At Your Service ✓

[Chapter One] Mari

Chapter One – Mari

Everyone knows of those people, the ones who hate everyone in the name of religion, who think they're better than everyone else, the ones who shove their beliefs down your throat and tell you you're going to hell for not being like them, I couldn't stand those kinds of people and my parents happened to be part of that.

I hated every minute of growing up with them, from their biased hatred of anyone who was different to their extremes on how to raise children and there came a time when enough was enough but for me that point came before I was a legal adult. I packed a bag and ran when I was fifteen trying to get as far away as I could. I hitch hiked and got my first taste of the real world.

I ended up in South Carolina after I was dropped there when a trucker took advantage of me; instead of breaking down I just made myself not care, I pushed away the disgust and let the self-hatred eat me alive, I was a child still but at the time I didn't think so. I got mixed up with the wrong people living on the streets and ended up on drugs; weed quickly turned to popping pills to Heroin, cocaine, PCP and even on rare occasion meth; I found myself an addict by my sixteenth birthday.

I slept around and when I needed money It went from sex for something to do to sex for money, sex for drugs, sex to survive. At first it felt dirty but then he would give me another line or needle and then it didn't matter. I wanted to be absolutely nothing like my family and out of spite I wanted to be the opposite.

I always managed to keep myself from getting arrested because I know if I was they would find out who I was and I would be forced to go back home and I didn't want to know what my mother would do to try to cleanse my body from what I had done this time.

I regretting leaving my little brother behind but I wouldn't stay there any longer.

I was sixteen when I found out I was pregnant, I hated the child inside of me for ruining my life and went to the clinic to terminate when I broke down and I just couldn't go through with it. My, handler wasn't happy about my new decision to clean up my life.

He beat me unconscious and left me in the streets, I nearly lost her but I finally realized what I had done to myself in a short year and how much my life had changed hit me hard. It took me a while to realize that no matter who the father was, my daughter was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. It was hell but I stayed clean and sober for her and vowed to never touch the shit again.

She was born right before I turned seventeen and I couldn't have loved something more, I was broke and alone with a baby but it didn't matter. I did what I needed to so I could provide for us and when I was twenty and came home to my three year old beat up I knew that I couldn't stay on the streets anymore.

I was lucky that a friend had gone to this agency and got me in there. The screening was insane, I had to go a month without sex, get testing done three times and then I could finally get back to work.

The company was strict with their policy and very exclusive. Disease testing was a requirement and it gave a lot of peace of mind.

I was a young mother to a three year old little girl and I just wanted to support her.

I was twenty-three when Lalexia came home and told me about an assignment she was doing, she was supposed to ask me about her family and that was the first time I had to think about what I would say to her one day.

I couldn't tell her anything about her father because I didn't know who he was so I could only tell her that he had left before she was born. When she asked about grandma and grandpa I told her that they weren't around, and when she asked about me my heart broke.