Life Lessons

At the age of nineteen, I was standing in front of the judge awaiting my sentence. That day would be one of the scariest I remember. There would be no slap on the wrist this time. There would be no getting off easy. Jail time was definite. I stood there, with tears in my eyes, remorseful this time, for my stupidity. My stupidity for being influenced by the ones I called friends. I just wanted to fit in somewhere and chose the wrong clique. I ran around breaking laws and being carefree. Now, the time had come to learn the consequences. Five years to serve one. I was sentenced to a year at the state penitentiary and just like that, in a blink of an eye, my freedom was no more. Just as my freedom was no more, those friends were no more as well.

I was handcuffed and was taken straight from court to start serving my sentence. I served six months of my one year sentence. Within that six months, I did a lot of growing up. I learned many life lessons in that time. Lessons such as, chose your friends wisely. What you involve yourself with says a lot about your character. Also, I realized they were not really friends at all. When I had a car, money, a job and freedom they were unknowingly there to use me. When I was locked up, and needed them to at least send uplifting letters to get me through this tough time, they were no where.

Another hard lesson learned was the decisions I made from here on out not only affected me but also the human I had growing inside me. Soon, I would be responsible for the well-being of my baby girl. I could not fail her as a mother, as my mother had done me.

In life, we will have many lessons. Some hard, some good and as long as we learned something from these lessons, that’s what it’s all about. We should not be ashamed of going through tough times, we only grew larger because of them.
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