I sat alone on a bench in the small park. I'm not sure why I was at the park or what drove me to sit down, but on that day I was glad that I did.

A woman, a complete stranger, sat down next to me on the bench and smiled warmly. I looked at her and could tell by her eyes that she had much experience dealing with the chaos of our ever changing world, yet there was a twinkle of hope flashing in her blue eyes.

"Hey there. What brings you to the park on this dreary day?" She asked with a sincere curiosity that I've never known before.

"Nothing really." I replied honestly. "I guess I just wanted to get out of the house for a while. I needed to think."

"Think about what?"

No one had ever shown an interest in my life so I was expectedly taken aback by her question. "Well," I began slowly, trying to piece my winding thoughts together. "I'm having a rough time and I was trying to think of a way that I could possibly catch a break."

"What's so rough? School? Work?" She asked me with a sly grin. "As a nurse I've seen more than my fair share of 'rough times'."

"I can't argue with that." I looked away and stared off into the distance until I felt her hand on my shoulder.

"C'mon kid, talk to me. I'm a great listener."

I looked back at her and for reasons that I can't explain I felt as though I could completely trust her. And I did.

"It all started back when I was only fourteen years old." I started my story with a somber tone.

"Fourteen is a tough time for everyone, especially girls." She spoke with the wisdom of loving mother.

"You're right," I agreed and looked down at my feet on the green grass. "but when you're forced to grow up overnight, to go from experiencing your very first day of high school to dealing with life and death in the real world, it's a painful transition that you can't go back from."

She patted my shoulder. "Tell me all about it. What happened?"

With a heavy sigh I told my story. The whole story:

"When I was fourteen, (my older brothers were seventeen and twenty-two); the night before I was to start my freshman year of high school, my father suffered a heart attack. The kind of heart attack that you doctors and nurses affectionately refer to as 'the widow maker'. The only reason he survived is because my father is a firefighter and EMT, he was on duty at the station when he went down. The idiot smoked himself right into a heart attack, even though he had been warned many times by many different doctors to stop smoking YEARS before his heart attack."

I cleared my throat a little and sat upright against the hard bench. "When my mom received the phone call she barged into the bathroom, when I was taking a shower, she told me what had happened and that she needed to go to the hospital. I watched as my mom rushed through the house gathering her purse, the car keys, leaving a note for my older brothers to read in case either of us didn't see them when the came home... And then she was gone."

"That evening I sat by the phone waiting for someone to call, but no one ever did. It was almost midnight when my mom came home. She told me that my father would need surgery, a quadruple bypass, and that she would be gone in the morning before I woke up. I couldn't sleep that night. I had to take a couple pills to get my mind to shut off. Barely six hours passed before my bedroom door was forced open by mom. She had somehow slept through her alarm and was now in a rush to get the hospital in time to see my father before he went under the knife."

"My heart was pounding out of my chest. I was nervous about starting high school, I was worried that before the day was over my mom would become a widow, I was scared about living a life where, if something went wrong, my father could've been in a vegetative state and in pain for weeks, if not years..."

It was hard for me to continue my story. The pain of that day was still fresh in my mind. It's been over 12 years and that day is still as vivid in my memory as any other moment I experienced since then.

"When I got to school the only person, aside from my older brother who was a senior at the time, who knew about my father's heart attack was my cousin. We're the same age but we didn't run in the same circles. I'm the 'weird girl' and always have been. She was a 'prep' who was too good to be attending our school. She briefly asked about my father but before I could answer she disappeared, God forbid one of her snobby friends saw her talking to a family member."

"I'm not sure why I never told my friends about what was happening that day. I guess it's because I knew they couldn't do anything to help or change the events that have taken place, but on that day I felt so alone."

"That bus ride back home was the longest of my life. I was never pulled out of class and updated on my father's condition, which can be considered a good thing, but I was still alone and lost in the dark."

I didn't want to keep talking but she insisted. "Let it out, don't hold it in anymore."

Taking a breath I continued on.

"When I walked in the front door the phone was ringing. I ran to answer it only to find a telemarketer on the other end. I hung up and checked for messages but all the messages were from bill collectors and more telemarketers. The house was a mess. My older brothers left after I did and they never bothered to clean up after themselves. I proceeded to clean the house up as quick and efficiently as I could. I brought in the mail, the newspaper, dusted, vacuumed the house, washed the dishes, took out the garbage, washed a load of laundry and made a small dinner. All the while I would stop to answer the phone, which for some reason on that day would not stop ringing and not once was it my mom or any other family member calling to see if they could help."

"At the time our internet used dial-up and I couldn't get online to do my homework because my mom might be trying to call. My first homework assignment was going to have to wait..."

Pausing I took another breath, the emotional pain was welling up.

This kind nurse brushed a lock of my brown hair away from my face. "It's okay. Keep going."

"That night when my brothers came home they never once asked about my father, my mom or even asked if I was okay. They spent their time after school hanging out with their friends and running around town. After walking in without a word they proceeded to eat the dinner I had made and left another mess in the kitchen for me to clean up. While I was washing the dishes, again, it was past nine o'clock in the evening, they told me to 'keep it down, we can't hear the TV'."

"It was at that moment I felt an odd combination of rage, hurt and loneliness that I hope no one will ever have to feel. My brothers didn't care. No one did."

"I wanted to stay awake and talk to my mom, but I was exhausted. At midnight I finally gave up trying to stay awake and went to bed. The next morning I found a note from my mom updating us on what happened and telling me that she loved me. I went to school like normal, but this time my mom had called the school and told them what was going on. She also warned them that when I get emotionally compromised I explode and it's never pretty."

"When I went to first period I was taken out of the class and into the hallway. My heart jumped in my throat. When they called me out of class my father was under the knife. To my relief and anger the teacher and counsellor just wanted to let me know they received the phone call from my mom. They scared the living hell out of me just to say they know what was going on. And that's all they did for me that day."

"Just like the day before when I came home from school the house was a mess thanks to my older brothers."

"I cleaned up, answer the phone and hung up on the telemarketers, and tried to do my homework to the best of my ability. I wanted to stay awake and talk to my mom but I couldn't keep my eyes open."

"When I woke up the next morning and realized that it had started out exactly as the other two: alone, confused, scared... I didn't want to go to school. But if something happened and my mom tried to reach me at school and I wasn't there I would've scared her out of her mind. I had to go."

"As soon as I sat down in first period and the bell rang I broke down. I cried..."

I stopped to wipe away a tear.

"I cried so hard and no one knew why. One person in the entire class asked me what was wrong, his name was John Pike, we never spoke outside of class before but on this day he wanted to help me. I was too emotional, too upset to talk to him and I wish I had."

"After a few minutes I managed to compose myself, to calm down and resume class like nothing happened. Once second period started, gym class, I broke down again. I sat on the bleachers in the gym and sobbed uncontrollably into my hands. My friend Kayla, who had no idea what was happening, sat next to me and hugged me as I wept like a helpless child. I could never bring myself to tell her even though I wanted to scream it from the mountain tops."

"Fortunately the gym teach escorted me out of class and to the student counsellor's office. Unfortunately our student counsellor was terrible at trying to comfort me."

"She actually told a freshman who was weeping in an inconsolable state of depression that these four years of high school were going to be the best of my life. If this was going to be the best time of my life, why should I even keep living? That was the first time I ever wanted to 'end' things. The first time I ever felt so weak, so helpless, so useless that I was convinced that the greatest thing I could ever do with my life would be to end it."

The nurse took my hand in hers. "I'm glad you didn't do it."

"After I left her office I went to my next classes and finished off the day like nothing happened. Everyone was giving me an odd look, trying to figure out why I had two emotional breakdowns, but no one, except John and Kayla, ever bothered to ask."

"The first week of school was only three days long, Wednesday through Friday, and that weekend was the strangest of my life. It was the first time I had seen my mom in three days and she told me about the surgery and that my father pulled through. But that he wouldn't be able to return to work for three months and that he needed 24 hour care. We couldn't afford a nurse and no one from the family would help us, so my mom had to quit her job to take care of him. For three months there was no income, but plenty of bills."

"Those bills are still coming in the mail to this day. I wish I could forgive my brothers for not being there for me and my mom when we needed them the most, but I can't. I cant trust them anymore. My father is still smoking. And I'm still waiting for the same chances at life my brothers were given, but I was denied. I was never given a car when I was in high school. I was never able to get my driver's license. I can't get a job, no one will hire me and I don't even get a 'thanks but no thanks'. I can't go to college because I don't have any money. I don't have any money because I don't have a job. I don't have a job because I never went to college."

"My life is a cruel paradox and no one seems to understand what I'm going through. They look at me and think that I lack ambition, that I'm lazy, that I don't care, but I do. I care about everything in my life more than they'll ever know."

"I have dreams, wonderful dreams, that I can only seem to achieve while asleep. But I'm not giving up. I refuse to give up. It may take me longer than expected to get to where I want to go, to become the better person that I want to be, and to live a life that doesn't make me weep when I open my eyes."

I turn and look at the nurse, I can feel the warm flow of my tears as they roll down my face. She also has tears in her eyes.

"Thank you for listening." That's all I could think to say.

"Thank you for not giving up." She looked at her watch. "I have to go back to work."

"Good luck. My name's Katie, by the way."

"I'm Dixie." She replied with a smile.

"Nice to meet you."

"Likewise."

-The End

*This story, aside from meeting Dixie McCall/Julie London, is real. This happened to me. I decided to share my story because I know I'm not the only one who's running on empty but still trying to keep going. You're not alone. Don't give up. Tell your story, you never know who will find it.