 When I was 12 years old, I tried to get to the side by taking an overdose. Yeah, I came close to overdosing and dying a few times. It's very depressing to think that this was our home. Somebody just kept shooting. When the gunshot stopped, they all got up, but he didn't. Yes, I came to Washington to meddle anyway when you and I have been living alone since then. I would use a condom or anything. I guess you could say I set myself up for it. Probably the most dangerous problem is probably a prejudice. It's real dangerous. We were telling him to slow down and he was scaring us. But we had no control over what he was doing. When he first came out here, the streets are so, like, addicting. Talking about the money and the women, and I just found out that it wasn't true. When I left home at 14, I was having a lot of conflict with my stepfather. The Hollywood Freeway is one of the first places I ever stayed. There was continuous tension under the bridge for everybody. It was a basic ritual every night. People come down to drink, shoot up, smoke crack, hang out for a little while until everything starts taking effect. There's not one person fighting in our unit. It's another. Street life got me involved in gang activity, a lot of crime, car thefts, muggins, burglaries. I wasn't taking care of myself. I was, like, doing drugs again. There were many nights that I thought I was going to die. I was afraid. It's scary. You can't go through one day wondering if you'll live the next to see tomorrow, or if you'll be able to eat tomorrow. It's probably the second 30th place that I stayed. It's very depressing to think that this was our home. Just thinking about what we had to do to survive had to live out here. And also the regression of us went from a basically decent place to a dirtier place, to a dirtier place, to a dirtier place. Just going down, you know, week after week after week. We had nowhere to go but back to here. Then we got into a shelter, and now we're doing what I'm working, where we've got a place to sleep. We are fed, you know, we have three meals a day. And things are just going to hold out better for us. I don't want to have to depend on anyone else. I mean, we need some help at first to get started and everything. The time the baby comes, I'm sure, we'll be able to be out on our own. I just want a good life for my baby and for my family. I grew up in Will Matt, which is the north suburb of Chicago, and it's a pretty sheltered area, a really nice area on the North Shore. Basically, I was pretty bored when I was a kid. I didn't have three many friends when I was in grade school. When I was a kid, I remember always taking sips off of my parents' beers or wine or whatever, and I always thought that was the adult thing to do. I started drinking a lot more, which led to my pot use, and then once I did that, you know, I did Coke, LSD, mushrooms, opium, all my freshman year in high school. You know, everybody drank, everybody did this, so I did it too. Acceptance. I came close to overdosing and dying a few times. My last arrest last fall was for dealing LSD. The whole time that I was in primary treatment, I lied my way through it. I told them what they wanted to hear because I had no intention of staying sober, and I got into Parkside Youth Center and I was going to leave right away, but I had nowhere to go, so I just stayed there, and it gave me a lot of time to think about what I really wanted and if I really was having fun when I was using, and I decided that I wasn't really having fun, so I had to learn how to live my life all over again. I feel pretty good about where I'm at right now. I just moved into an apartment, the first apartment I've ever had. Working here at the hospital is really neat because it's a real sober environment for me, which I need right now since I've been out of Parkside Youth Center for two weeks. I used to be worried about what people thought about me. That's why I used a lot. If someone doesn't think maintenance work is good enough, that's their opinion. When you're using, you don't see yourself slipping. You don't see things bad happening to you. As a standpoint of you causing it, you always think it's everybody else, but it doesn't have to get that bad. That's what I'd have to say to people. Don't let it happen. I don't know, I feel like I'm a different person. I understand a lot more, and I see a lot more. I'm more cautious as to getting into a car with somebody over again. I don't trust other people driving. He looked perfectly fine when I got into the car with him, but it was risk-taking. I hadn't seen him drinking, but if I had used my common sense, I would have known that he had. He was going about 70 miles per hour around these curves, and it was real dangerous. We were telling him to slow down, and he was scaring us. But we had no control over what he was doing. And the next thing I know is we were spinning, we were in a spin. He hit a telephone pole, but it hit on his side. But I got the impact and snapped my spine and broke it. And then they had to rip my door off because they couldn't get me out of the car. And I just remember what kind of pain I was in. It just was incredible pain that I couldn't walk. I cried. I mean, it's just totally unbelievable. It's like a slap in the face, you know? I went through a lot of therapy, like five hours a day. Like every single day it was really hard. I still, as of today, have the physical pain constantly. I don't have my bladder back internally because the nerves, there's something wrong with the nerves. My balance is not very... I can just get, somebody touched me and I can fall over if I don't have any support. So I walk with the cane. If I hadn't had my mom there, I mean, it brought us a lot closer. And it's just, it's a struggle. It's a struggle that we both went through. What I could have done differently was not get in the car with him. But I could have found somebody else. I could have called my mom and had her pick me up. He could have, I guess, not drank. I mean, and he was trying to show off for another girl that he had liked. So I think that his ego got in the way of his common sense. And that's why he decided, well, I'm going to be cool. I'm going to race. I'm going to speed just to show off for this girl. And in the long run, in the end, he wasn't bagel at all. He slipped up. Whenever I read in the newspaper or saw on television that someone, son was gunned down or cut up or just found dead for whatever the reason, it hurt for a little while because I thought that parent could be me. But then the pain would just sort of go away like I would forget, I guess, like everybody else. But this time it was different. It was me and the pain is real and it doesn't just go away. He said, that's what it was. That's what the fight was about. Dancing a while and bumping into each other. And they walked across the street from the club to the Woody's parking lot. And they saw the guy that they was fighting again. And he asked them, were they looking for him? And he pulled out a gun, started waving it in their face. And they said, when the gunshot started, they fell through the ground. And he did too. When the gunshot stopped, they all got up, but he didn't. He was the bright spot in our lives. I know Mark's problem was peer pressure. He wanted to be like everybody else around him. Mark mistake that night was being at that club because he was only 16 years old. And he should not have been allowed to go in there. He could have just leave. Mark could have just leave. I've often told him that it was easier to walk away from trouble than to stand the fight. It's dangerous out there for everyone at this point, but especially for young blacks. The teenagers today don't have any respect for each other, for themselves. It's almost like it's a new generation of people and they just don't care about what other people feel. It's very scary and it's painful, it's hard to sleep at night. Every night you hear, you wonder if it has something to do with your kids. I'm 18 years old. I've been in the U.S. for one year and a half. I came to Washington without anyone who I knew. Atlanta was quite apprehensive even from the time before she left home. But once she was on the road with the person who had agreed to bring her, she got more and more nervous. During the passage from El Salvador to the border with the U.S., the group stopped in Guatemala. And according to what Blanca had heard, these coyotes tended to take advantage of young women, especially those who were unaccompanied. And it so happened that Blanca was assaulted by this man and the group actually helped in that process. Firstly, what's been most difficult for me in coming here has been the lack of family, the lack of a place in which to stay. The school is a good place for me to learn and to study, but I haven't gotten close to or made to many friends because I'm weary of getting involved and getting disappointed once again. Coming to the U.S. has been much more difficult than I expected, primarily because I thought it would be very easy to get a job here and to work. However, without knowing the language, it's very difficult to get a job through support and through my counselors at the Latin American Youth Center, people at school. I was able to overcome some pretty rough times. I try not to look back and to think about the negatives because then I would not be able to go on day-to-day. Most people call me RJ and I'm from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. Mostly it's like drinking. A lot of parents drink and leave their children alone. Others, it's no jobs. There's no jobs on the reservation so that's why you get a lot of Indians leaving the reservation. It extends even into lower grade schools, lower school class because it'll be like they'll come to school. Oh, we had so much fun. We drank this weekend and we all got stoned and huffed gas. My classroom, they've gotten insane. They draw devil signs on themselves and pray to him and stuff. And because I didn't get involved with that, I was kind of shunned as the nerd. Probably the most dangerous problem is probably a prejudice because you find it in a lot of places. There'll be people that you tell them you're a Native American and you won't get the job or something. Red man, chiefie, savage, those kind of schoolboy names. It makes you want to hit them but then I don't because, well, I don't really care for fighting. My parents got divorced so that's kind of frustrating. Kind of angry at my father within the pride of my mother because the way she can support us so good without any help from my father. They need a good home. They need a loving family. A family that's close together. Of the session is a discussion of tunnel vision. That's what happens to people when they're feeling depressed, when they're feeling alone, when they're feeling suicidal. Now what you see there is basically what a person who's intent on suicide sees. They don't see the big picture. All they see is the grief and the pain they're experiencing. When I was 12 years old, I tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills. When I was nine, I was molested by my dad. I grew up in a abusive home where my mom got beat in an alcoholic home where there was a lot of emotional and physical and sexual abuse. The fact is most people who want to commit suicide are actually undecided. Well, a little bit of me wanted to die. A little bit wanted people to understand that I really didn't need help. I never did drugs. I had one friend that did drugs. She smoked pot a lot. And before I tried to commit suicide, like the day that I tried to commit suicide, she used my name to get drugs and it got all over town that I was using them. And that was like my big breaker. I mean, that was the last straw. They go on living because of the people who do care about them, their friends, their families. All the friends I meet and I realize I'm not alone. I mean, I'm not the only one with problems and I'm not the only one that hurts. Everyone hurts. I'm not in an abusive home anymore. And now that we're out of my dad's home and stuff, we're allowed to laugh and allowed to have fun and allowed to be ourselves before we had to be what he wanted us to be. I think that they should listen to teenagers more when they cry out for help. Watch more for the science and give them a lot of love. That was really important, I think.