My first real job came when I was fifteen.

I was a cashier at a small deli located directly across the street from the Catholic school I had attended as a child. Every single day, it stood there, the church steeple rising high into the sky, the large stained glass windows, staring back at me, reminding me of the lands I escaped to while mass was going on. The bell, locked away in the tower, that rang every single hour on the hour. It a constant reminder of the prayers I once whispered, begging for someone to save me.

Before every shift, I would take a deep breath, walk through the deli doors, and glance one last time at that steeple I had once loved.

Then I would go to work. That job became my freedom.

Four hours a day that belonged to me.
Four hours away from her.
Four hours where I could almost pretend I was a normal teenager.

The truth is, I stole five hundred dollars from her mother. At the time, I told myself it was money I would use to leave that house for good. Money that would buy me a way out.

But I never left. I had nowhere to go. I never ventured out into the real world. All I knew was home, the school, and her mother’s house. Once in a while when I was bad, I went with my dad. But every day, she drove me the same exact way, down the same exact streets, and park exactly the same way before heading into my prison cell. Once I realized, I had no one to trust, no where I could run, I had tried getting my mom to take me, but she couldn’t. Tried getting my foster mom to take me. She couldn’t. Tried getting my friends parents to adopt me. No one would. I was trapped. She had them all scared, of her. And those who weren’t, believed her. Believed her lies. Her “tone.”

So instead, I spent it on my friends, on moments of feeling accepted, wanted, included. I couldn’t bring anything home anyway. Nothing that might raise questions. Nothing that might bring more punishment.

She always told people the horrible things I had done. But she never told anyone why. She never told them that just days before I took that money, I had been expelled from school after four girls jumped me, and I fought back.

I had taken a knife with me to school after that. Not because I wanted to hurt anyone, but because I was determined that no one was ever going to make me feel that powerless again.

I was walking out of detention one afternoon, with my brother beside me when they came up from behind. It’s funny. She always told everyone “She spends every day in detention.” She never told them WHY I was in detention. And why her precious son, was sitting right next to me.

I was in detention for being late, as usual, after being tortured for two hours prior to school. We were late, every single day. It wasn’t a “were you late today” it was a “how late were you today?” Every single day, she would wake me up, screaming, yelling, throwing things, breaking things, pinching my ears,

One of them hit me with a Pepsi bottle. And that was it. The red came flooding in. The rage. The beast.

Every hit I had ever taken, every moment of fear, every ounce of pain, it all always exploded at once. I couldn’t see clearly anymore. I had no control over what I was doing.

Something else had taken over. Every single time I was even confronted now.

A survival instinct so raw and primal that I didn’t even recognize myself inside of it.

The next thing I remember, someone was pulling me off one of the girls. By then, her face was covered in blood. I had been slamming her head back and forth against the concrete ledge of a doctor’s office flower bed.

She needed surgery after that.

The following day, I returned to school prepared for retaliation. I brought the knife again. This time, someone saw me putting it into my locker. Maybe part of me even wanted them to see it.

Maybe I wanted the message to be clear. Come for me again. I’m ready.

That is what childhood abuse can create.

It can build a beast inside of you, a force that is not born from cruelty, but from survival. A force you never asked for, but one you must eventually learn to control.

Because that beast can destroy your life just as easily as it once protected it.

So you learn.

You learn to be stronger.
You learn to be smarter.
You learn to be braver.

And most importantly…
You learn that no matter how dark the past has been, you cannot give up on the person you are still becoming.

Working that job began to change something inside of me.

For the first time in my life, I had a sense of control. It wasn’t a big job. It wasn’t glamorous. It was ringing up sandwiches, counting change, wiping down counters, and smiling at customers I would probably never see again. But it was mine. She thought of it as punishment. Taking every penny I earned. But she didn’t see it gave me time. Time to heal. Time away from the torment in school, and the torment in her prison. It’s funny. She always called herself, “the warden.” What she never realized was, I know. I lived in her prison.

Every dollar I earned felt like a tiny piece of independence.
Every shift I completed felt like proof that I could exist outside of the chaos I had grown up in.

There is something powerful about earning your own way when you have spent your childhood feeling powerless. It teaches you that your effort matters. That your time has value. That you can contribute to the world instead of just surviving inside of it.

I started to see that there was a life beyond the walls I had been trapped in for so long.

A life where I could make decisions.
A life where I could move forward.
A life where I could slowly build an identity that was not defined only by pain.

It didn’t happen all at once. Nothing about healing ever does.

But little by little, working gave me structure. It gave me routine. It gave me moments of normalcy that I had never truly experienced before. I learned how to speak to people without fear. I learned how to handle responsibility. I learned that I was capable of more than just fighting to survive.

In many ways, that small deli job became the beginning of a much larger realization.

I was not a victim of my past.
I was someone with the ability to create a future. And sometimes, the first step toward freedom is not a dramatic escape.

Sometimes it is simply showing up, clocking in, and proving to yourself, day after day, that you are stronger than you ever thought.