eventually gets her last offense. Taking someone's cell phone, which was yet another suspendible offense so they pulled her out of class, had her sign some papers, & the school's officer took her to sit in a cell until her mama came & got her. Her mama left her there for 4 hours until finally picking her up. After speaking with some officers she finally took her home & begin dragging her with words so hateful they cut like knifes.... her mama degraded her, disrespected her, & embarrassed her. They following week they met with someone from the job corps in Dayton, Ohio & after going over her they accepted her in. They gave her the entire run of what to expect & gave her a entry date of 2 weeks, there was no looking back now... She got a job at McDonald's for the meantime & after 2 weeks it was finally time for her to leave. Her sister's granny, grandpa, & her mama drove her all the Ohio, it was long quite ride. No one uttered a word the entire ride until they arrive, guess it was because no one knew what to say. This would be the longest she's even been away from the family since she was younger & her mother would send her away to psychiatric facilities. They got there & was greeted with reassuring people, & open arms. They received an entire tour of the huge older looking facility & then it was time to say goodbye. It was bittersweet, she felt her stomach churning as she waved her final goodbyes & was left to the student aids. Her first few months were rough, not because of the people but because she missed her family. She missed familiar faces, & everything else she was accustomed too. It was different there, they had curfews, & roommates. They had public showers, & people who weren't your mama telling you what to do constantly barking out orders. She gotten into a couple arguments after a  month of being there but it wasn't as bad as she anticipated. She enjoyed herself from time to time & made a couple friends, along with a few boys to talk to. She started to slip in the high school diploma program severely because she would skip all her classes with a friend named Shayla & sit by the third floor staircase. Shayla was a good friend, she told her some personal things but nothing too deep. She still had issues with her trust, she didn't fully know who & who she couldn't trust yet. Her depression only cane occasionally mainly striking through the lonely darkness of the night, reminding her no matter how many friends she made she would always be lonely. She soon made a few new friends named CeCe & Rissa, & they quickly became the three musketeers. She started started skipping her diploma classes to go to her trade nursing classes to be with her new friends. But it changed when her other friends were going to clinical's soon. She never thought about it until now that soon she would be on her own again, or how depression would come back like a wreaking ball in her life. The only way she would make it with them is finishing her diploma classes, so that's what she did. Summer break in Job corps was coming soon & she had to finish before then. So she started going to classes, doing the work, paying attention, & learning. It felt good to be positive & do something good for a change. By 2 months she had finished her high school diploma classes, & finished all of her other work. She could finally be in trade all day to work on her nursing skills, so she could leave with her friends. A few weeks passed & it was time to go home for summer break for two months, & although she would deeply miss her friends she had grown so close with it would be nice to get back home. Her mama stopped answering her calls there so she hadn't been able to speak to her siblings. She missed them so much but had gotten so used to being there it didn't sting as much as it did when she first gotten there. Finally it was the day to leave back home, Job corps sent her on the greyhound back home like they did for everyone. It was a 4 hour bus ride, the entire time she had thoughts of how much had changed since she been gone. She wondered had would her mama react to see her, she was anticipating on getting there. Finally she arrived back in Lafayette to see her mama sitting in the car at stop. She filled with joy at seeing the sight of her mama, she figured her mama must've missed her if she was there that early right? She runs off the bus & grabs she things to run to her mama's car. Her smile ear to ear as the eagerly runs towards her mama, she finally the car & pulls the door open to be met with annoyance. "Girl get yo ass in the damn car you anit went no where", her mama says. Her heart sinks into her stomach hearing those words, it stung like alcohol on a open wound. Why was her mama not happy to see her? She's been gone for months & is even trying to repair her life so what was the problem, she thinks as they are pulling off. They get to the house & she's greeted by overwhelmed siblings at the door. At least someone genuinely is happy to see her, & whatever hurt her mama threw at her before suddenly didn't matter. Walking in the house felt strange, everything was the same but it felt new. Like she was a stranger to her own house, & her room felt different like she had never been there. Everything was cleaned & put up as she walked in. She settles in while her mama leaves off to go to work, she had started working a factory job at amazon & was gone 7 days a week, 4pm- 8am on weekdays & 2pm- 10am on weekends. There was one person she was overly ready to see, one of her good friends Ke-Ke. They were close friends before she left, & she was ready to pick up their friendship where it left off. She knew Ke-Ke would bring fun, & that's exactly what she needed. She didn't know Ke-Ke would bring something else to her life & how it would affect her life from that point on.