Growing up, although divorced, my parents got along. Every day my brother, sisters and I would go back and forth my dad and mom's house. My dad wasn't the most financially stable. My three siblings and I share one room. Over the year we moved to different houses around town. At my mom's house, she was always fighting with my oldest sister. When I was about 6 years old we stopped going to church. Everyone told me that God is still there but I didn't believe them.
I had nothing major happen in my life that really changed me as a person until March 7, 2013. My dad passed away from a brain aneurysm. He was 41. Some people think that the worst pain you can feel is being burned alive, some say giving birth, although I have never felt either of those I must say that the realization that my father, my knight and shining armor, was gone. I grew up without a strong male role model. Because of that, I lost all of my self-confidence. I hated myself because I was convinced that everyone will leave. I started shutting out friends just in case they wanted to leave me also. I needed a guy to make me feel somewhat OK about myself. I started to worry about every little thing that didn't matter and not care about everything that did matter. I started to talk to friends about this problem. I asked them what to do and every time I got the same answer. "I don't know." I started to loose hope that I could get better.
Things started to look better. I was doing good in school I wasn't having as many breakdowns and I got new and better friends. That was about the time I really got into photography. Photography was my escape from the real world because every photo was different. With photography, nothing else mattered outside of that photo and each photo was another story that only I knew. I could tell the story any way I wanted or I could make up a new story. I was in control for once. That was until life threw another hurdle at me. I found out that my twin sister self-harmed a lot and I blamed myself. I'm her older sister how could I let that happen. What could I have done differently?
About the time that all of this happened I when to a church camp in Wisconsin called Northern Pines. I was not ready to go. I thought that if I go I will feel worse about myself. Everyone at camps like these had talked to God before and I don't even go to church. I was embarrassed and ashamed. I thought I wasn't good enough. At this camp, every Wednesday is called family day but only two of my siblings were there. Every family day there is a really big worship. That's when everything sank in. I fell to my knee. I couldn't stop crying. That is when my brother put his arms around me. All I could think about was how scared I am. Then a little thought popped into m head. My life is so short and so precious that I can't waste time being scared and waiting for things to get better. I need to do something to help my sister and fix the things that were falling in my life. That was the first time I truly felt like everything would be OK.
