2026 – Alicia Stoll – Manila High School HS

You Only Live Once, So, Why Not?

How can one be born into chaos, addiction, instability, and all odds against them and still choose a different path? I have spent my life searching for the answers to that question. While trying to answer that for myself,  I learned many important lessons that helped shape me into the person I am today. 

I spent a lot of my early years feeling alone and different than others. I grew up as the only Hispanic person in my family, with a Mexican father not in the picture. Living in extreme poverty and watching my mother struggle trying to support her drug addiction, my childhood was about just trying to get by, not actually living. When I was five years old, I got put into foster care, which didn’t seem much better. Although drugs didn’t surround me at the time, foster care didn’t feel like much of an improvement.  I was moved from home to home with people who seemed like they didn’t care. I was alone in the world, and I couldn’t even imagine a future that wasn’t about just surviving. Then, at eight years old, I was adopted.

While I was introduced to a life with people who loved me and allowed me to just be a kid, I resented the feeling. I felt guilty that these people were taking me in and that I didn’t deserve it. I still had the feeling that my future wasn’t meant to be much different than my mother’s. People looked at me with pity, and I constantly heard things like, “Let’s just hope she doesn’t turn out like her mom,” and it was discouraging. It still seemed like people didn’t expect much of me, and I didn’t know if I did either. After all, I was a drug baby and was raised in the same drug-filled life. 

I spent much of my teenage years still struggling with my sense of identity. I even fell into substance abuse myself, which made it worse. Then, in April 2025, my family received a call. My mother, who no one had heard from for years, was in the hospital in Denver, CO, on life support. She had suffered from a fentanyl overdose. My family and I drove to visit her, and I was shocked by the woman in the hospital bed, who was supposedly my mother. I swore right then and there that I would not let this be my future.

I realized that the only person who could change my future into what I wanted was me. I started putting a lot more into school, my sports, my relationships with my family, and even joined my county’s Substance Abuse Prevention Committee.  My experiences helped me develop skills such as perseverance, empathy, and independence.  One of the biggest things I have learned, looking back at my life, is that anyone is capable of anything, no matter their background. I also started looking at other people in a different light, recognizing that everyone has a story and shouldn’t be judged for things they can’t control. The final, most important lesson I learned was the importance of life. Losing my mother and watching her struggles with addiction shifted my perspective on my own life. I became more grateful for the blessings in my life and looked at challenges as opportunities for growth.

I finally found the answer to my question: why choose a different path? And the answer to that is, why not? I used to live by the saying, “you only live once,” as a way to do whatever I wanted. I still think that phrase applies, even more so, but in a different way. You only live once, so why not become the best version of yourself you could be?