Reflection for week 3

I remember in my senior year of high school waiting for my ride after school and these two girls that I had never talked to or even seen before came up to me and my friend and started to talk to us. At first it was just small talk about school and relationships but then one girl started to share how her mom’s boyfriend molested her and the self-injury she had done to try and deal with it and the other talked about her past addiction to cocaine and how she would do it everyday. The first girl’s story was hard to hear because she seemed so nonchalant about it but I could see that it was really hard for her and the other girl had gotten kicked out school for using drugs; it was all very overwhelming. I notice that people sometimes talk about their problems to people they don’t know that well because they might not be as judgmental or biased and they could give good advice or have gone through some of the same things. These stories affected me in a lot of ways. I was new to the school and transferring in my second semester of my junior year was more than hard. I had a lot of anger and frustration and I was holding it all in. When they expressed their problems I was more open to the idea of letting people in and giving them a chance to really get to know me. My senior year was a lot better. I had good friends and people accepted me. I learned that it’s ok to let your guard down sometimes because not letting anyone get through only makes things harder.