Chosen Topic:
Journey
General education student-inmate from institution A4
Consolation Prize
In our life journey, we definitely have gone through challenges that made us who we are today. There are many kind of challenges such as a broken family, being poor, struggling with sickness and many more. These struggles that we face, will either shape us to become a stronger person or ruin our lives.
In the twenty four years of my life, the most challenging journey that I had gone through is having a broken family. It is not easy for any children to go through life without their mother. My parents divorced ever since I was two months old due to my mother being a drug addict. My father got remarried when I was in Primary School and I was brought up by my step mother until I was sixteen years old. It did not feel the same to live with my step mother instead of my biological mother. When I was sixteen years old, my father and step-mother divorced due to my step brother raping my biological sister. My life was a mess.
I could not accept that fact of what had happened to my life. I can never live with a happy family just like my friends. I hated to be at home to face quarrels every day and all the tension amongst my family members. Since then, I started to lose focus on my studies and always spent my time with my friends. I picked up smoking, drugs and alcohol when I was sixteen years old. I wanted to get away from reality. It did made me feel better. I could not stop what I was doing because I got hooked on it and being high was part of my daily routine.
As for my studies, I managed to complete my N levels but failed to do well. I used to be the top of the class but ever since the incident that happened to my family, my grades dropped. Part of the reason why I did not want to do well in my studies was because I wanted to get attention from my family. But nobody seemed to notice. I felt that I was not important to anyone anymore. The only thing I could do was to harm myself with drugs.
Drugs made me forget the world and without me realising, I gradually became worse. Day by day, I get to know more friends, one of them offered me to sell drugs. I needed money and accepted his offer. I was earning so much easy money but I did not care about the consequences. I thought by doing all that could make me happy, it did not.
One day, I went over to my friend’s house to take drugs together. Suddenly, there was a knock on the door and it was the CNB officer. I knew then, that was the end of my life, that I will be arrested and put behind bars. I was charged with drug trafficking and was sentenced to 5 years and 6 months. I could not accept the fact and cried every night hoping that I could go back home.
While being in prison, I did not know where all my friends were. These people whom I called my own friends and treated like my own family, none of them came to visit me. The only people that came to visit me almost twice every month without fail are my dad, sister and brother. They were the ones that gave me support and courage. Being in prison made me realised that I could not blame anyone but myself. I take control of myself and not others. I could have made my life better instead of doing things to get attention from my family members. I should be the one giving my moral support to my family instead of making things difficult for them.
Now that I am in prison, I am making the best out of it by studying. I had wasted my life being nobody, but now I want to be out of here being somebody with a good qualification. My family made me believe that I can do it. Without them, I guess I will not take this as a lesson. My life journey has taught me, that family is everything, even if it is a broken one.