Wanted

Fourteen years old and two thousand miles from home I realized something wasn't right in my life. I had run away from home two months before so that I'd be able to be "on my own." I found myself in Amarillo, Texas. I'd been running with a gang but now I found myself on the street. I feared the night. I found food in the dumpsters of restaurants until I learned to steal, and stealing became a way of life. It is the way I acquired my booze, my food, my cigarettes, and my clothing. I lived in the fear that some day I'd be caught. Sometimes I got sick to my stomach just thinking about it. It occurred to me that perhaps my life wasn't normal but the thought would soon pass. This was life as I knew it.