All My Shit Is In A Book

*Not A Poem

So I just wanted to drop in and just talk to you guys real quick, this is also my outlet and I'm dealing with a lot right now so thank you guys for reading. Anyways, several years ago I was introduced to a girl when I was in about 5th grade. She was tough but kind, sassy and funny, super athletic and smart. She was about 8 months older than me but a year ahead in school however because of when her birthday fell we ended up doing a lot of school things together. We also played soccer (yes folks I was a soccer kid at one point even though I hated it lmao). So after doing all these things together we became kinda friends and me being the very observant person I am, seemed to learn a lot about her. She was brave as can be, it was like she wasn't afraid of anything. She was extremely smart but hoped you wouldn't catch on to that. The most obvious thing about her was the fact that she was the most athletic person I think I've ever met(reminding you that I know people who trained with the Canadian Olympic team). She put sports first over everything. She dreamed of track and field scholarships which at that point she was bound to receive. She'd go home after soccer and have a hot bath to help her muscles even though it was 30 degrees celsius and we were all dying of heat. She turned down dozens of boys because they would distract her from her goals. She ate right, worked out, and studied hard. It looked like she had her perfect life all planned out. What I didn't see was the home life. I didn't see her parents favouriting her older sister and pushing her to the side. I didn't see the constant pressure to be the best. I'm sure her parents have always meant well but they didn't show her the love she so desperately needed. Middle school rolled around and she had fallen off the rails as my parents would say. She had pretty much dropped out of school, moved out and was couch surfing with drug dealers and was doing hard drugs. She was soliciting her body and partying pretty much every day. It was sad because she had once been this driven, bright, athletic, young girl and now she was selling sex to pay for her drugs. What was even sadder was the fact that for the first year, no one really did anything because they thought this was a faze. We thought she would wake up one day and figure out that she really did want to go back home, go back to school, and back to the sports she had once loved so dearly. We thought wrong. The second year rolled around and her parents tried but it was no use they seemed dead to her. Then about a year later she seemed to be doing alright. She had moved back in with her parents, gone to their cabin by the lake with her entire extended family, she'd even gotten a puppy who she was caring for pretty much on her own. She had to retake all her classes from the previous year and so she ended up in my math class. I couldn't help but study her for those 80 minutes each day. I saw her applying herself to something other than drugs. She was rebuilding a relationship with her mom and things seemed to be going well. Then it wasn't. As of tonight she might be going to juvy for a minimum of 6 months. It hit hard because I could only think of the little girl I'd met so long ago and how this was not a part of her gigantic plan. I thought about how that little girl became this one. I thought about how even when she was at her worst, I still saw a little girl who only wanted someone to truly love her for who she was. We failed her and we're gonna fail thousands of other kids just like her. We need to stop treating troubled youth like a disease and we need to start helping them. I'm asking all of you to be careful with what kind of drugs you take at parties if you take any at all. Please be careful it's a slippery path. And if you ever find yourself in trouble my dm's are always open but please, ask for help from someone who truly can help you. And if you see someone sinking down towards the darker side of life, try and help them back to the light. I love you all so damn much. Stay beautiful-Ash