My life begins with my first footstep at the age of 9  months old in the hot crop fields of Texas after crawling behind my parents while they labored under the hot Texas sun, living in a shack by the Rio Grande River empty of everything called basic human needs, because such was our poverty. I went barefoot to school, cold and hungry in raggedy torn clothes and learned that if I could learn to read and write, I could make it in the world, which I did, only to face the haunts of survival a young girl could live in the streets of my hometown working at a young age by force to help support my single parent household. I learned the hard way to crawl out of poverty and met a dreadful fate along the way where adults took advantage of my innocence and poverty and learned to make decisions at a  young age by keeping my baby against my mother's consent at the age of 15, facing the hard turmoil of young motherhood at age 16 in one of the poorest regions of the State of Texas, hoping to one day know the feeling of flushing a toilet and washing dishes at a sink and having indoor plumbing and running water, because in Texas when you are poor, you starve and it was until I was 18 years old in 1972, that I actually flushed our own toilet in our first home and we got our first washing machine, and no longer would I wash clothes outside on a washing board in the cold dreaded winters.  I met every fate a young girl could meet in the dark streets of my hometown where adults took advantage of me and I had to find a way to feed my family and learned that unless I crawled out of poverty the only way I could, there was no other way because few were the helping hands that pulled me out of my nightmare and many were the abuses that crushed me and forced me to become what I am today, a living memory of a terrible past I don't wish on anyone. I learned the hard way that unless one works hard to overcome the obstacles we  face in our destiny, nothing will fall from the sky and understanding how to accept reality and wait till I grew up, was one of the hardest things to experience and do.  Today I live in a world few understand enjoying the isolation of lonliness because I feel safer away from a cruel world that hurt me beyond anyone's imagination and have learned how to deal with  what destiny threw my way, and picked up where I left off sometimes feeling that only my body has aged because my mind remained in the poverty of a young girl who struggled to become what I am today.