“Mommy, I want you to be happy.”

I was just five-years-old, fastened in the carseat of my mother’s racing car. It was perhaps the thousandth time I’d seen her face illustrated with black-and-blues, fleshy scratches, and deep-red blood. My father painted on her like the suffering of Picasso’s Guernica. She couldn’t sit and let him destroy her world anymore. We were speeding to escape from him that night.

“Daddy doesn’t make you happy.”

I cried, trying desperately to convey to my mom that she didn’t need to stay with him just to preserve whatever semblance of a family we had. It was then that she knew: if her youngest child could comprehend the pain he caused her, she shouldn’t stay with him. 

That night transformed my life. My mother divorced him for good, launching her, my sister, and me into a period of instability. Aiming to leave my father in the past, we looked to New York City as our safe haven. We struggled greatly, spending our first summer of freedom homeless. 

Our trio persevered, however. We began sharing a cramped, roach-infested 1,000 square-foot, two-bedroom apartment with three other adults in Astoria, Queens because we needed to start school. Just six or seven, I was immediately labeled “gifted” and was involuntarily placed into the advanced classes at my school. Balancing two full-time jobs, my mom was never home to check if I was doing my homework or praise me for the notes on report-cards. She only asked every morning before school that I did my best. I made her words my responsibility and devoted all my energy into school.  It was in these classes that I found sanctuary in my education. School gave me the opportunity to show myself, having just fled from a broken home, that I was worth something more than my past. I pushed myself to get good grades, to test into a demanding gifted-and-talented program, and to challenge myself every time I could. Learning excited me. It was my rescue— it filled the void my father left.

Once a “daddy’s girl,” I still visited him every few weekends. Even though we continued to give him opportunities to change, his presence near the apartment was still characterized by vengeance and violence. I remember seeing my father one night before he was arrested; he attempted to choke my uncle to death just to get to my mother. These defining, dangerous moments were ones that caused us to finally erase him from our lives.

Although he’s been absent from my life, my father exposed me to plenty of hardships, planting a driving force of motivation within me. I didn’t grow up with either a mother or a father to watch over me. My mom only had time to put a roof over my head. From the age of 9, I remember cooking, cleaning, and doing homework with only the company of my older sister; we raised ourselves. I know now that I don’t want to see anyone struggle like I did. It’s more than just a goal of mine to devote myself to learning and helping others— it’s a matter of meaning and self-worth to me. School showed me I could still thrive in the face of adversity; I want to show it to the world now. 

I’m no longer the same teary-eyed little girl from that fateful night years ago. 

There are many children that grow up in homes like mine but come to use their misfortunes as excuses to drop out of school, turn to drugs, or make violence a medium for domination. Just 16, I know that wherever I go in life, I can’t neglect my origins or let them bring me down. 

I take my life into my own hands.

In order to challenge myself more, I chose to use my preparation from the gifted-and-talented program to skip the seventh-grade, moving me directly from sixth-grade to eighth-honors. I know when I have to back down or need to ask for help. I’m still extremely independent, adaptable, and have learned how to play my strengths; I’m endurant. I am now putting energy into a job and more chores to lift some of the weight off of my mother’s shoulders.

My origins have formed the ever-lasting motivation to live and to learn that follows me wherever I go. They’ve made me see that I can continue to drive myself farther than drive away from just my father. I hope now that someday I can also be a role model for a little girl of my own so she can have a childhood.

 And she won’t have to ever ask if I’m happy.  She’ll see it on my face.