Life, right?

Everyone always says to embrace it, to live it and to love it, that we will never be as young as we are in this moment, to live with no regrets, that life is so precious.

This moment? This moment is a seventeen-year-old girl who has just had a baby.

This baby is now her whole entire world. The new mom's world has just been flipped upside down and around, plus one.

This baby, she's so precious and delicate, a lot like life, right? 

The new mom is left to raise this baby alone. Turning eighteen in a short two months; not only a mom, but now an adult. She's about to graduate high school. She works full-time and takes care of her baby.

This baby, she's growing. She's a toddler now. A toddler with a step-dad who is trying to fill the absence of the man who is rightfully supposed to be in the baby girl's life.

The new mom is now a new wife. She's a young, married mother who, as much as she hides it, is truly sad. In this moment, she wants to be something bigger, someone greater.

This moment? The toddler is not a toddler anymore, she is eight years old when her parents sit her down on a couch and her mother presents her with a necklace. A silver necklace that reads, "#1 Big Sister." 

So, that was it. She was going to be a big sister. In this moment, it was the greatest thing... ever.

A long nine months later, the not-so-new mom became a mom to another human being; a baby boy. 

The little girl's world was turned upside down and around, much like the mom's was when she birthed her first child eight years earlier.

Little did the eight-year-old know many hardships were going to come and that little boy was going to be all that she worried about.

This moment? Less than a year later, the little girl was taken out of church to be told that her most favorite person in the whole entire world had just left. She passed. Was gone. Forever.

Never was she the same again because a part of her was and always will be missing.

This moment? Fast forward a sad four years later to Halloween night when the children's parents brewed up a nasty fight and brought it into what was at a point in time, a "loving," "happy" home, and the little girl watched her whole world turn upside down and around, yet again. 

There was lots of screaming and yelling and harsh words that stung the twelve-year-old deeply because that was her mom and that was her dad. Blood? No, but that was her daddy and he was so mean to her mommy. 

Her daddy came in and sat on her bed, told her he loved her, kissed her forehead and said he was leaving.

This moment? Crying. Her best friend telling her it was going to be alright. Everything was going to be alright, right?

In this moment? She is now fourteen. She's overcome so much with her mom and took care of her little brother much of those two years. 

This fourteen-year-old is now about to meet her biological father. Thinking it was all going to be great and everything would be normal; everything would be alright, right? Like in that moment two years ago.

In this moment? The teen is now angry, bitter and jaded. Why wasn't he there? If he were, would all of those moments have happened? 

In this moment, she is a freshman. New school, new people, new atmosphere.

It was just a football game, right? No big deal.

Until this moment... when he drug her down an alley and did something that, once again, flipped the girl's world upside down and around.

In this moment? It's a police station. It's statements and tears. Crying. Her mother telling her it was all going to be alright. She was so precious and delicate, why would something like this happen? How could something like this happen?

In this moment, she's back at school. Never said a word, but everyone knows. She was horribly bullied. She was tormented. She was terrified.

She became a quiet person. Kept to herself. She didn't go out, she wasn't a normal teenage girl. She was a girl whose world has been flipped upside down and around so many times she couldn't see straight.

In this moment? She is now sixteen. Crying. Her best friend telling her it was all going to be alright. A different best friend telling her the same thing her old best friend told her when her daddy left. Except now, this best friend is telling her it is all going to be alright because the sixteen-year-old tried to kill herself last night.

The cops showed up. She was okay. But was she? Her health? In that moment, yes. Her mental state? Her? No.

In this moment, she is sitting in a doctor's office with her three best guy friends, waiting to see someone with an $80,000 piece of paper on his office wall who apparently can decide if someone is deeply sad or not. 

In this moment, she is diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety.

In this moment, she is prescribed anti-depressants.

In this moment, the mother who birthed that precious, delicate baby girl sixteen years earlier is now tired from staying up and worrying. Is this baby girl still precious and delicate? Is she okay? Will she ever be... okay?

In this moment, she just finished her sophomore year. She's sitting behind a computer screen filling out scholarship applications. Crying. Telling herself it is all going to be alright. Financial aide, scholarships and jobs. You can do this. You can do this, it is all going to be alright. 

In this moment, she wants to become something bigger, someone greater, just like her mother sixteen years earlier when she had a baby and a husband. She is young and the world is at her fingertips. She is infinite. Nothing can stop her.

In this moment? She's okay. I'm okay, mom. Everything is alright, just like you said, like my two best friends said. Finally, everything is alright.

In this moment, I just want to go to college. I want to succeed, to be happy, to make a change.

Life, right?

Life is full of hardships and aspirations. Life is full of precious and delicate babies, with people telling you to embrace it - life. Life is full of moments. We'll never be as young as we are in this moment. 

Those moments, this moment. Life, right?