It had started with a beautiful day in My hometown where I have learned such a beautiful lesson that I will never forget. Even though everyone was smiling, the sun was shining and children were playing happily, but my eyes were sparked by only one person; the one who was sitting under the tree with a smiley face, asking for a penny, to buy a loaf of bread saying Good Morning to everyone passing through him, I did not know what the first action should I make, wondering if I can ask him how is he doing? Is he okay? Why he ended up like that? Many questions came into my mind, because of that smile. How can any person be happy while he keeps always crawling from one street to another begging people for money and food? I was imagining myself if I were in his place my whole life will turn to a hell based on sorrow and grief. How can I smile while myself, and my spirit is telling me to cry, I would never endure this feeling, so I went toward him and asked all that came into my mind? With a sweating body and a trembling voice I said : Good morning, he replied with a grin on his face, wakey for a pretty lady I smiled sadly, and asked why? Why are you being so fake, pretending that you are having a good time and happy while you are not? Your eyes show you within pain and your hidden tears !? He answered me why are you so sad? don't you have everything? mm …Your eyes are telling something had happened? I was surprised by his answer asking curiously: how did you know? He told me we all have emotions but it depends on us if we like to show them or not. Yes I'm sad and you can bear neither my feelings nor my pain of having no shelter no family and no friends, but I try always to overcome the harsh memories I try to be positive and look to things from another perspective, I asked again but why? He told me because I believe in miracles I believe that there is someone who is always stalking and tracking me when I'm sick or sleeping I asked with wonder what makes you sure about that? he said because I feel it and for me, this feeling of being safe and protected means the world to me even more than being happy. I asked with amazement but who is that "someone"? He replied back with confidence he is in the sky watching me every day and I'm pretty sure that one day I will get what no buddy else had before, I will live with my own family and play with my kids because this life is not the one it is all fake, am sure that there will be something prepared only for poor people who did not have the chance to be like you or any ordinary person in this life. One day we will all die and none of us will take his money or glory to his grave, we will be alone there; in a place where we all be equal in. I started crying, and with a faint voice, I admitted: I wish all people think like that. I do not know why should we care about our good looking, job salary and what the others say about us, why do we care that much hate in our hearts why..? He answered softly because the truth hurts and hard to be accepted. I will give you advice my dear try to keep it for the rest of your life; just be who you are and if you want to do something that people think is weird while you really want to do it, just do it and never care about them .like smiling even when you are begging, as I did today although it was unfair to you? I surprisingly answered... how did you?... he gave me a tender smile and said yes This Life is so "UNFAIR" was what I have seen In your eyes.

Look, you've come so far! Life moves on, and you are going to go even further! Maybe you didn't even believe that you would make it this far since the beginning, but now look! You did a great job. You are probably so tired, yet you are too young and it is too early to give up on life, and I know you would not do that either. So many things happen in life, and I have come to know many people who want to escape their realities because they are just so tired of facing them. I used to be in the same circumstance. I could tell you how my life sucked when I was taking two majors at university, and how hard I had to devote myself for the sake of education. I understand that so many people at my ages are working or studying even harder, and many of them are probably wishing if they could leave their realities for a while and go somewhere, take a deep breath, and relax. Back to when I was taking two majors, I was thinking the same. Life was a bit terrible for me. People who know me know that I was trying to apply for some exchange programs and scholarships in hope that I could just leave my repeating annoying daily life behind and go somewhere away without it, or start a nice and better study life. Needless to say, getting a scholarship was also my only goal and dream since I was in secondary school. As growing older, I want to see how it is like to go abroad, how it is like to be surrounded by different cultures, how I am going to survive somewhere else which is not home, and how big the world is. After 3 years, I did make it! I can say I am totally in the new world right now. I am opening a wide and important page of my life stories book. My dreams come true. I finally escape what I had wished for. It is good, isn't it? You must have thought that everything is great for me right now, and I am living a wonderful life. You must have made many assumptions although you don't really know me well or you don't know what I am going through. But believe me I am still wishing to escape this reality again. Back then it was hard, but still, after avoiding the hard one, comes a harder one. The thing is there are always two different sides in life: Good and bad, and the truth is you can never escape from reality because reality never leaves you. Appreciate it when good things happen and deal with it when problems happen. No matter how hard you want to avoid a life that you are having right now, you are still going to go through other hardships in life because this is life. Life is always about going up and down. Somedays good things happen; somedays bad things happen, and somedays nothing happens. Problem is not life; it is just a part of life. It is time to stop avoiding and blaming yourself for a life that you have already chosen. You make your own choice, and that is why you have to take responsibility and learn to accept the truth. Although now I am proud that I am finally here, entering into this new world, at first, was such a challenge thing to me. Living life is not easy, but it is not that hard that you cannot even do it. There are solutions in each side of problems. At first, I was so scared to overcome all these miserable things: culture shocks, homesick, language barriers, school,... So many times I feel lost, and so many times I feel like I am flying like nothing. So many times I wish I could go back to realities I hated, and so many times I wished I could turn back time. However, there are also many times that I am proud of myself for coming so far, accomplishing many great things, experiencing many new things, and leaving many good memories along the journey. The longer I move on, the more I have discovered that life is meaningful when there are hardships. “If you know how to comfort yourself along the way, you will be less hurt and happier.” Although it is for now or my past realities, I am so thankful. Each stage of life that I have come through, I learn different things. I find out that I am now a better me compare to 1 year ago, yes only 1 year you can see lots of changes in me. I can see how old, better and independent my thoughts are right now and I believe that this moment in life is given to me to discover and find out more about myself. No matter which stage of life you are in right now, live it at your best! Don't try to avoid it; try to accept it. You are given choices, so make your own choice and responsible for it. No matter how tired you feel of your realities, you will be so thankful for it in the future after realizing how much you have grown up because of it. Believe that problems come with many solutions. This moment of hard ship is given to you to find out and understand yourself better. Be thankful for it

My life is so weird. It's always been weird. That's probably because I was born in 1949, the 3rd child of a family that wanted to stop at two. I was constantly told that I was worthless and was always costing my family money. In those days, children had no social security numbers and if somebody had the right connections they could sell an unwanted child in a black market adoption or even worse, sexual slavery. I think I was three at the time but my parents left me with the baby-sitter on Christmas. The baby-sitter, I found out later from my older sister was also the contact for back-street abortions and black-market adoptions. The babysitter who was an older woman, left me alone with a book filled with Christmas stickers. In those days, there was no self-stick stickers. You had to lick them glued back to make them work. This was the first time I was away from my parents and I was scared. My anxiety increased as I stuck stickers everywhere, hoping my parents would return soon and be proud of my handiwork. Instead a young couple arrived. I remember the woman had long blonde hair and a red dress under her fur coat. My babysitter picked me up so she could hold me when all that anxiety and glue backed up on me and I threw up all over her red dress. She yelled something like "How dare you give me a sick baby!" and pushed me back into the babysitter's arms. I was put into a crib in a dark room after a lot of angry talk and I stayed there until my parents picked me up. I don't remember much of what happened next, but I was very sick because the next thing I knew was that I was in a hospital, being stuck with needles by angry nurses. The story I heard later in life was that my parents left me with the baby-sitter so they could attend my sister's Christmas pagent and was sick with something that was called "glandular fever." My mother said I spent eight days in the hospital. The first seven days I was given sulfa drugs that had little effect on my sickness. The end of that week, the doctor told my parents that he could give me a new drug that was still largely experimental, but my father would have to sign a permission slip because the new drug could cure me or kill me. My father signed the paper and they gave me another giant needle of the new drug. That night I flew. I flew around the hospital. I saw what looked like a woman having an operation. I saw lines of cars and trucks on the roads outside. Finally, I was back in my crib I was coloring in a coloring book and throwing crayons back and forth over the tops of our cribs which lay head to head with a kid named Mikey. The next day, I stood up in my crib and tried to see over the huge wooden top, but I was too short. When the nurses came in, I asked where Mikey was. The younger nurse burst into tears and said "Mikey's dead!" I went home that day. When my mother told that part of the story to my sister and me, she asked "Guess what that medicine was?" We shook our heads. "Penicillin." Our life was rough after that. My father had a successful machine shop but he drank all his profits. My mother took in ironing. Later, I found out she was also turning tricks. When she wanted to insult me, she'd tell me I was "just like my father." For a long time I wondered what she meant by that because weren't we supposed to be like our parents? It wasn't until much later that I found out about the visiting "insurance men." We had dogs but the one assigned to me suddenly disappeared. My mother said it was all my fault because I didn't take care of her and she ran away. Years later my sister told me that she wasn't going to keep a female dog that wasn't spayed. The male dog was never the same. He always kept to himself and never wanted to play. My mother did some darker things to try to "turn me out" but I was too defensive and would say I'd jump out into traffic before I'd go along with that scheme. And I said it while in a moving car going down the Long Island Expressway. My parents bad habits were backing up on them. I got into constant fights at school. Nobody wanted to be my friend. My mother kept trying to get into the local social scene by joining a church but the gossip got about and she was shunned. I was shunned too. Finally, my father lost his temper one last time and decided to move from New York to Florida. In Florida, he bought a bar and had my mother help him run it. I had always wondered why they stayed together for so long. She said it was because he was the only man who offered to marry her. I always wondered why a man would stay with a woman who fooled around. I found out later, he fooled around, too--with other men. The whole marriage thing was one big made-for-social-acceptance sham. My mother liked playing the diva at the bar and my father spent a lot of his spare time fishing. My brother only stayed for the first month when he turned 21 and flew back to New York to stay with friends until he got a place of his own.

I don't know where to start...My name is Nidiyah Thompson, I was given this name on October 22, 2001, by my mother Gloria Lewis, and my father Alvin Thompson. Growing up wasn't easy in my family, my father spanked us a lot while my mother worked to put food on the table. My dad wasn't very opened, and he was a mean man who didn't know how to raise us right... every since I was little, I had an active imagination even now I still do. When I was a child, I would call out to my mother calling her "Nani." ever since I was a child, I had a speech problem, and couldn't say certain words right. I grew up with my siblings, Bruce Lewis who is currently 22 at this time, my older sister Daysha Thompson, and my younger sister Arianna Thompson. Over the course of my life, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to go back in time, to change some events in my life, so I could just have the family back, but I realized that life isn't a fairy-tale. I learned thing don't just end with a happily ever after, no matter what we do... it's sad really... there were times I remember I had a lot of fun with my father and mother. my favorite color is black because it reminds me of when we had fun in the dark, I know it's stupid but it does. Sometimes when the lights turned off, we had so much fun playing different types of games in the dark, we were a family.... my mother cooked my favorite food, spaghetti, chili, everything I ever loved. now in my life, I don't have my dad anymore... I resent him for what he has put my mother through... but I have to thank him for getting me into writing, that is the only thing I can ever thank him for. so this is my life, I'm sorry I can't offer more, I know this isn't worthy of winning.... but I have to try... we're on the verge of getting evicted and we have no food in the house... My mom has done so much for me, and my siblings... I just want to help her, I need to help her.

I took the steps two at a time just to get down to soak up the first rays of summer after kindergarten. My hand-me-down sneakers hit the unmoving concret that we use as our backyard. I ran down the narrow passageway and as I did it transformed into a tunnel made by towering jungle trees. Once the tunnel breaks open a large cheetah runs pass me and lets out a roar. As it speeds down the jungle path I run across and open the door to the lion's den. As I walk into the bar and to where I know I will be able to find my mother, the owner greeted me by name. My mother sat at her favorite slot machine, and I plop into the spot next to her. “I am back from the last day of school Mother and my teacher gave me a bag of clothes for me and they are so pretty but there isn't any new shoes, can I get new ones yet cause you keep telling me tomorrow but that never happens and I really could use new shoes so I can play.” After waiting for a response that I knew wasn't going to come, I hopped off the stool and strolled out of the bar. I head back up the stairs to our little apartment above the church where I'd find Morgan, my best friend and niece. When we are together our imaginsoin run wild. I call Morgan by her pet name she has had since she was born, Gorgan, and ask if she wants to come out to play. We didn't have a back yard so we played in the many allies in the town. We ran around dodging cars and jumping pot holes. Morgan and I made our own village where we were the rulers and we lived by our own rules. Living in trees and grabbing apples from nearby branches was how we lived. When a grown-up was needed we just go to the the bar. When my mother was home it was hard to stay inside because Mother was the type of person who didn't like little kids and become angry with us for things any little kid will do. When Mother was home we couldn't play with our toys because they made a mess. Singing and dancing made too much noise. Wasting paper is what she called drawing. So the only thing we could really do was watch tv but the only thing allowed on was the news. Having fun was a bit difficult but we learned that we could enjoy ourselves by telling stories and playing with things that weren't really there. Most of my summers were never real but they were all amazing. It is such a rare treat for Morgan and I to go to Walmart and when we do it is a bit crazy with all the people. To our mind it is a marketplace full of people running around and shouting. The dust being picked up as people rush around and it seems like almost everyone on earth was there. We never see this many people in one place. As Morgan and I were playing in the marketplace weaving in and out of people, we end up in the area where the people are selling the little girl's clothes. I almost run directly into a girl I know from school. As the dust flies around us and the vendors are shouting, the girl looked me up and down and wrinkled her nose with a sound of disgust. Her mother came up behind her and looked me over just like her daughter did, only this time she said, “What kind of person would let their kids out in those rags. Their rude things pulled me from the marketplace and landed my feet on the white tile floor. This is the first time someone had really been rude to me. It made me realize what I was wearing. I had holes in my shirt and grass stains on my pant. I had all kinds of spots on my shirt that didn't even come from me. The back pocket of my jeans were ripped off from jumping out of a tree. The soles of my shoes were almost gone and my hair was all tangled because no one was around to brush it out. We never got new clothes and all mine are so worn by the time I get them. The first new clothes I have gotten was a bag from my teacher because she felt bad. For the first time I felt ashamed about my clothes. Instead of joining Morgan back in the marketplace, I marched up to Crystal, my older sister who took us here and asked for new clothes. She looked at me and told me, “You know we can't afford that Molly, now please go get Morgan we are about to leave.” The way that Crystal said it I knew that I wasn't getting it. That night I thought about the clean and pretty clothes that girl was wearing and how I wish my hair was combed out and put into a braids like hers. That night instead of dreaming about flying or being super strong, I dreamt about have a brand new pair of shoes like that girl. I woke up in the morning with a smile on my face and almost completely forgot about it.