She sat in the passenger’s side of her dad’s white truck, imagining all of the emotions gorging through her mother’s insides. Her mother standing in her bedroom, looking over her favorite clay duck that her grandfather made her when she was little.

She took a deep breath in and watched her breath fog up the glass, her face a scorching red with waterfalls streaming down her face.

“She’s going to hate me,” Kaylee thought, “I can’t do this.”

As a child, she had an average mother. Her mother took pictures of her child and enjoyed watching Kaylee experience her childhood like any mother would.

As Kaylee started growing older, she started noticing her mother becoming different. Her and her stepfather began to believe that her mother was bipolar.

“She made you feel like you meant absolutely nothing,” Kaylee said, “I couldn’t handle it anymore.”

She was driven down to her dad’s house over a weekend and told her dad how she didn’t want to live with her mom anymore. Her mother had made her feel as if she were useless and she wanted to be freed from that.

For weeks, her mother and father fought over custody and her mother repeatedly told them that she would refuse to give her father the rights. She believed her daughter needed to come home.

The CPS officer that was working with her family made Kaylee feel as though she didn’t believe what Kaylee was saying. There were things in that house that Kaylee knew she shouldn’t have been going back to but the CPS officer only believed that Kaylee was a rebellious teenager.

Without access of records from her previous school and the support of her CPS officer, Kaylee was forced to come home.

“People don’t understand that just because we are not as old as an adult,” Kaylee said, “We still understand when things are wrong and we still know when we’re being treated unfairly.”

While she was at her dad’s house, she already began to make new friends and became closer to her younger sister.

“One hundred percent, I would have stayed with my dad,” Kaylee said, “Sometimes a fresh start would be nice.”

Throughout the years, Kaylee has noticed her mother becoming less strict and hurtful, which she is thankful for. Her and her mother have become closer over the time and she feels as though her mother is returning to a former version of herself.

If you are facing similar experiences, remember that you are not alone. You can either visit your counselors during the school day or contact them here.