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Freshman year. Book 2. Pages 18-19.

*Page 17 has been intentionally left out to ensure the author (myself) remains anonymous.

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Freshman year. Book 2. Page 16.

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Freshman year. Book 2. Pages 14-15.

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Freshman year. Book 2. Pages 12-13.

*The story written here is, in fact, not a true story.

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Freshman year. Book 2. Pages 10-11.

*This post contains non-original work. Lyrics from Love Me Two Times (1967), performed by The Doors

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Freshman year. Book 2. Pages 8-9.

*This post contains non-original work, image from Juicy Couture, ad from TeenVouge.

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Freshman year. Book 2. Page 7.

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Freshman year. Book 2. Pages 5-6.

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Freshman year. Book 2. Pages 3-4.

*This post contains non-original work, image/ad belonging to the brand Converse (a subsidiary of Nike), altered from its original appearance in Teen Vouge.

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Freshman year. Book 2. Pages 1-2.

*This post contains unoriginal work. Covergirl images and branding were originally published in TeenVouge magazine and do not belong to OP.

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Freshman year. Book 2. Cover, inside.

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Freshman Year. Book 2. Cover.

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Before Freshman Year: Displacement

I was born in 1992, at four in the morning during the Winter Olympics. (Not that it has anything to do with anything)

And all my life I had grown up in New Orleans, Louisiana. In Algiers, to be more specific, and the house I grew up in was a historical double shotgun house nestled beside the levee along the Mississippi river.

There were only five people in family, a mom, dad, grandmother, brother, and myself. And each and every one of us was lonely and isolated, by the unintentional design of parents who were the products of their own horrors and generational issues.

My mother went undiagnosed for her ADHD and BPD. My father fed into his anxieties, depression, and denial.

A variety of abuses came from this, but morphed from more physical to more emotional when the displacement happened.

Before freshman year, a year back in 2005, I had been living in my families camper. We had moved after hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans and the surrounding regions. During the first few months of 2006 I had tried to tell myself that we would go home one day, and that I would go back to my old school. I had just begun to attend a charter school for the arts, and felt I had a place with other kids I resonated with and adults I felt safe around. - Again I was isolated.

While I managed to find a place with friends, the first year was still difficult (as it would be for anyone entering high school). But I found myself also adjusting to a new town, new culture, even new slang. I adjusted myself accordingly. I was used to adjusting my behavior to stay safe around an unpredictable and violent home. High school would be much of the same, but at least it was enjoyable (and the pretending wasn't obvious, not even to myself).

After all, our adolescence is a testing facility. We shouldn't be expected to know or even be ourselves. We won't know who we are for a very long time anyway.

I am miles away from that girl now. Now, she feels less a part of me and more an imaginary friend, displaced from who I actually became.

Desperately, she wanted to be seen and heard. Mostly, she wanted to be understood - Instead she focused on pleasing others, being who and what she thought would gain her the biggest laugh or the most friends.

I'm glad those things became less important to her, to us.

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Freshman year. Book 1. Page 54, back cover.

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Freshman year. Book 1. Pages 52-53.

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Freshman year. Book 1. Pages 50-51.