Children of all ages have always been seen as na�ve and
innocent, therefore underestimated. Depression: severe
despondency and dejection, typically felt over a period of
time and accompanied by feelings of hopelessness and
inadequacy. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). This is the story
of the time my emotions were denied and the toll this
situation has taken on my future. The worst part of it is
that my own father was the one who did not believe me. �It�s
just a phase�, he said. �She�s too young to really be
depressed�, he said. �She�ll get over it�, he said. �She�s
probably just crying out for attention�.

Some might say that my parents were meant to be or that they
were the perfect married couple during their time together.
These same expectations were determined by the public for
the marriage of Jay-Z and Beyonc� Knowles. Evidently, even
�perfect� marriages can fail.* Who would have known that one
mindless act of betrayal would end things forever?  It all
started in the early 90�s: my dad was a NFL football star,
while my mom was just getting used to the transition to an
American life from that of a French-Canadian from Montreal.
They both lived in Atlanta, Georgia at the time that they
met; my mother swore she could never move away. My mother
also thought that her marriage would never come to an end.
Unfortunately, plans tend to change whether we like it or
not.

When my parents first got married, my dad was working two
jobs while my mom stayed at home taking care of me after I
was born. Less than a year after I was born in Atlanta, my
dad decided that he wanted to start up his own business in
the television production industry. My mom, being the
supportive wife that she always was, completely went along
with his decision without hesitation. Throughout this whole
process, my mom came across a side of my dad�s personality
that she had never noticed before, his tendency to make
promises that he knew he could never keep, one of those
promises being his vow of marriage to my mother.  Shortly
after I was born, my father explained to my mom how he
thought it necessary to move to Los Angeles, California in
order to start up his business. Los Angeles. The definition
of the American Dream. Seeing my mother�s doubt about
whether to leave her life in Atlanta, my dad promised her
that this move would only be temporary and that they would
be back living in Atlanta in no time. Boy, the lies people
tell to get what they want. Sixteen years later, my dad has
never fulfilled that promise. Having the little amount of
money that my parents had at the time, and due to this
last-minute situation, my parents� only choice was to move
into a cheap hotel until they got their life together. My
dad would work early mornings and late nights while my mom,
unhappy with her new life, took care of me, living in a
Marriot hotel in a strange part of town. My mom would take
me with her to the mall across the street from the Marriot
where we lived. They say shopping is one of the many methods
of drowning out sadness. My mom became the parallel to Isla
Fisher in Confessions of a Shopaholic.** Now I know where I
get it from. Eventually, my dad�s business began to prosper,
later proving the theory that money does not buy happiness.


There were plenty of people who came to know of my father as
he became more and more successful. I would like to share
one of these people in particular with you.

Charlene Boudreaux. A young woman from hell who has been put
on this Earth by the devil himself to ruin lives and to tear
families apart. She has ruined my life. She has torn my
family apart. Gold digger: a person who dates others purely
to extract money from them, in particular a woman who
strives to marry a wealthy man (Merriam-Webster
Dictionary).

As Charlene got closer to my dad, she began calling him
daily and meeting up with him more often than usual. Because
my dad had told my mom that he and Charlene had been working
together and that she had just been giving him tips on �the
business life� as she had been working in the industry as
well, my mom was not concerned at first about their
every-other-day meet-ups. What concerned my mom was when
Charlene left a troubling message on my parents� house
phone. This was concerning to my mother because, when she
had heard the message, Charlene had been referring to my dad
as �honey� and �baby�. Any wife would be concerned with
this! My mom decided to take initiative and call this
mystery woman back to find out what her deal was. �No need
to be concerned. I call everybody �honey��, claimed
Charlene. She ended this conversation with my mom with a
snarky, �Bye doll!� You know a woman is two-faced when she
calls you doll. I guess she figured that if she followed the
way of the Kardashians, she too would prosper in wealth.***
Although Charlene assured my mom that there was nothing
going on, my mom�s suspicions remained. As my dad began
spending more time with Charlene, my mom had an increasing
doubt about whether she was being lied to.

The whitest of all lies will still come back around to haunt
you. Of course, my mom found out, eventually, that my dad
had been cheating on her with Charlene and, of course, my
dad tried to pull the �It�s not what it looks like!� crap.
My mom was furious and felt betrayed. She sacrificed her
whole lifestyle to support his ideas and this is what he�s
done to repay her? After a while, my mom and dad had been
trying to work things out. My dad was in the process of
ending things with Charlene and going back to my mom until,
ironically, Charlene got pregnant. This conniving monster
tricked my dad into getting her pregnant because she knew
that he would do the right thing and marry her because he
did not want to be known as that typical guy who gets a
woman pregnant and then bails out to avoid the
responsibility. What about me? Shouldn�t I have been his
first priority? Why would my dad choose her over me? Then
again, as Pastor Burpo asks in his novel Heaven Is For Real,
why do people choose hell even though there is a heaven?****
My parents eventually got a divorce, creating the starting
point for my future of troubles.

�When you�re mom dies, you�ll have to call me mom.� What
type of sick, twisted person says this to a young child? She
knew I was vulnerable at the time and would believe anything
that seemed true, just as any innocent child would. Charlene
has always hated my mother and has focused her life on doing
whatever she feels necessary to try and ruin her life.
However, she soon realized that my mom genuinely does not
care what Charlene says about her or what lies she has told
to my mom�s old friends to try and turn them against her.
Charlene would never settle for making peace with my mom, so
she had to ruin her life instead. I was my mom�s life. She
had to ruin me.

Charlene is queen of manipulation. She knew that if she
could succeed in making me love her and hate my mom, she
would break my mom�s heart. �Your mom only spends time with
you because she gets more money from your dad when you�re
with her.� I was stupid. I believed it. I felt unloved. No
matter how much I wanted to believe that this was not the
case, I was a young child, a gullible young child who had
this thought in the back of her mind every time she spent
time with her mom. One year, during Christmas, Charlene�s
family came to our house for a visit. I am pretty close with
her niece because we are the same age. During one of the
days she was here, I was telling her how much I hated going
to my dad�s house because of the way Charlene treats me.
When I came out of my room, Charlene was standing right
outside of my bedroom door and she told me that she had
heard everything I said to Camille. At that moment, I knew
that she felt a sense of fear that I was so willing to talk
to people about the way she treated me. She knew that it
wasn�t long before I would tell my dad how I was feeling, so
she played her usual mind games on me and told me that it
would hurt my dad�s feelings if I told him that I hated
coming to his house. Fortunately, as I grew older,
Charlene�s mental tricks wore off and I soon realized that
she was not to be trusted. Maybe this was a sign that she no
longer had control over me or a sign of mental growth. Maybe
I had proved Emily Dickinson�s statement that �After great
pain, a formal feeling comes-�. However, the pain that came
with her evil actions toward me have stuck with me and will
stick with me forever.

Everyone knows that it is a dangerous thing to criticize the
appearance of an insecure teenage girl. Charlene knew this,
but she did not care. �You�re getting fat Destinee.� �Get
rid of that acne all over your face it looks disgusting
Destinee.� �Put down that cupcake Destinee you know you have
to watch what you eat these days.� Anorexia: an emotional
disorder characterized by an obsessive desire to lose weight
by refusing to eat (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). I was in
7th grade when I decided that food was my enemy. I just
wanted someone to be proud of me. I wanted to feel loved. I
wanted to know what it felt like to be happy with myself. I
did not have friends. I was that girl who was too shy to
speak or to make eye contact. That girl who spent the school
lunch periods in the bathroom so I wouldn�t have to face the
question, �Why aren�t you eating�. I was that girl who
bursted into tears for no apparent reason. During the middle
of my freshman year in high school, I looked at myself in
the mirror and decided at that very moment that I was skinny
enough. I rushed home to show Charlene that I had
accomplished something. �Look Charlene, I did it! I�m
finally skinny! Aren�t you proud?� I was desperate for
praise like Biff Loman in Arthur Miller�s Death of a
Salesman as he fails over and over again to make his father
proud.***** She looked at me with disgust and turned to my
dad and said, �Look, James. Look at your daughter. She�s too
thin. She. Needs. Therapy.�

Therapy. A 13-year-old girl in therapy. �I can�t do this�,
something the voice in my head told me often. As I was being
dragged down the endless hallway to the door of the
therapist�s office, my heart started beating fast while my
face grew red. I began to cry. We waited until it was time
for my appointment and until I finally stopped crying. When
it was my turn to go in, I sat on the couch and told her my
name. Her name was Kat. She asked me questions. Lots of
questions, but I could not find the voice to answer her. I
had no voice. I sat there, staring down as I twiddled my
thumbs feeling guilty because, with every second that I was
not speaking, my dad�s money was going in the garbage. I was
a waste of my dad�s money. That same day, when I got home,
my dad sat me down and asked me what was wrong with me. I
decided that this was my chance to get everything off my
chest. I told him everything that Charlene had ever done to
hurt me. When I was done, I actually felt better because I
thought that by telling my dad what was going on, everything
would be taken care of. I soon found out that was not the
case. I was shut down. My dad defended her completely. It
was like he did not even care what I had to say or that he
had not heard a word of it. It was at that moment that I
knew I could trust no one.

Some believe when teens say they are depressed, they are
merely looking for attention. I believe the ones who are
truly depressed do not tell. The mind is a scary place. I am
scared of my own mind. My mind is filled with nightmares.
Why can�t I ever just dream? During my freshman year of high
school, I began to have dark thoughts. Thoughts of death. I
was not scared of death. To me, death meant freedom. I would
do anything to be free. Death meant ridding myself of my
days of coming home and crying alone. However, death also
meant hell. �Dear God, please take my life away.� I remember
this thought as if I had told it to myself just yesterday.
During my sophomore year of high school, those thoughts
became actions. I wrecked my body like it was of no worth,
like it was my fault no one cared and that no one listened.
I thought to myself, �Why do you always fail, Destinee?�
With every tear came another cut, another bruise, another
scratch that will never disappear. The scars on my body
remain to this day as punishment, as a reminder that I am
weak. �What happened to your arms Destinee?�, my friends
would ask. �My cat has some pretty sharp claws�, I would lie
with a smile. A smile, I figured, would hide my pain. If
they saw me smile, they would assume I was happy. Why
couldn�t anyone tell that I was not happy? One day, my dad
bought a gun as protection for our household. This gun came
with a dream. One night, while I slept, I had a dream that I
was alone. Alone in my house that some may call a home. In
my dream, I walked into my father�s room to the place where
he hid this weapon. This weapon was my way to peace. I held
the gun to my head and prayed, not a tear in my eyes, �Dear
God, I am a failure. Please allow me to succeed.� During
this dream, my peace was interrupted when my father came in
the room, causing me to wake up. I�ve always thought it was
funny how, the very next day, I had heard my father say he
had gotten rid of his gun. Was I really even dreaming? It
sure felt like I was.

I am finished with my junior year of high school and, still,
no one understands me. �Why are you so shy, Destinee? You
never talk.� �Why do you always wear black? Aren�t you hot
in that outfit?� �Why are you always so stand-offish? People
are starting to think you�re rude.� I present myself based
on how I feel inside. Dead. The thing is, I do not
completely understand myself, and I do not believe that I
ever will. Why am I so shy? I never talk. Why do I always
wear black? Aren�t I hot in that outfit? Why am I always so
standoffish? People are starting to think I�m rude. Why was
I chosen for such a terrible life?