Make A Change

• Chelsea Phillips, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2013

There are approximately 1.7 million homeless teenagers in America, I am one of them. Forty six per cent of homeless teenagers leave home because of physical and sexual abuse, I am part of that percentage. Fifty per cent of kid’s parents told them to leave or didn’t care, I went. I have always had problems at home and when I left, I felt free. My name is Matilda and I am seventeen years old and this is me, I am on the run to make sure to stay away from my father. You could say I am homeless, poor or a low life because I already know it. I sell most of my stuff, but most of the time I peg for my money. I go to homeless shelters but they only house people for only a day or two. Now I live in a poverty city with a lot of homeless people. I would say I am miserable, but am not this is better than my life before and I am glad to be like this in a freakish way. I go from shelter to shelter hoping to get food on the way. Once I lived without food for a week and a half. I survived but promised myself to never do it again. It’s hard for a seventeen year old girl who lives on the streets. Always getting influenced on. To get people look down on you because they assume about your life story. ‘That girl is living like that because of drugs’ or ‘got kicked out of home because she got pregnant’. It’s nothing like that,don't look at me and assume my life. I choice to leave because I had an abusive parent, even if you yell that to them they still wouldn’t understand. No one understands. No one understands what it's like to live in your own filth. Or go without food. Only some and that’s us people who are poor and have no one to go too. But I would rather be disgusting and hungry before I go see my father. When people come and try and talk to me, they always say ‘go back to your father’ or ‘he's family’ but I can’t imagine going back to him. He made my life a living hell and that’s why I am like I am today. Not drugs, not alcohol, no teen pregnancy, nothing. He made my life like it is and that’s why I will never return to him. I will be in poverty for the rest of my life before I go back to that rotten man and no one can change my mind about him. For what he did to me, he should go to jail for a thousands of years. One day I will put him in their if I have too. Sometimes I go to support groups to try and get help, but they are all have the same answer and that is to go back to my father, to forgive him for what he did. But I can’t and won’t, ever go back. Next time you see a homeless, poor or someone in poverty, don’t stick your nose up and think your better than them. Imagine what kind of life they left behind and there life story, ask them about their live or how they are going, this will put a smile on their faces. Make sure to come up to me and maybe I will tell you about my story and how I got here. Don’t be a snob, make a change.