AT SEVENTEEN by Pam Hamrick

I’m really not sure how to start this. Some things just happen without any reason, I guess and memories come flooding back.

Recently, I saw a post on face book from a teenage girl who said her life wasn’t worth anything, and she just wished she could die. When I was a teenager, I took a handful of pills. To this day I don’t know what they were. For some reason, Mom figured out what I did, and off to the ER we went. They gave me a little cup of caffeine and cups of lukewarm water to drink so I would vomit them back up. That may be why I don’t like the taste of coffee, to this day. I guess God wasn’t ready for me to leave this world, then, cause I’m still here.

Anyway, I remember my brothers coming to the hospital, and everyone was putting pressure on me to tell them why I did this. I finally told them it was because of a boy, just to get them off my back, but that wasn’t the truth. The truth is it was because I thought that my Mom loved my sisters more than she did me. You see, I am the oldest of three girls. I am adopted. My birth mom and my mom are sisters. I have six half brothers and one half sister from my birth mom. Maybe, this is something that all adopted kids go through, but I remember feeling unloved, unwanted and like nobody cared about me. In my heart, I knew this was not true, but I just could not get this out of my head. I lay there in the darkened bedroom and cried and thought I would just end it all. That way, I would be out of everyone’s way. I just figured they wouldn’t care or miss me, anyway.

Years later, I told Mom how I felt, sometimes. She took me in her arms and asked how I could think that? She said I was her special baby, because she got to choose whether to take me or not. She said she never once regretted bringing me home from the hospital, when I was born.

After Mom passed away and we were going thru her things, my sister and I found a journal-like book. In it Mom had written about the day she brought me home, as a newborn. She wrote how happy she was and how she felt that now, she had someone who would love her unconditionally. Oh, how I wish she would’ve told me that face to face.

So, to all the teenagers out there who think you are unloved and unwanted, just remember that you are not the only one who has ever felt this way. Just keep taking life one day at a time and hang in there; your life is worth something. After all, Jesus died for you, just the same as He did for me! And, I am very glad that my life did not end at seventeen.

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Thanks for reading, and be sure to come back on Wednesday.