Entry 6- Peer pressure.

I want to turn to the subject of friendship for a minute and let you know that, as you have seen, I was deprived a childhood. Always made out to be an adult and if I showed one sight of uncontrollable emotion my crazed family members (this including my mother, father, steps and families for all four) would deem me unfit as a person and immature by fault. I was never given the chance to have that one best friend that would be there for me no matter the situation. That summer, I finally found one person that understood me. Or so I thought. I met a girl named Faith Westerland and I thought she was just like me. Faith had also led on a hard life, or at least that’s what I was told (although I did later find out she was a pathological liar so I don’t know the truth behind the stories.), she seemed similar to me in a lot of ways. She was a year younger than me but had started homeschooling as well and was in need of a friend to confide in. She also was involved in horses which made me think that this friendship was going to be one that lasted for years. The only thing was that Faith had a past that a sixteen year old should not be involved in. Faith had turned to drugs and alcohol at a young age, which was something I was unfamiliar with yet I overlooked. She told me of her problems and I told her of mine, trusting her to keep secrets. Of course, we became two peas in a pod. Have you ever heard in studies they show that when you spend a certain amount of time with a person, you unconsciously pick up their habits and demeanor? Believe those studies, they are the truth. People have told me that once I was hanging out with Faith, I changed. I was kind of bitter and distant. Other friendship’s faded until all I had left was Faith, recollecting now I think that was her plan all along. By the mid beginning of the summer I was a totally different person. My emotions weren’t bottled anymore, they slipped from the seams revealing their disgust and breaking the front I put on for the outside world. I don’t know how I let Faith have so much influence on me. Oh yeah, her influence was strong, I can recall the first night I had ever done anything illegal. It was a late summer night, a sleepover at Faith’s. I had known about Faith’s marijuana exposure and knew I didn’t want a part of it. But I had never done something so bad before. Part of me thought “wow, that’s something real teenager’s do.” And I longed to be just like all the other ‘normal’ teenagers I knew.