My name is Riley (code name). I was born in Los Angeles, California. I am the third of four children. My life has always been a series of downs with the occasional ups. I was born in a hospital room that no one exactly remembers. There are no pictures on record. When my mom went back to work I ended up spending my days with my father, who for the most part ignored my crying all day. My mom was head chiropractor until I was the age of 4. When I hit that age my mother got pregnant with my little sister, Dawn. Because of her pregnancy she had to take off a couple of months leave from her job. She had my sister, nursed her, and eventually had to go back to work. Unfortunately the ward had given away my mother’s job to another woman. My mom got so angry that she didn’t take the position that she was offered.
                          
                        For a while everything was fine. Then with all of the stress my mother and father built up. One night they decided to sit us down and asked us the dreaded question “If we decided to separate, who would you rather go with?”. We decided that going with my mother was best even though she was harder on us than our dad. A few nights later we had packed a lot of stuff and all I remember is walking by our patio and hearing my dad’s cries. Over the next few weeks, having not seen or heard from my dad I kept together. One day after school he showed up and was back in our lives occasionally ever since.
                   
                    Throughout my elementary and middle school experience I used the struggles that I had seen as my motivation to be a good student. It was easy at that point. When I reached high school it was easy because nothing had really changed. Half way through my second semester in school my home life began to get in the way. I had to struggle to keep up with my work and I ended up losing focus. Ever since then it became a habit of forgetting to do work or putting it off. It’s been a struggle over the last couple of years to get back up to the student I used to be, but with great effort I’m slowly reverting back. Balancing life and work is a thing everyone eventually has to learn to do. I feel like I am finally starting to get the hang of juggling both concepts without losing hope or giving up.