My name is Nichelle. I am nearly 21 years old and currently a student. I will be attending Western Oregon University in the Fall of this year in pursuit of a degree in teaching. I guess that is a story long enough to include most of the details as to how I came to see things the way I do and my motivations to speak up. I am not the only person who has had a more than bland life and I won't begin think I am better or worse or more or less entitled than the next person who reads this because of the experiences I am going to share. I have reasons for my beliefs and I am going to share this so hopefully you can see what those reasons are.
Just for fun, I will start the story like this:
Once upon a time, when I was a young girl, I was always looking for something to make me feel like I belonged. It would be easy to say that as a younger sister in a two child house hold where my only sister hated me and regularly told me things like I was the reason mom and dad got divorced and how life before I was born was so much better (like she could remember), made me feel like I wasn't wanted, but that would be making a victim of myself and I don't think I can really blame everything on that alone. I don't entirely blame the crap things in life on anything in particular anymore. I feel like they happened for a reason to make me better than what I could have been and unfolded to teach me things that I needed to learn.
So back to our story, searching as I was for a niche in this world, I thought I found the answer while in middle school (because that is the time of all knowledge and enlightenment of course!). Popularity, drugs, and parties was what I thought my answer was. As many of those kinds of stories go, I wound up feeling lonelier and more lost than before. I was betrayed by my friends, and finally sober in a world I didn't want to face. I used to keep a diary. It really did help when I couldn't tell anyone else. I was raped by my friend's next door neighbor and my friend, well she wasn't quite taking my side when she received a bribe to get me in that position. That diary, I wrote everything in it. My sister found it a few months after and gave it to my mom. I begged and pleaded for my mom never to tell and I couldn't bare for another person in this world to know what happened. She couldn't look at me the same for months. With the shame of what my life turned out to be, depression was a pretty logical road for me to follow.
High School came along eventually and at one point through a long series of events I told my Parenting and Family Life teacher what had happened and than my school counselor, which then led to a CARDV representative immediately followed by two Corvallis Police officers.
After the police officers, lawyers, therapists, doctors, victims reps, judges, pained looks and dark places had faded from my immediate memory, I found my way to some friends who are always supportive, a man who knows everything about me and still wants to marry me and to the God who sees my failures and still calls me to rise and rejoice. I have seen how adolescence can be difficult for some and not for others and I want to be there regardless and witness, encourage and inspire those to do more, rise above, and be better. I want to be a teacher. Currently, I volunteer at my church's youth group and am a part of a team working with middle school aged kids. Aside from the time I spend at church and with the kids, I work as a part-time teller in the drive-up at a local credit union, go to school (14 crd hrs this term), and plan my May wedding; I keep myself busy and try to take each day as it comes because sometimes crappy things happen and you never know just how things will turn out.
So my hope is now that part of my story is available, there won't be as many reasons to wonder what I am talking about, how could I think a certain way, or why would I say that. I am a Conservative Christian with passionate views on education as well as an open mind to be taught the things I have yet to understand.
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