What is life? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary it's defined as 'the ability to grow, change, etc., which separates plants and animals from things like water or rocks'. Besides thinking that definition could be a lot better, I believe that life is what you make of it. That's basically what I have done, for if I hadn't, I think I would be long gone by now.

My journey started on December 23rd, 1987, in Vancouver, British Columbia. My parents were also Canadian, as far as I know. I don't recall much about them. The only memory I have is of my mother, who I remember was a lemur like me, and it's the first memory I can recall having. I remember I was five, and I was sitting on the kitchen floor at my mom's feet as she stood in front of the stove preparing a meal, when for some unknown reason she threw the frying pan she was using across the room and through the closed window, the glass shattering and sending shards everywhere. She then sat by me and held me in a tight hug, stroking my hair furiously. I did not know it then, but that was the start of her descent into madness. I don't know how many episodes she had similar to this, but the only other one I remember is the one that marked my life the most, in a way no child should ever have to go through.

It was winter, and the air was chilly like it always was in Canada during that time of year. I was in my room playing with my dolls, minding my own business, when I heard a crash coming from my parents' bedroom followed by a deep-toned scream, which I recognized as it being my dad's. Before I knew it my mom had run into my room and picked me up before I could react.

"Come along, sweetie!" she said as she quickly walked across the house. "We're heading out!"

"Mommy, what was that noise?" I asked innocently. "And where's daddy?"

"Oh, that was me. I dropped a vase." She replied, her face contracted in the creepiest smile I had ever seen. "Your father is asleep right now, but I'm sure he'll be happy to clean up the shards when he wakes up." I noticed her right eye twitch as she said that.

Not long after we were in our red minivan, my mom driving across town unusually fast. I sat in the backseat, wondering where we were going, but all my doubts were answered when for some ungodly reason my mom decided to speed up and throw the car into the ocean with us in it, making her bang her head onto the steering wheel in the process, knocking her out cold.

I started to cry desperately, panic setting in, as the ice-cold water started to enter the car and the walls compressed as we descended deeper into the darkness. Luckily for me my mom had unknowingly left one of the windows open and I managed to swim out, but we were already too deep for me to manage to reach the surface. I tried my best to swim up, but my arms were to week and soon I was starting to run out of air. I don't remember what happened next; only that my vision blurred more and more, and then I blacked out.

I could hear voices around me as I started to regain consciousness. I felt freezing cold, but I wasn't wet anymore, and I felt that I was lying down on something very comfortable, covered by what seemed to be a blanket. I slowly and weakly opened my eyes, my gaze falling upon a young raccoon couple and their daughter. Later I found out that they were passing by at the time the incident took place and after rescuing me they took me to the hospital to be observed.

The two adults seemed to be in their late twenties, the wife with a protuberant stomach, indicating that she was close to giving birth. She seemed kind and gentle, with elegant small thin-framed glasses and short black hair. The husband had a stern look on his face, but you could see kindness in his eyes. He also had neatly-combed black hair. The daughter, on the other hand, seemed to be displeased with my presence. I could see some anger in her gaze, which made me rather uncomfortable. She had raven hair, just like her parents, only hers was long and reached about her lower back. Then I noticed I was in a hospital bed, hooked up to the heart monitor, and that made me feel confused.

I tried to talk, but the wife quickly placed a hand on my shoulder, as if trying to stop me.

"You shouldn't waste your breath. You are very weak, right now." She declared, giving me a warm smile. Her tone was soft and calming, and it somehow made me feel safe. But that's when I remembered something that almost made me jump off the bed.

"Mommy! Where's my mommy?" I asked desperately. They two looked at each other, in a way I'll never forget. The wife took my hands in hers and squeezed them gently, looking deep into my eyes with a look of concern.

"Sweetie…" she started, seeming to not be sure about how to verbalize her message. "…your mother… she's not coming back." I felt my heart sink.

"What do you mean? Where did she go?" I managed to inquire, my voice cracking.

"She's gone to a better place…"

"Will I ever see her again?"

"No, sweetie. I'm sorry…"

I broke down crying at that moment, somewhat in disbelief. She held me in a hug and I cried even more violently into her chest.

"Don't worry, it'll be OK…" she whispered to comfort me. "We'll take care of you."

And they did. Just a week later the adoption papers were signed and I moved in with them. Their names were David and Rose Winters, and their daughter's name was April. David was a lawyer, one of the best in the region, and Rose was a Social Worker, which helped with the whole adoption process. They were thirty-three and thirty-two, respectively, and they seemed very united as a couple. They took me in as their own, and from the first day I set foot in their house they treated me like I was their daughter. April, who was ten at the time, despised me completely. It seemed like her goal was to make my life a living nightmare. To this moment I still don't know why she hates me so much.

Right before being released from the hospital and moving in with the Winters, the doctor told us that the incident I had experienced had weakened my heart, which compromised my entire circulatory system. Since my arteries were extremely sensitive, he advised me stay off any kind of fat, including animal, which lead me into becoming a vegetarian at a very tender age. Rose would make me protein-rich veggie meals and normal dishes for the rest of the family without even thinking twice about it. She has always been a caring mother, even if we weren't blood-related.

A few nights after the incident I started reliving the whole ordeal through my dreams. I would have very realistic night terrors where I would be back in the car and my mother was launching us into the ocean again. I would wake up screaming and crying violently every night, with the whole family having to come to my room in order to calm me down. I still suffer from those dreams up to this day, no matter how much help I have received to try and make them disappear.

About three months after my adoption, Rose gave birth to a baby girl, whom she gave the name of Violet. Unlike what would be expected, Violet was born with darkish-red hair, as opposed to her entire raven-haired family. Rose justified that with the fact that her father was a fox and that she got his genes. Against all odds, Violet took a great shine to me, and became the only best friend I had throughout my childhood. We were inseparable, and we still get along great to this day.

As soon as I started Elementary School I loved to learn. I have always been a good student, even if that gave me the fame of being a nerd. The only downside to school was that I never trusted anyone to as much as come near me. I was always worried that other people would hurt me like my biological mother tried to. I would always isolate myself and people just thought I was an antisocial shut-in who didn't want to interact with anyone. That and the fact that I was terribly shy didn't help me make any friends. My only friend was Violet, and that was just at home. The only times we were in school together were when she was in the first grade and I was I in the sixth, and when she was in the ninth grade and I was in the twelfth.

After observing me in my first week of school, my teacher called over a meeting with my stepparents to discuss my lack interaction with the other students, and she suggested that I should see the school's Guidance Counselor, Mr. Rorschach. I would see him every day after school, and he would help with my people skills. I can't count how many times I cried in that tiny office, but little by little I was able to open up to people, even if they didn't want anything to do with me, all because of him. He was a good man, and he must have been the one who motivated me to follow in his footsteps.

Also after just a few days of school, I started having a lot of pain in my chest from time to time, and, after one day passing out in the middle of class, David and Rose took me to the hospital to find out what was going on with me. Turned out I suffered from Prinzmetal's angina, a syndrome typically consisting of cardiac chest pain that occurs in cycles. He told us that it had been most likely triggered by the incident I had experienced the previous year, and prescribed me some nitroglycerin pills that I should take whenever I felt chest pain. It mostly happens whenever my heart has to beat faster, whether I am angry, stressed or excited.

After Violet was born, David and Rose decided that they had had enough kids for their own sake, but, surprisingly enough, a month before I turned nine Rose discovered she was pregnant again. She gave birth to another girl, for some reason, which they named Francine. Rose would call her their 'little accident' for fun in her first days. The newcomer ended up being very rebellious, much unlike Violet, who was an exemplary daughter and an avid student, just like me. Their youngest decided her name was 'lame' when she was still very young, so she started calling herself Frankie, even though we kept telling her that Frankie was short Frances, and not Francine. Eventually it stuck, and to this day everybody calls her Frankie.

In my thoughts about what had happened to me when I was five, I had always wondered what really had happened to my dad. I never saw him that day, but it was possible that my mom had been lying about the whole jar thing and about how he was sleeping. I thought and thought about it, until one day, at age thirteen, I discovered the gruesome truth. Me and Violet were playing in the attic with Frankie, who was four at that time, when I somehow tripped and fell on a big cardboard box full of old newspapers. There were who knows how many boxes of who knows what in that attic, but for some reason I had to fall on that one. When I got up and looked down at it I saw something that took back my seven years of therapy: the first newspaper on the pile had the same date as my incident, and under a photo of what I recognized as being the vehicle in which my biological mother launched us into the ocean it read 'Crazed schizophrenic housewife murders her husband and tries to drown herself in her car with her five-year-old daughter.' All I remember doing after seeing that was falling onto the floor, hugging my legs tightly against my chest and crying violently. Violet had to run and call Rose, who took me to my room and gave me an anti-anxiety pill. I fell asleep not long after, but I could never erase that sentence from my mind.

I only managed to open up the most to other people when I started High School, but even that was a chore. Besides being pegged as a nerd once again, April was the school's cheerleader, AKA the most popular girl at school, and she still wouldn't take it easy on me. She made fun of me any time she could, and made sure others joined her. And she had all the reasons to. During my senior year in Junior High I hit puberty in the worse way possible: acne. And lots of it. That and the fact that I had been wearing braces since age eleven made me a target for the worst kind of mockery. Pizza Face, Railroad Mouth, Brace Face, she would attack me with all of those and more. She even called me Granny sometimes, just because of my snow-white hair. And the fact that she was popular just made it spread so that everybody else would make fun of me. I was lucky enough that I got my braces removed in the eleventh grade and my acne cleared up in time for college, but it couldn't take back years of social torture.

As soon as I turned sixteen I wanted to get my driver's license, but not to drive a car. I had been fascinated with motorcycles ever since I was a kid, and I was determined to be able to drive one someday, despite my parents' insistence that they were too dangerous. So when the time came, I decided to compromise and get a motorcycle license, but to drive scooters, which were less dangerous than actual motorcycles. Unlike what I thought, I aced my driving exam at the first try and got my license right away. The next day I was surprised with a beautiful brand new dark-blue Vespa scooter in my driveway. David and Rose said that I had earned it, and that was the day I started calling them 'Mom' and 'Dad'.

After graduating from High School with honors, I enrolled myself in the local community college, but never got a chance to actually attend any classes, because only a few weeks before starting I felt a pain in my chest so must sharper than usual, that I only remember being in my room right before I lost my senses. I woke up a few hours later in a hospital bed, where I was told I had just had a heart attack and that I had to be operated right away. I got a triple bypass, but, unlike what I was strongly hoping for, they couldn't cure my heart disease, which meant it would continue to manifest itself. The doctor told me to take it easy and stay at home for some time. Rose, being the a-little-too-careful mother she was, didn't let me continue my studies until four years later, when I finally convinced her that I was feeling much better.

Desperate for a breather from all the smothering I got at home, I decided to enroll in a college far FAR away from there, and after searching the Internet for a while, I found a school that had all that I wanted: Elmore Community College. It had a great Psychology program, which was what I wanted to major in, and it was in the States, which meant I would be miles from home. David and Rose weren't very happy about it, but they realized I was old enough to make my own decisions, and supported me by giving me money for my plane ticket and an advance on my tuition. A month later I was off, and I didn't regret it one bit.

My college experience was even better than I could ever expect. I started being social from day one and got along great with everyone. I continued to be an enthusiastic student, especially since I was learning about what I love the most. Even though Rose and David sent me money every month to pay my tuition, I started working nights at a karaoke bar to pay most of it myself.

I lived in a nice little dorm at campus with the same roommate for three years. Her name was Olivia, and we became best friends. She was the first real friend outside my family I had ever had, and we were inseparable, that is until one day, a week before the end of our third year of college. She had gone to a party somewhere outside the school grounds and I had stayed in because I had to study for an exam. From what I was told she was coming out of the party when she was run over by a drunk driver. I only found out the next morning, when I realized she hadn't been home all night and asked another girl who had been at the party with her. I was completely devastated, and wasn't able to talk to anyone for days.

At the start of my senior year they gave me a new roommate. I honestly can't remember her name, but I remember she was an out of control junkie who injected herself right in front of me and then went on crazy drug-induced hysteria fits, running around the dorm screaming and making it impossible for me to get any work done. That and the fact that that place brought back too many memories of Olivia was all it took for me to decide to get an apartment outside the campus. I had enough money set aside from both my parents and my monthly paychecks to find a small place to live, so I set in search of one. I spent a whole weekend looking at different apartments, until I found one that was just right for me. It was close to college and the rent was right on my price range, so after paying the real estate agent and signing the insurance contract, I gathered my stuff and moved into my new home.

Early in my senior year, the dean had informed all the students that in order to graduate we had to undergo a three month internship in our field of interest, but with all the work in and out of school I had, I only remembered the start looking for a place a month before we had to start. Feeling a bit in panic, I searched for local schools on the Internet. If I wanted to become a Guidance Counselor, which I did, that was where I needed to go. My first goal was an Elementary School, but because the deadline to find an internship spot was near, I just picked the first school that popped up on the search results: Elmore Junior High. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but I thought that if I could succeed there, it would be a great thing to have on my résumé.

Entering the school's website, I found their phone number right away, which I instantly dialed on my cell phone. After a few seconds of waiting, I was answered by a deep male voice, a little too formal for my liking.

"Elmore Junior High, Principal Brown speaking."

"Yes, hello." I began, my voice a tad shaky with the nerves I was feeling. "My name is Leela Winters, I am a student at Elmore Community College, and I would like to know if you would accept me as an intern at your school."

"I see. Well, we don't normally provide that kind of situation here, but I guess it's always a good time to start." he replied. I sighed, distancing my phone a few inches from my face so he couldn't hear me. "So, exactly in which area do you wish to intern in?"

"Well, I'm majoring in Child Psychology to pursue the career of Guidance Counselor, so I would like to work in that area, if that would be possible."

"I don't see why not, but let me transfer the call to our school's Guidance Counselor so you can ask him." he put me on hold before I could protest. I have always hated to be put on hold. It annoys me so much!

After what seemed like forever, I heard a click and a different voice on the other side. It was also male, but softer and soothing. Definitely more pleasant to the ear.

"Hello?"

"Uh, yes, my name is Leela Winters and I'm a student at Elmore Community College." I repeated myself, simply as a formality.

"Ah yes, Principal Brown just told me about you." he declared before I could finish my sentence. He sounded somewhat enthusiastic. "You want to undergo an internship in my field of work, right?"

"Well, yes, if that's possible. You must be the Guidance Counselor, right?"

"Indeed I am. My name is Steve Small." he replied. I wrote down his name so I wouldn't forget it. "I personally don't see any problem with having you as my intern, but what if we set up an interview just for the heck of it?" he sounded so nice. I doubt anyone could ever disagree with him.

"Sure." I checked my agenda, looking for a day without any appointments. "The only free weekday I have is two weeks from today. Is that OK?"

"Sounds great." he said, once again in his enthusiastic tone. "How about at noon thirty? The kids are off to lunch at that hour and it's the time of day I'm less busy."

"Yeah, OK." I wrote the time down. "I'll see you then! Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity!"

"Not a problem! If you ask me, we could sure use some more young people in our staff."

We shared a laugh and said our goodbyes, making me eager for the day when I would meet my new mentor in person.

And that's it for my life story. It's the day before my internship interview, and I couldn't be more excited about it. I guess I did this whole reflection on my past as a part of figuring out of what I'm going to do for here on out. I've had it pretty rough, but I guess those experiences are what's going to help me decide what I will do during the rest of my life. I don't know if my internship is going to be a good experience or not. Heck, for all I know it could turn out to be a big disaster, though I seriously hope not. Whether it goes great or not, it will determine part of my future and where I'll be going from here. I both fear and yearn for my future, but I'll just live my life one day at a time.

Until then, this is me.

Leela Winters

AUTHOR'S NOTE (PLEASE READ)

So this is Leela's life story. I've wanted to write it so you guys could know some more about her, so here it is. =)

For those who are wondering, the cover image is Leela at age twelve.

I don't really have that much more to say... I hope you enjoyed reading this, and don't forget to review. ;)

*brofist*

~LeelaSmall