The boy that I met at a Christian School in the middle of nowhere changed the way that I looked at love.

After my stepfather left, it left me with a void that I never noticed before. I felt this emptiness and unworthiness. He was gone, and he took my innocence, self-worth, and self-esteem. I no longer felt like a normal girl. I had this huge secret hovering over me.

Right before my stepfather left, we discovered that my mom was having seizures that were so consistent that she could no longer hide them from us. This illness would affect the next 5 years of our livelihood.

My mother reported Pastor to the authorities, and I remember being brought into a room with two investigators and asked all of these questions. It was humiliating to have to tell what he did in detail. The embarrassment made me feel like I would die. I begged my mom not to make me testify in court, and it all went away.

That January, me, my mom, and three brothers moved to Delaware. It was a familiar place that we would vacation to, often, but I never imagined actually moving there. It was a lot more suburban than Philly, but more multi-cultural than the small suburb of Delaware County that we’d lived in for the past three years.

Although it was an adjustment, it wasn’t hard for me and my brothers to make new friends in the neighborhood. When we were all together, it felt like I could actually be a kid.

A few months later, we ended up moving further South to Delaware, where she got a position working for a local church. I ended up going to the local high school for a few months, before going to the Christian School of the church my mom was playing for.

The school was predominantly white and had one black boy and another bi-racial family. The Assistant Principal gave us a tour, and kept bringing to our attention that Braheem, the one black student in the school was from Philly just like we were. All I could think was, I know how this is going to go…

On our first day of this Christian School, I was walking to my class. I looked into my brother’s classroom, and we locked eyes immediately. His mouth was wide open and all I remember saying was, “Here we go.” I knew that I would have to try my best to avoid him. He was loud and had a very strong personality, and I tried to avoid him like a plague.

Maybe a month after, he started sending me e-mails. I yelled at my brother because there was no way that he would’ve found that out if he didn’t tell him. One day, two girls were reading something addressed to me. I asked what it was, and it was a poem that he wrote me. This led to an argument between me and the girl, and her going to the bathroom crying.

I wrote him a note saying that I don’t like him that way and please stop sending me things. He stopped for a little while. Then one day, our house phone rings and Ephraim, my brother answers the phone and gives it to me. He says, “Please just talk to him.” I wanted to slap him! I took the phone, and we started talking. I shortly noticed how easy he was to talk to.

We were from two different worlds and bonded from our trauma. I fell hard for him. We would talk for hours about everything. We never went on dates, or really got to hang out anywhere outside of school, but we still enjoyed each other. It was the first time that I felt that after what I’d been through, there are people who would love me.

We dated for about three months, and after a stupid argument about who knows what, I broke up with him. Just like that, it was over, but the effects of our relationship would forever put an imprint on my life. At the tender age of 15, there was so much I didn’t know about love, but the connection that we had was genuine and beyond our years.