The worst thing a parent could ever do to their child is to get divorced. I had a close family friend named Angelic who was encountering problems where she needed a friend to reach out to her. Her parents had just gotten out of a bad divorce and Angelic started doing drugs to help get herself through it. The night I found out about her use of drugs I was 13 and it was a day I would never forget.
Angelic was at my house and she looked different. She was always a good, Christian girl and she had very strict beliefs. When she came over that one day it had looked like she was a different person and she had gone against everything she believed in. She had piercings all over her face; on her nose, her lip and on her ears. As she spoke, a billow of smoke clouded around me. She looked less lively and her attitude changed as well. She wasn’t the happy, loving girl I knew. That night I asked her, “Angelic, what’s been going on with you? What happened to you?” “Nothing’s wrong with me, stop worrying!” was her reply.
Suddenly, tears were streaming down her face like I’ve never seen before. I thought I had offended her in some way but Angelic was crying out of her own guilt and loneliness. She confessed to me all that had happened to her. After her parents’ divorce, she was living with her mother, who also had been dealing with cancer. Her mother was strict and had a lot on her plate, which meant she wasn’t really looking after Angelic as much as she used to. Everyday there was fighting amongst the both of them. Angelic wanted more freedom; she also wanted nothing to do with her mother. After months of arguing with her mother, Angelic decided she would move in her with her father who was a lot less strict.
Her father let her go out every night, including school nights. Since she had moved, she started hanging around the wrong crowd of people. They got her into all sorts of drugs and alcohol. Her parents’ divorce had hurt her so badly that she thought the only thing to do was to resort to drug use. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She made me swear that I couldn’t tell a soul. I felt trapped and scared. I wanted to help Angelic and tell someone all that I heard. I knew that if I told someone she would lose all the trust that she put in me. After all, I was the closest friend to her. I just tried convincing her to stop and I spent more time with her to keep her away from the drugs. My advice did no good because as many times as I tried to make her stop what she was doing, she continued. There was nothing I could do except to be a good friend and hope for the best of her.
Later on that year, I invited her over on the same day that my uncle was coming over who happened to be a priest. The minute she walked into my house and saw my uncle, I saw those same tears that were streaming down her face when she had told me about her problems. She took the priest aside and told him everything she had done. After that day Angelic was a new person. I saw relief on her face where there used to be grief. She had completely changed and maturely handled her dysfunctional family problems. It’s amazing how one person could have such a great impact on another’s life; my uncle had saved her and freed me of the trapped feeling I had felt. We have drifted apart because she has moved away and is now living with her mother in Atlanta. I think about her often and hope she continues on the right path.