Have you ever felt that you couldn’t get your opinions out or express yourself because you’re scared that a certain person might get mad at you?
I hate it when my parents always tell me not to make any plans for the weekend. I understand that I don’t stay home a lot with them and it doesn’t feel like we are a family, but when I stay home all I do is sit on the computer and just help around the house. I’m okay with helping my mom to clean the house but after that’s done I have nothing else to do. I always do my homework and study to keep my grades up. And when I’m on the computer I talk to my friends and listen to music but after a while it gets boring.
“There are a lots of kids in the neighborhood that you can hang out with” my step dad said. “I only like to hangout with people that I trust and I know that wouldn’t hurt my feelings on purpose and do it all the time around me.” I said. But he said “oh! You’re friends DO hurt your feelings, they call you names and you still hang out with them!” he said as he was getting more upset than before. After he said that I stayed quiet. It wasn’t the fact that he was right; he was actually wrong because my friends never called me names or made fun of me in purpose, I wanted to tell him that but he would probably not believe me. After a couple minutes of silence, my mom came in and asked what was going on. Then my step dad said “Jessica wont hangout with other kids that live in this development because she says that they would make fun of her and hurt her feelings. When I was young I used to hang out with kids that lived near me even if they made fun of m, I still stayed with them!”
After he said that he would stay with the kids that made fun of him, I was thinking how I can’t really accept that because my mom taught me that I should be with kids that I want to hang out with and not with people that would be really bad influence on me. I talked to my mom about it and she said “when I was your age, I used to have a lot of friends like you. They were all good to me. And I also knew other girls that I would be making fun of other people and I never would hang out with them.” I was glad that my mom understood me.
My step dad gets mad at me when I don’t want to go to the lake on summers. Sometimes I just don’t have a certain mood of going or I don’t feel good to be on a boat, I would get even sicker and he doesn’t understand that.

I’ve learned that the times that me and my parents don’t go to the lake or its winter, I just really can’t do anything fun at home. I normally want to go to my friends’ house and sleepover. Have some fun and not just sit around the house. But my friends live a little far from me and that’s the reason why my step dad wants me to have friends that live around me so he doesn’t have to take me to my friends house.
Also something that I was really concerned about during the summer is that I wouldn’t be around my friends from 7th grade because they would move me to another house, Hiawatha. I don’t have any classes with my friends from Tawasentha and I do have my ESL friends and I have other friends in Hiawatha but I still do miss my friends from Tawasentha. A lot of times I find ways to hang out with my friends over the weekends or vacation time and keep working on my homework at the same time. But sometimes it’s hard, with the projects we have in school and lots of homework and all of that. So I really want to hangout with my friends after for a long time we haven’t seen each other.
Sometimes I really wish that my step dad would change a bit, like his character and not get so mad at small little things that are not so important. I really don’t understand why he gets mad at every small thing that I do wrong and can actually be fixed.

I think I have to do what I feel is best for me, even if somebody else doesn’t understand. I learned that when other peoples opinions may be totally different and they tell me what to do, It may be different from my opinions and what I’ve experienced in my past years. For example when I would hangout with other kids and I didn’t feel so good being around those kids, I would normally get away. My mom experienced the same situation when she was young and she understood what I feel. Would you take steps that somebody that you may not trust too much tells you? In my opinion, I would do what my heart tells me.