At the vulnerable age of 18 my father whom I had not seen or heard from since I was 2 years old called my mother late one evening in November 2004. He told her he was dying from cancer and wanted to meet me before it was too late. That same night my mother called me to her room and sat me down and shared this information with me. She told me he was living in Pennsylvania and was married to his 3rd wife. She told me he and his wife had offered us to come up to Pennsylvania for me to meet them. I decided that this was something I just had to do. My mother dropped everything and drove my sister, her and I all the way to Pennsylvania.
During the 4 to 5 days we stayed there it was a very emotional time for me. It was the first time in my life I had felt so much anger and love at the same time. I had never felt this way before that I could remember. All together I was only able to spend about 2 hours a day with him because his medication made him extremely tired. So there was not nearly as much time to get to no each other as I would have liked.
Just a few weeks after we were back home I got the call that my father had passed away in his sleep on December 16th 2004. After this everything around me seemed to spiral out of control. I had a lot of anger toward my mother. While dealing with my anger and sadness I stayed out late drinking and partying, I was doing very bad in college and was skipping classes, I was losing my jobs cause I did not show up or did not focus when I was there.
In October 2005 I found out my mother had gotten a check from my stepmother in Pennsylvanian. In my mind at the time I felt that I was entitled to some of this right then and I felt like running away with my problems. I wrote a check to myself for $4,000.00 out of my mother checkbook. The bank knew me and did not think twice about giving me the money. It did not take long for my mother to find out about this. She contacted the bank and the bank told her the only way to get her money back was to press charges and if she was not going to press charges they were. So my mother had no other choice but to press charges. I was arrested and charged with fraud on October 29th 2005.
I had to spend 30 days in the county jail while awaiting my court date. During this time I was meeting with my public defender and he told me the only real choice I had was to plead guilty. So that is what I did on November 30th 2005. The judge gave me time served and 2 years probation and $4,000.00 restitution due.
I was doing well on my probation for over a year and had almost paid off all my restitution and fees until I decided to make another stupid move and stole a pair of $13.00 shoes from a Department store. I was then charged with violating probation and was convicted and was given 2 more years of probation.
Since my felony conviction in 2005 I struggle daily to correct my mistakes. However, I have grown so much and have experienced so much more in life than most of the people I know. I also stay very positive about my current situation, because I know for a fact it is only current and not forever. In March 2011 probation had ended. Now there is nothing stopping me to accomplish my goals!
