Our Life Project

This is My Story

By Khera Carter

"I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. "- Stephen Chbosky

In a world where people suffer from depression, suicide, sadness and death, it makes me wonder if I'm any different from the rest. I suppose that when I hear the terms; "You don't know how good you have it" or, "People have it worse than you." I realize how fatefully right and wrong those people are. They're right, there are people in this world that in some way are faring a lot worse than I. Yet they're also wrong, there is no way I could consider my own woes and memories "not that bad" compared to others because I have no idea what it feels like to be in another's shoes. So if you read this and you find yourself thinking that my story "isn't that bad" or, "is not unique" then my friend, you are wrong. This is my story, it is all I know for hardship and to me – I am unique, I am my own person, so this story is special to me.

I suppose I should start right off the bat with the first thing I remember as child. Well, more like was told as I grew from baby to toddler and from toddler to child. At the age of two, my parents decided they no longer wanted to be with one another and signed the papers that officially announced them as "no longer married". That's right – they changed their Facebook status to single and moved away from each other. That left me in sort of a limbo, bouncing back and forth from one parent to the next for many years to come.

I'm not sure if it was the divorce or for other reasons but in the space of time since I was a baby to now – I moved more than 15 times. I went from house to house and before I was even in eighth grade, I had made eleven transfers school wise. It was hard, very hard, because I was continuously the new girl. I didn't see a good point in making friends when there was no guarantee in my life that I would finish the year out. It became routine for me, I passed by many faces in the hallways and as time progressed, and I stopped trying to put a name to the face before me.

The stress of the divorce and the strain it put on my family was overwhelming and with each and every move that I underwent – something inside me started to fold under all the pressure. At my new schools, even with the mysterious new kid aura surrounding me, I was still the shy, and meek kid. So, when I was in 6th grade and I received an anonymous note telling me to kill myself, I thought it would be best to do as I was told. That night I pulled all the medicine down from my mom's cabinet and swallowed them. I don't remember much until a few days later when I was waking up in a blinding white hospital room.

After my incident, I suffered with a large bout of depression. The moves and the school transfers continued to make the depression worse and now thinking back on it, I think I would have attempted suicide again. But that wasn't my fate, at least that's what I think. Why? Because I stumbled across two boys that helped me help myself.

Everyone knows this story, the one where Sam and Colby from Kansas came into my life. They've helped many people and I'm proud to be a part of that group. Meeting them and the people of The Life Project have been my anchor since I joined. I still have to move, and I don't know as to whether or not the school I'm at will be the one I graduate from. But do you want to know that good thing about The Life Project? It doesn't matter when I move or what school I go to, these are friends that I can put a face to and not worry about losing. Finally.