Monique Dantzler

A Change in Heart

When you're a young girl, you dream of the fairy tale life and growing up to see your prince charming. It's not the reality of life that comes to your mind as a child, but the dream and the notion that things will turn out to be alright—or at least that's what I thought. At the age of 16, I was raped and the scare still haunts me to this day. I didn't know, one year after, that my past was going to come back and do it again. When I was 17 going on 18, I got pregnant from my attacker. At the time, I was living with one of my older siblings and I did know how I was going to explain to her about the little innocent angel I was carrying. I wasn't sure to keep the child or not, but everything in me said to keep it. Not many women would keep anything, no matter what it may be, that will remind them of the horror and violation they have endured. Instead, they either give it away for adoption or have an abortion. By making this decision, I mustered the courage to notify my sister. With one quick yell and a scream, she told me to get out of her house. Alone and pregnant, I decided to go to my other sister's house. With no hesitation, she took me in and I stayed with her, but that came out to be jumping into the frying pan, but missing it and jumping into the fire. Although my sister was loving and caring enough to take us in, she was dealing with her own issues that caused her children to be taken away.