I was going into my senior year at a small private high school. I had many friends and a long-term boyfriend at the time; however, our relationship was not stable.

The young people we work with are forced to live in a culture of hate which continues churning poisonous rhetoric and making our world unsafe. Though youth are leading the movement to end white supremacy and gun violence, their efforts are thwarted by politicians and pundits who treat human beings as expendable. 

Advocates for Youth and Trojan are opening the annual application window for The Condom Collective (formerly known as the Great American Condom Campaign), a youth-led grassroots movement to make condoms available to every student who needs them. The Condom Collective will provide colleges who apply with free condoms to promote sexual health and make their communities a better place.

Things just aren’t what they are in the movies.

I kept dreaming he would show up at my doorstep with flowers and beg me not to do it.