You know that one girl who swallows all her feelings? That girl who covers her pain with the great smile she has?

Well, that’s me, Jessica Monique De La Mora. I am 17 years old. I have a mother and father like any other girl. My family is from Guadalajara, Mexico, and I was born and raised in Venice, California.

Little does anyone know, once you open me up, you will find my deepest pain and the true me. I am not really like every other girl.

Wouldn’t it be nice to say that your mother is your best friend and you are Daddy's little princess? I can only imagine how awesome that would be.

My mother is Esmeralda Jimenez. She is a great mother, and I wouldn’t ask for anyone else. But she isn’t my best friend because she’s too busy being a mother. She raised me and my sister, Pricilla, who is now 21, all by herself. All our lives, it was my mother who brought us everything we wanted and who tried to do everything she could to keep us happy. In her beautiful hazel eyes, I see all the pain she has endured — her pain and her anger because my father, Mike De La Mora, has been in and out of prison since he was 17 years old. He left my mother all alone with her two baby girls. He broke his promises that he wouldn’t go back to prison, his promises that he would be out here to help her raise us.

My life changed forever in 2001, when the cops took my father away from us. My sister Pricilla and I were left fatherless, my mother husbandless. I was only two years old, and Pricilla was six. I have no memory of my father living at home. I don’t remember the details of the day they took him away. Everything I write on paper now are things I’ve been told, not my memories.

About a month ago, I asked my cousin Jose, who is 24 years old, if he remembered the day my dad was taken away. He stopped sweeping the floor, looked up, and smiled. The expression on his face gave me a glimpse of that day. As he began to tell the story, his movements told me even more. Jose remembers being upstairs at our grandma's house with his sister, Adriana, when the phone rang. Adriana answered; it was my dad. Jose said he had a bad feeling when he looked at his sister's face. Adriana took the phone downstairs to Pricilla, and my dad started apologizing to her, telling her he was going away again, this time for a long time. Pricilla began to cry hysterically, repeating, “No, Daddy, you promised . . . ” and she fell to the ground. Jose says she “went crazy.” Adriana grabbed the phone and tried to calm Pricilla down.

After that my dad was on the run for some time. He sneaked into family parties through the back door. Once he stole Jose’s bike to take off. Jose remembers waking up the next day and feeling angry because his bike was gone.

The cops finally caught up to my dad one day in front of my grandma's house. Jose remembers my dad staying calm. All the time he was being handcuffed, he kept up a conversation with my cousins and aunt; he kept smiling, asking how their day was going, and telling them he was going to be okay.

Since I was two, I have been fed lie after lie about why my father was taken from me. The first lie I remember was my mom’s telling me he was taken away because he didn’t put on his seat belt. The last story I was told was that he was taken away for committing armed robbery, possessing an illegal weapon, and violating his probation. My father told me this last one himself, just a little while ago, on June 19, 2016. I remember the date because it was Father’s Day, and I asked because for the longest time I had wanted to know the truth.

Along with telling me what he was charged for, my father, Mike, finally told me the truth about how many years he has to serve. My father, the guy who is supposed to be my superhero, was given 21 years. This year I am 17 and a senior in high school. All I have ever wanted was for my daddy to watch his little girl walk the stage wearing her graduation gown. All I have ever wanted was to hear him cheering my name.

Year after year, my father told me he was getting out in “one more year.” Now that I’m older, I can see the picture more clearly, and I’m not afraid to ask questions. I see why he fed me that lie. He did it so that I wouldn’t lose faith in him, so that I would still talk to him. He didn’t want me to give up on him. He didn’t want to lose his little girl.

As I was growing up, whenever I saw friends and family with their fathers, I cried and wondered where my daddy was. For years I thought I wasn’t good enough to have a father, but my mom used to take me and my sister Pricilla to visit him all the time. All I remember about those visits was my mom being angry and the two of them arguing. But I was young then, and I didn’t pay much attention to their arguments. I used to hold my hand against the glass, pretending to hold my daddy’s hand, trying to get his attention so they would stop fighting.

But after a few years my mom began to give up on my dad, and she took us to visit less and less often. She realized she didn’t want us to have that kind of lifestyle — one that included visits to prison. But she felt guilty about not letting us see our father, so she had his sister, my aunt, take us instead.

Pricilla had it worse than I did; she was older and more aware of what was going on, and after a while she was angry at the world. She never talked about our dad. She still doesn’t. I don’t blame her. She saw more than I did, but she holds in all her anger and pain.

In 2008, my mother left my dad. That was the year his mother was dying, so those were dark times. He told me that a lot of crazy things were going through his mind, and often he wanted to give up. But, he said, Pricilla and I kept him going; he said we were what kept him strong. My dad was in prison when both his parents died, and when his brother and his cousin died, too. He was supposed to be at my grandma’s funeral, but it became too complicated and expensive. His sisters told him they were willing to pay the expenses to get him there, but he knew they were already paying a lot for the funeral, and he refused their offer. So he wasn’t there.

A few years ago Pricilla stopped talking to my dad, but a couple of months ago I was on the phone with him and I told him I had a surprise for him. I put the phone to Pricilla's ear and made her talk. They both started crying, and I could hear my dad saying over and over and over how sorry he was, and I thought about how before I was always ashamed to talk about my dad, and part of that was because I didn’t know much about him. I only remembered seeing him in an orange jumpsuit through a glass window.

Whenever my friends asked about him or talked about their dads, I just walked away. As I got older, I started opening up a little, but only to the point of telling people where my dad was. Sometimes I told them why he was in prison and sometimes I mentioned how long he had been gone. But whenever they asked more questions, I couldn’t answer.

Then one day when I was in 11th grade, my friend Kat told me I should go with her to POPS, which stands for Pain of the Prison System. It’s a club at my high school for kids with incarcerated loved ones, kids with problems they don’t know how to deal with. The club meets every Wednesday during lunch. The staff feed you and help you learn how to write about your feelings. Even before Kat convinced me to go, the smell of the food had been enticing. I always wanted to go in, but I was afraid of being judged or looked at the wrong way.

The moment I walked in, Amy welcomed me in the warmest way; she’s the woman who started POPS with her husband, Mr. Danziger, an English teacher at our school. Amy made me feel like I was home. After I sat down and listened to other people telling their stories, I knew I was where I was supposed to be. I felt like I had finally found a family. Mr. Danziger gave me a notebook to write poems, my story, or anything I wanted to write, and within a week I’d written two pieces. By the next week I was showing Mr. Danziger my first piece, and he was happy to help me edit it.

POPS is the reason I am able to open up and talk freely about my dad. Now I don’t need to cry every time, and have also had the opportunity to make my dad proud. My stories have been published in a book, and my piece "Fatherless Girl" was read by a famous actress at a show at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. This year I am President of POPS the Club at Venice High, and I am so proud to be able to help and talk to other kids and share my advice with them.

Also, this summer I went to Washington, DC, where along with 18 other youth with incarcerated parents from 14 states, I talked to Federal officials about the problems we’ve had. When I first arrived in Washington and met all those other kids, I was hesitant to talk to them because I knew nothing about them. But then I thought about POPS, and I remembered how scared I was at first. As soon as I started talking to the others, we connected. That first night together, 16 of us went out to dinner together, and in just a few hours we felt as if we were one big family who had known each other for a long, long time. The experience is hard to explain, but I know our bond comes from the fact that we children of the incarcerated have so much in common.

I was scared when I first walked into POPS. I practically had to be dragged into the room because of how nervous I was. I looked around and felt as if everyone was staring at me and wondering why I was there. I thought they probably believed I was there just for the food because when people look at me, they see a happy girl, not the pain behind my smile. I used to be ashamed of talking about my father because of I feared people would think I am my father’s shadow, but since I have been a member of POPS the Club, I have learned that you can break the chain and be a better and stronger person. There's no need to be ashamed of who you are or who your parents are. Even though my father has not been there my whole life, I want to say he is my superhero.

POPS made me strong enough to begin to tell my story. I no longer worry about being judged. I know there are people I can reach out to when I feel sad. I have learned not to hide my emotions, because now I know there are millions of children that go through the same thing I’ve gone through. There will always be someone to talk too. I do not need to be afraid or feel judged for something I didn't do.

I am Jessica Monique De La Mora, and I am the daughter of an incarcerated loved one.

To learn more about POPS the Club, please visit the organization's website.