Prologue

I was born in North Miami, Florida, the youngest of four girls. When I was two years old, my family and I moved to Elkton, Maryland, a small town just ten minutes away from Delaware. This is where I spent the next 7 years of my life; this is where my childhood took place.

I lived on Douglas St, which was a generally small neighborhood. Everyone pretty much knew everyone else, and your friends were always just a few steps away. As a child, I considered my life to be pretty great. I had a house to live in, my parents were awesome, and I had a great group of friends that I could always play with outside. However, from my parent’s perspective, things could have been so much better. It’s natural for parents to shelter their children and not tell them the problems that the family was facing; yet, no matter how happy I was as a child, I was so unaware of what was really going on. I was unaware of the fact that my parents were struggling with money; I was unaware of how many drug addicts and drug dealers there were in my neighborhood; and I was unaware of how bad of a place Douglas St really was. With the SWAT team raiding a house on the corner across the street, police chases that ran straight through my backyard, and drug dealers living right across the street from my house, my parents were fed up with the dangers of this neighborhood and were determined to get my three sisters and I out and as far away as possible.

Leaving Elkton was one of the saddest days of my life. I was only 9 years old, and I felt like my life, as I knew it, was over.  From watching fireworks every year on top of our van in Meadow Park, attending Pre-K to third grade at Thompson Estates Elementary, to the best friends that I ever had since I was 3 years old, Elkton was all I ever knew. Leaving it all behind was the hardest thing to do, and saying goodbye to my friends was even harder, especially since I knew that I was moving all the way back to Florida and thought that I would never see them again. However, looking back at it 11 years later, I know it was one of the best decisions my parents have ever made for our family.

Growing up in a place were things such as drug deals, teen pregnancies, and high school dropouts were a common occurrence, you wouldn’t necessarily think that I would be where I am today. However, thanks to the determination of my parents to get my 3 older sisters and I out of that bad neighborhood, and all of their hard work, I am doing what others thought I couldn’t. Being an African American woman, and spending 7 years of my childhood in the place that I did, no one ever really expected me to achieve all that I have, and I am proud to prove them all wrong, and will continue to prove them wrong no matter what obstacles may get in my way. I graduated high school at number 22 in my class, out of over 350 students, with a GPA of 4.62; and above all, I got into one of the most prestigious art schools in the world, which also happened to be my dream college, even after my senior guidance counselor told me that I should look for other options. None of this would have ever happened without the fight and strength from my parents, and that I is why I will never give up on my dreams and will never stop fighting, no matter how many people tell me that I can’t do something or that it’s impossible for me.

My childhood will always be apart of me, and it will always be one of the main reasons of why I am who I am today. I am strong, smart, independent, and determined, and I owe that not only to my parents, but also to growing up in Maryland. Thinking back to when I was 9, I wish I could tell my heartbroken self that everything will be okay and even though it doesn’t seem like it now, this change was meant to happen. Being a junior here at Ringling majoring in Interior Design and thinking back to all of the friends that I haven’t seen in over 11 years, has showed me that life can be hard, really hard, and change may not always seem like it’s the right choice, but if you work hard and never let anything stand in your way, no matter how difficult and stressful it may seem, amazing things can happen and dreams can come true. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel.