Quella's Success Story
I am 17. When I was younger, my father slapped me around most of the time and my mother didn’t have time for me. One night when my father came home drunk, he beat me very badly. That was the first time life that I ever fought back, but it didn’t help me at all. That was the beginning of me rebelling against my father. By the time I was 13, my parents divorced. My mother started dating and seeing new people. I struggled with my mother because she put her ‘relationships’ before my sister and me. At 14 years old I was going through hell. I started having thoughts about killing myself and hurting the people around me. My life was defined by problems at school and problems at home. At 15 I was getting in fights and hanging out with the wrong crowd in school. I eventually got into a fight that resulted in my getting expelled from school for the rest of the year. At the age of 16 I had to start ninth grade all over again. That was very depressing and hard for me to face.
The year I was to repeat ninth grade my mother moved us to Durham. It wasn’t long before we started having problems again. We were evicted from our house on the day of my grandmother’s funeral. It was hard for me to get through anything at that time. I was very sad and depressed. I had lost my grandmother, who I loved, and I had no place to call home.
The only thing that kept me going was the fact that I was finally being successful in my education. I had started attending the Achievement Academy of Durham. I had teachers who really cared about me and cared about what happened to me. Today, I am finishing work toward my GED. When I am done with that I will start studying for college placement tests like the COMPASS and the SAT. I want to go to college to get a Bachelors of Science in nursing. No one thought I could do this but me. But I am doing it.
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