Leaving Ann Arbor was challenging. I loved my hometown. All my friends lived there and all I knew was within those borders. I didn’t want to stretch or change—, so I rebelled against it, hard. Though my new neighborhood was beautiful, it was full of kids who had too much time on their hands and who drove nicer cars than their school teachers did. So when they wanted to have fun, they could afford it. Strangely enough, it was easier for someone my age to get drugs than it was to buy alcohol so I went with the flow and followed suit like everyone else. I slowly became a statistic. I’d met dozens of other people in my same position—, lost and without purpose.