This is the story of my life. At the moment I am a seventeen year old girl trying to finish high school. Sounds pretty normal right? Well, I’m not any other normal teen girl.  I am sick. When I was around the age of four, my mom noticed my side was hurting, more than any other normal kind of pain. She assumed everything was fine, and it was probably just growing pains. But just to be safe, she took me to the emergency room. I got cat scans and MRI’s done, we thought everything was fine. Until, one of the doctors came in the room with a serious face and told my parents that he needed to speak to them outside. He told them I had a massive tumor on my left kidney that needed to be removed immediately or I would die.  Obviously I went into surgery right away and the surgery went right; the tumor was gone. I was in recovery for a year or so, and everything pretty much went back to normal, for a few years until this… around the age of ten or eleven something incredibly evil happened to me. I was close with my family, very affectionate and assumed it went both ways. Prior to; one night; I had slept over at a cousin’s house, we watched TV, played games, and made our pillow forts. My uncle was at work the entire time I was there. I loved him like any niece would normally love their uncle. So, that night when i fell asleep, he came home, angry and annoyed. His wife tried calming him down and talking to him. He did for a bit, this is when he left to go kiss his kids that were upstairs goodnight. His daughter was sleeping next to me downstairs in the living room, so he came down to kiss her and just paused. I was half awake during this, and saw him just staring down at me.  He lowered his body down and began to caress to my legs. Which then led to him groping my body, which led to… It’s not that difficult to assume what happens next. After that night, I came home in tantrums and crying my eyes out. Everyone assumed I was just being spoiled. I never told anyone about that until i hit thirteen. At thirteen, I was in middle school, I had a few friends, and was overall dealing with everything pretty well. I had this one friend, she was older than me, and super comfortive. I always felt comfortable with her and I trusted her. She told me about an incident she had gone through that was similar to mine. So, I felt it would be okay and it would stay secret if i told her. It didn’t. She told the teacher which then went to the principal, which then led to my mom. I got called down to talk to the principal about the incident; the principal thought i was lying and just wanted attention. But, when my mom got there her opinion changed dramatically. My mom ran in and hugged me super tightly, and asked who did it. I told her and we left immediately and drove to the police station; which of course led to me retelling what happened to a bunch of officers, lawyers, judges, CPS workers, and therapists. It didn’t help me at all. If anything it made me feel so much worse. The entire school knew what had happened to me and I was humiliated so, I never went back to school after. Until high school. When I got to high school, I was even more shy than before, my social skills got terrible. I couldn’t really make friends. I did however manage to make two. They were awesome. I was having a great freshman year. But I had made a bad habit of making more guy friends than girls. Which got me in some drama of course. Yet, what I got was girls hating me for being friends with their boyfriends. I reinstated many times that i was not interested in that way to any of them multiple times. They didn’t believe me, so i was threatened by a group of students both boys and girls. If it were just words that they were doing I would have been able to handle it. Except, they wanted to hurt me physically. Anytime I was alone, there would always be someone ready to hurt me. So, I had to leave. I left my friends, I left a great point in my life. Again; I went back to being homeschooled. Now, we get to my junior year. I tried again,  I went to public school; the only difference this time was that I chose to go to an alternative school. It was smaller and the people that went there had there own plethora of issues. I felt comfortable and safe. I kept to myself and didn’t really make any friends. I focused on school, and just tried to finish quickly. Which is when my health started to act up. During the end of junior year, my kidneys started to cause me indescribable pain. I was walking to my fifth period, when I fell and started bawling my eyes out. I called my mom, and the nurse came to get me. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t move. I was bed ridden for a few weeks, then back to the hospital; then back to being bed ridden. When i finally got somewhere with the doctors they told me chemo would be my best option. And everyone knows when you do chemo there’s a likely chance you will lose your hair. Because I knew this would happen, I took it upon myself that I would have control and do it myself. So, I shaved off all my hair. Which leads us to now. I am a senior in high school. I’m starting college soon. I finally stopped therapy because I realized it did nothing good for me. Furthermore, right now I am all around doing so much better. Hi! My name is Crysten and this is my story so far.