Over the past year, everything in my life has completely changed. The ways that I think, react, and live now are totally different. As I was growing up, my father would physically abuse my mother and me. The situation I was in cost me many things in my life, but in retrospect I have gained more than I have lost. Six months ago I had hit rock bottom. It was the end of my senior year and I had just run away from my abusive home for the fourteenth or fifteenth time. I was at a payphone, going to call one of my friends to come pick me up and as I was catching my breath, I couldn't think of anyone to call. My life had been totally cut off because of all the wrong decisions that I was making. It was like I had flashbacks of scenes through the last four years of my life and I saw how I was reacting to situations, and saw how everything I did was only fixing things in the short term. I came to accept what had happened to me in my past and I decided to move forward towards a better future. Finally, I made that call and took an offer to live with an old friend's family and made a promise to myself to look for a long-term answer.
             When I lived with my new family, I still talked to my mother and sister and I saw that even though the same patterns were still occurring, I could look back and see that I have moved on to another level of awareness. I'm living with my mother and sister now and I'm no longer content to play the same old roles of the one that bears the blame that my family expected me to play. For four years I was entirely focused on my problems while the world went on around me. Now I want to see what I have been missing. I can see how my situation has set me apart from others, but people intrigue me and I want to listen to their stories and ideas and learn what makes them tick. In high school my teacher gave me an escape from the same old roles that I had been playing. She showed me that there was life a...