RING!!! The school bell rang. Every single kid running to their buses joyfully and all excited that they can finally go home. But i was never like that. i loved school because it was the safest place on earth for me. other kids ran home to safety and loving parents. i would stay in school for as long as i could. sometimes, i would bring my sleeping bag to school and hide from the janitors until the light went out in the school. then i would turn on all the lights in the library and begin reading. i would read all night long until i fell asleep on my sleepingbag. i couldnt go home. i wasnt safe there.it was never safe there. whenever id go home, my mother would beat me. sometimes for a reason she made up on her own or sometimes for no reason at all. she would beat me all night if she could. but my dad ususally came home later on at night so thats when she had no choice but to stop punching, beating me, throwing me down stairs, whipping me with my fathers belts. i would not dare tell me father because if i did she said she would kill me. she would say "If you tell him, ill beat you until you cry, make you cry until you bleed, and make you bleed until you die!" i had so many bruises and so many scars. so many stitches and so many cuts. where could i go. what could i do. my own father could do nothing for me while my own mother brutally beat me daily. why should a child have to go through something like this. why should a child not feel safe in his own home? why should anyone have to endure any of the pain i endured? its not fair. no child should have to go through the devastating process of child abuse. the fear in the eyes of a child who doesnt have a safe home, a safe mother or father, a safe life, just isnt right. Justice has to be served! And by someone who really understands what its like! Thats why i volunteer at a childrens runaway shelter. to help those who lived lives of abuse and fear. i do everything in my power to help them not fell like runnin away is an option, even when i know first hand, it may be the ONLY option. i teach them to rise up and be the adults and hopefully be the parents their parents could never be. so Justice will not only be served, but it will be taught to the children of the future who will rise up against the world and change their lives forever.