My Religion's Past

If human beings were not as averagely intelligent as we have evolved to become, then we would have gone extinct thousands of years ago. If one takes away the tools and the shelter and the clothes and we are so terrifyingly weak. This fact is no scarier for anyone other than us, and having faith in something larger than your existence was and still is the way people battle away a lot of this fear. Therefore, everyone on Earth holds some set of beliefs. If we feel that humans are here because we have some higher power that is more terrible than our predators and more awesome than the diseases, then our existence is justified and we are safe. Whether they be religious or not is up to them, but no one lives without them. My personal set of beliefs and religious practices was established over my entire lifetime and is still vulnerable to change even now.

Daddy was born to two genetically predisposed Methodists. His daddy fought in World War II, and survived three gunshots for his wife, not G-d. Granddaddy and Grandma did not really actively practice or believe in being a Methodist. They attended church occasionally, except for Dad, who threw a tantrum at age 8 and never had to go again. After enduring his service in the Korean War, he followed his father’s example in what to believe. He didn’t really stick to a religion growing up, and sired seven children and one half son.

When I was five years old, Mom became pregnant again. This was my father’s last child. She went into labor on Christmas Eve. I remember asking our nanny when the new baby, Aurora, was coming home. They managed to hide it from me for two weeks before they told me that Aurora died during labor. The umbilical cord had gotten wrapped around her neck and she had choked to death before they caught it. They were devastated, both of them. I was too young to understand the true gravity of what had happened. Daddy told me that in order to get him out of his depression, some of his closest friends took him on a road trip. They gave him a story called the Shack by William P. Young.

“Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation, and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his "Great Sadness," Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever.”

The road trip and the book helped Dad to recover. He tells me that today he believes in the eagles, high cirrus clouds, coronas, deer, and that book that helped recover himself from his loss. This unique view on life makes my Dad an interesting person, but does not really affect my life that much anymore.

My mom, Beth R. Koenig, was born a reform Jew and was raised as a reform Jewish person. She attended Hebrew School until after her bat mitzvah or Jewish coming-of-age ceremony. After that, she attended the holidays and she did little events and services. Otherwise, she did not practice. I suspect that her religious choices have to do with her family. I used to visit and stay over, but now, only my brother talks to them. Over my lifetime, I have seen her grow into spiritualism. I am not completely sure on how this happened, or why it did, but her transition changes my life irrevocably. The rules of her life didn’t stop with her. My younger sibling and I were given gluten free and dairy free diets all the time for “a healthier lifestyle” even though we had no allergy. Homeopathic remedies are go-to medicinal routes. She nags me even now to visit the chiropractor every other week. The problem I have here is this: I am not a spiritualistic person. I do not believe even in half the ideas that she does. Unfortunately, I depend on this person to feed and nurture me. I live with her and see her everyday. I think that it is better for me not to fight with her about her beliefs every other day. I let a lot, and I do mean a lot of issues with her go. I often will nod my head along with her words, or give an empty agreement. Due to this relationship I have in my life, it is actually sort of difficult to slip a belief into my head. First, I will identify that it isn’t what I believe, and then I will tear it apart and find everything that is wrong with it. Finally, I will kick it to the curb. However, when surrounded by others who believe differently than I do, I am able to respect their ideas and do my best to tolerate and understand.

In sixth or seventh grade, I learned that later reports of the tragedy of a super eruption due to the majestic Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii suggested that Pompeii’s citizens believed that the Roman god of fire, Vulcan, was angry with them. On the day of this infamous catastrophe, it was said that about half the entire population actually tried to give offerings and prayers to the mountain. His name later gave fruit to the name for the never before seen erupting mountain, volcanoes. The decimation of an entire city that believed that if they could appease Vulcan, the sky would come back proves that every belief can evolve, fail, be challenged, and or change.

My first “official” religion was Reform Judaism. In second grade, I moved away from my best friend. That was not acceptable, and so I began attending the Rodeph Shalom Synagogue. That was not the only reason I became a member. My first and favorite part of the entire religion is Sunday morning services. The music and unity of this this ceremony was like nothing I had ever seen before. I felt out of place until I started singing along with everybody else. I felt a positive connection to everyone around me. I fell in love with that connection, and I graduated from Hebrew School last year. Zooming in on the more religious aspects of Judaism, I am a very loose practitioner myself. I attribute this to how I was raised and also my personal philosophies.

The highest power that I believe exists is the balance of the universe we exist in. To be more specific, I think that our entire world revolves on the balance of opposites. Life and death, good and bad, action and reaction. I believe that every single loss has an equal and opposite gain and vise versa. That is what I think drives the world. Everything has a price, everything. I can’t really believe in a god because I haven’t experienced anything that could make me believe in them. As to the contents of the Torah, the Jewish holy book, I agree with most of the philosophical content and think a lot of its history actually happened. However, there’s a lot of the Torah that’s disagreeable or looks to have- a covert reason of existence. I found most major religions to have this in common. So until my way of thinking is challenged on Vesuvius level proportions, I plan on maintaining this personalized set of beliefs.


My Personal Essay and Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrDRxkeJrgw

Javier Chueca-Bosch

English 3

Mrs. Pahomov

12/22/2017

August 23th: My long term exchange is about to start. It’s six in the morning in Barcelona’s airport. Even Though, is early and the sun is just rising the air is heavy and hot. The airport is already functioning and the busy businessman going up and down, with their small suitcases, showing their professionality in the art of traveling. There are also German and British families who might come for their last week of summer vacation to Spain willing to stay in the beaches as much as possible until they turn red as shrimps. My mind is starting to ask questions that no one can answer. Questions that all seem to have the same answer. Answered by the sentence that my dad has told me just before crossing the security control. “Be yourself Javi, just be yourself”


After every single moment in America I feel how I change. However, there are moments when the change becomes visible. Is like the outside armour gets blown away and for first time the changes materializes into a real feeling emotion or even physical sign.


The english benchmark is due tomorrow and I’m here staring at the wall with a bunch of thoughts that go around my mind. None of them are about this huge project that I have to finish for tomorrow. After the initial thoughts questions start to appear. Do I really like her? If the answer is yes. How can I have done this incredible change in such a short time? No, no way I like her we only kissed once and I was drunk is just a normal one night relationship, something similar to Spain. But what if….?


The night is cold and cloudy. There is no more light and the streets are empty. Shops start closing and my benchmark still in blank. The thoughts keep going while I type in the computer a bunch of words that I hope Mrs. Pahomov will like enough to give me a good grade. I actually see how my mind have changed I see it but I don’t realize it, I don’t want to accepted, I’m not ready for it.  


“1,2,3,4, 1,2,3,4, 1,2,3,4” This numbers that accompanied me during the late afternoon  football practices. Or during this night parties. This numbers that I used to dance with some girl who, with some luck, will be happy to come home with me. I know it was me because I have it in my mind but, I don’t feel identified with this boy anymore. The ambition that he might have ever had of alluring a girl are not with me anymore. I, sometimes, wonder if I flew back to Spain, would I notice the change? Throughout my time in America, I’ve learned about new ideas and met new people. These experiences have caused a complete change in who I am today.  But the question still in my head. Do I love her? The question has evolved as so as me and has gone to another level.



Today is Sunday afternoon the Eagles are playing but in my head nothing's the same anymore. Yesterday, she came to the city to make some papers at USPS. It was snowing and the air was cold and got into my throat as a milion small spikes. I get together with her to help her with the paperwork and then to hang around downtown. Every step required some more effort than the normal ones and the distance seem to be twice longer. We end up on the Rocky steps with the Philly skyline in front of us. The views were amazing, but I'd rather look at her and kiss her than watching the views. In that moment I felt ready to accept the huge change that my brain had been doing during all that time. And there is finally an answer to the question. I do love her, it has been difficult but I do love her.


While the Eagles play. My head keeps going up and down. Thinking on the change I have just made. The whole idea of one night thing has disappeared from my brain. “Yesssss the Eagles have scored” Joe gives me a hug and I go back to my mind world. It seems that America has changed me every second I spend here brings me to a new state of mind. To make it clear.

As an example of this change, you wouldn’t have the same idea of having a relationship after watching a romantic movie right? I would say there is always a first mind changer like the first kiss in a romantic movie. Then the movie tries to prepares you to realize the change by giving an story. But when the change is realized when you see the break up and you watch the two main characters cry for love. The change was initially made but you don’t realize it until almost the end of the movie. So I would consider my relationship with her as this preparation in the movie. A preparation, long, heavy but necessary to accomplish the mind changes in itś totality


And when I’ll go back to spain it would be six in the morning and  my long term exchange would be about to end. The air would be hot and heavy. The businessmen will be going up and down, with their small suitcases, showing their professionalism in the art of traveling. And a bunch of tourist will be coming out of the finger, to get fed up with all the information that they are gonna receive in the Philadelphian Museums. I will remember the day of my departure in Barcelona, my head was full of thoughts and questions. I would remember just having one answer. ¨Just be yourself Javi, just be yourself”. This words were, for me, profund and sentimental but what I didn't realize was that the self that my dad was talking about was going to change in such an spectacular way. And what is for sure is that the kid who once left Barcelona as an adventure, has now come back as a total new grown up.


Labeled Life - Caroline Pitone

Caroline P.
Ms. Pahomov
1/9/17
Labeled Life
While my mother was pregnant with me, she always believed that I was going to be a boy ever since she found out she was having a baby. But then I arrived, a surprise of gender for my parents, as well as a surprise of being a 22 inch long baby with a full head of hair and screeching that flowed from my mouth. At a time of my life of being a toddler, I would say I loved dolls and Barbies, and I loved dresses and pink, and things like stuffed animals and princess sets. I loved these toys so much, but I don't know if it was because they were marketed towards my assigned gender, or if I voluntarily was attracted to these plastic objects. I always will wonder if I still would have loved them if I'd been exposed to other toys instead more often. 
As time went on in my life, my mother and father put me in sports like tennis, soccer, martial arts, hockey, and so on, ever since I was five years old. I adored these activities and they soon became the only thing I really loved to do. Things began to change a bit for me and my perspective upon things, as I started to closely inspect my environment and the  people I would be placed around during the activities I would do. I started hanging out with boys more. I observed that all of their hair was cut short in a similar style, with slightly off voices that were completely different from mine. Their pants looked larger than what their waist could support at times, and their t-shirts would cut them into the shapes of perfect boxes. Their muscles were more defined than mine and they seemed to have different nail beds than I did.  Growing up as an athlete was very life changing for me and it was something I always loved to do and looked forward to. I was always in co-ed, which means it was both boys and girls in the same sport and in the same environment. At the time, I remember usually being one of the only girls on the team. Hanging out with boys was always something in my comfort zone and it always felt more appropriate since there were never usually girls around me in a hobby that I enjoyed so much.
Everyone's sports uniforms were always the same, with the only difference of the individual number on the back of each jersey. I never saw anyone differently, as everyone wore the same thing. When it came time for dressing off the field at the age of around eight years old, I despised wearing skirts and dresses. “Why should I wear that? It isn't comfortable!”, I would exclaim on and on, while cramming in enough words in the short mornings to my parents to let me go to school in pants instead of the school uniform every little girl was getting put into. It typically consisted of navy blue dresses and a white or blue collared shirt with an added touch of just a few hair clips. This made me feel very uncomfortable with myself. “Am I just odd?”, I would think, since all of the girls around me were fine and comfortable with wearing things like hair clips and high knee socks, but for some reason my mind would go against it. I felt wrong, It was very easy to compare myself to other girls, since there were so many of them around me in the environment of school. This kind of environment was something I was not used to. I tried and tried, but it never felt correct for me to look in the mirror and see a dress, and having some sort of label pinned to me, as benign as the term “girl”, at the time.
While I played sports from a young age, I never fully self reflected on my environment and behavior until I was about 9 years old. I started to realize differences with me and the boys I surrounded myself with. I began to be judged by my team members for being the gender that I am, a female. I would be looked down upon, and even assumed to be some sort of joke for being on any sports team. This particularly happened during the time I played roller hockey for a league at a park nearby my house. Roller hockey, for some time, was my favorite sport. I played defense man for my team, and was one of the best defense man in the league. I sensed jealousy and tension between me and the team, and a slight disconnect from me and the usual groupings of boys. I noticed I was not being accepted into the team for being a girl since every other person was a boy. I figured this judgement just came because I was a female hockey player, on a mostly all boys team.
I started to feel as though something was wrong with me, and I really was different. I tried to not let it bother me because I thought it was some sort of fun joke. As I began to do some independent thinking, I realized that I was seen as different for loving sports, not liking skirts and dresses, and wanting to play with Pokemon instead of Barbies. I was not the typical girl that people like to label. I started to become very noticeable once I did something impressive in any sport. It was looked at as more of a miracle than if a boy did the same thing I did. I loved the attention I was grasping while playing these sports, but I was uncomfortable with the thought of being congratulated so highly when I know that my performance was not as amazing as people believed it was. “Is it because I am a girl?” I would always think, and I allowed this thought to float in my mind for quite some time. This subject fired up my brain power and discovered the common use of gender stereotypes and genders abilities to perform certain things. It made me believe how much of a fool I really felt like, thinking I was this amazing athlete, but only to realize it was because I was a female and I was doing things not most girls were doing at my age. When I played sports on a mostly male team, I got a lot of attention even though it wasn't always for a good reason. Being a girl and doing things girls weren't seen doing very so often made me feel small in a way the boys never experienced.I began to start to understand everything, and everything began to fall into place.
Now that I am older, I realize that gender rules are not a realistic thing unless you take into account what they are and you want  to allow them to affect your life I wear what I like to wear. I do not ever think about “do I look enough like a female today?” because I have learned that the way I should present myself is the way I feel inside. Although I don’t scream and cry once I see a dress in front of me as I did when I was a child, I realize that I do not have to do anything I do not feel comfortable as a whole.

Time Taken for Granted

I think differently from everybody else. This might sound cliche but I really do. One thing I usually do is overthink and blame myself for things. I feel like I should be held responsible for a lot of things especially if I am aware of the situation. As a human, everybody in this world has the opportunity to do things that they almost never do. There are a lot of reasons that we decide against doing a lot of things that we truly know need to be done. One of the biggest things that I regret is not being there when I know I should have been. I had the chance to help. But I did not. Instead of helping I sat there and said nothing. I did nothing and here I am writing this essay with a guilty conscience that sometimes starts to eat at me. I honestly don’t know what to do to fix it. Someday I will have to realize that I did mess my only chance up. I have to realize that I decided against doing everything that I could have because I just wanted to be to myself and not with anyone else. I did not want to hug anybody or say hello to anyone. I did not want to check up on anyone. I definitely did not want to say things would be okay because I knew they wouldn’t be.

Reading this, you probably have no clue what I am talking about. I haven’t exactly said it yet because it is still kind of hard to process the events. It’s still hard talking about what happened because I wish it did not happen. I was in seventh grade and we had not been too far into the school year. I knew Uncle Bill was sick so I truly don’t understand why I was so shocked when we got the call. I had just got up to get ready for school and my mom told me something that I was not quite ready to hear. She had just gotten a call from Uncle Bill’s wife, Aunt Tiny. I probably don’t even have to say what happened at this point and I really don’t want to. I remember going in the bathroom and not believing what had exactly happened. I was confused and shocked and hurt. All I wanted to know was why this happened. I continued to get ready for school but I felt no emotions at all. It was as if all my senses had been taken away from me and I was left with a body that I had absolutely no control over.

I remember being in school later that day, and while I was having a conversation with my friends laughing, I blurted out that my uncle had died. My friend asked why I was laughing and okay, but I didn’t know why I was. A little later into the school day I got a message from my mom saying that she was coming to get me. Because it was so early in the day when I got my early dismissal, my teacher asked why I even bothered coming to school. I didn’t even bother to tell him about what had just happened. When my mom came to get me I found out that the reason she had left work so early was because her boss wanted her to “go home and take it easy” since she had been at work upset and crying. I didn’t exactly know how to comfort her because I didn’t know how to comfort myself. I then decided to just leave the situation alone hoping that my mom would eventually be in better spirits.

The hardest thing about writing this essay, is trying to write this essay as the person I was when I first received information of his death. I can no longer be that emotionless person especially because I still haven’t gotten over the death of Uncle Bill. I’m not sure if I ever will. I still find myself balled up in the corner crying on his birthday, August 24. I still cry on the day of his death, October 29 because I find myself replaying the events of that day in my head. Saturday, November 2, 2013 was the day of his funeral. I was not sure what to expect at the funeral. I was okay until we got to the funeral. The church was packed as I walked down the aisle next to my aunt, who was one of his many nieces. When we got to the casket I could not look at him. He was not the same person that I had always known. I began to cry and I don’t remember stopping until the end of the service. During the service everyone kept telling me that things were going to be okay because he was no longer suffering from the cancer that we thought he could handle. But I honestly don’t think that anybody understood how I looked at this.

I have probably been to about 100 funerals in my lifetime. Growing up my family was very active in church and I would always end up at any event that they had to attend. Since my grandparents were ushers, and I spent a lot of time with them, I would usually attend the funerals at church that they ushered. Sitting in the back of the church, I would see all the families crying but I never knew exactly why. Yes, I understood that they had just lost a loved one. But it seemed that going to all these services caused me to build a barrier to protect my feelings when I went to funerals. I would never cry at any of the services  including those of strangers and the family members I saw laying in the casket. In third grade I was even hysterical when my mom did not allow me to go to my cousin Aaron’s funeral. He was a teenager who had just been killed in Southwest. Something about these funerals engaged me and interested me. That wasn’t the case for Uncle Bill. For the first time I felt what those families had felt. Seeing someone that you can no longer hug or hold laying in a casket stiff and cold has to be one of the most devastating feelings ever.. You start to feel empty and cold inside because you don’t know what is next for you.

We knew Uncle Bill was sick but we didn’t know it would end like this or even end at all. Everyone was telling me that he was going to be okay and I believed them because what else could I do. For weeks we would go over his house and there would always be a people there either speaking the word (reading the bible), or bringing comfort food to his wife. Crowding around him, people would hold his hand and talk to him about past memories just to see him smile. I never did this though. Everytime we went over, I sat on the couch watching television, Sometimes I wouldn’t even go over and greet him and at that moment I wasn’t quite sure what was causing me to stray away from him. One of the days that we went to see him, I was sitting on the couch sneezing. As he lay on his deathbed, with little to no strength at all, he said “bless you”. This was the man that I grew up knowing and loving. Someone who was very protective and caring about his family especially the girls in his life.

Now that I look back at that year, I felt the most hurt from my grandfather, Uncle Bill’s brother. As a young teenager I was never really as concerned about how he felt in this situation until now. During the process he was always very quiet and to himself, which was unlike him because he was known for “talking someone’s ear off”. Whenever we went over Uncle Bill’s house, Pop Pop (my grandfather) would sit next to Uncle Bill’s hospice bed and hold his hand while he talked on and on about memories from their childhood up until now. One of my favorite stories was the story about how Pop Pop and their other brother, Uncle Walt, had pushed Uncle Bill down a hill in a little wagon which caused him to end up with a broken arm. Stories like that brought tears to my eyes because it made me realize how tight their bond was. That right there was an explanation of what would happen next.

Throughout this whole process, I tried as much as possible to stay to myself. I wasn’t aware that this would get me into trouble. One day, I came home and I did what I had been doing everyday, staying to myself. Things were pretty quiet in the house until Pop Pop approached me. Yelling at me, without yelling, he asked me why I wasn’t worried about Uncle Bill and why I never ask him how he was doing. I distanced myself because I never knew what was coming next. All I knew was that I had been told everything was going to be fine and somehow things were never okay. Those endless nights of me crying my eyes out never stopped because I still never found out how to deal with death.

This essay is especially hard for me to write because I am still dealing with how to deal with the death of a loved one. Since the death of Uncle Bill, I have not looked at death the same.  During 2017, I lost 3 people who I truly love. Uncle Jazzy, Aunt Jo, and Aunt Stelle lost the life that once graced their bodies. I regret every second that I passed up because I was being selfish and laying in my own bed of pain while I ignored theirs. It takes such a toll on me because I always feel like there is so much more that I could have done to help that person and to help myself. It is incredibly hard to deal with change that not only takes a toll on you, but also the people around you. I am supposed to be answering the question, “How does the self react to and deal with change?”. It’s simply hard to answer that question because I am still unsure about how to deal with change. I would explain how others deal with change but everyone around me deals with it differently. When things begin to change, it begins to disrupt the normal flow of how things go and as hard as it may be to say this, things will never go back to the way they were before the change happened. So I guess the best way to deal with things like this are to adapt although it might be one of the hardest tasks life throws at you.


The Grieving Process

“Are you OK?”  There are other ways of checking in on someone, but that just happens to be the most common one. Asking someone are they O.K doesn’t make things better for the person, it just gives the one that’s asking certainty about the person’s being. As for me. I’ll be honest about if I’m fine or not, but i’ll let that person know so they’ll not have to worry about making me feel O.K. “No, I am not O.K” came out faster than the paramedics that Sunday morning when my mom collapsed on dining room floor.

She was admitted to Einstein Hospital around 2pm on Valentines Day. When my dad arrived at the hospital room, the doctors explained that they tried everything the could to bring her to back life. When my dad came back from the hospital I was expecting good news. The words “she didn’t make it”  had me lost, I was confused and angry. I started pointing fingers blaming the paramedics for being late, blaming the doctors at the hospital for not doing the best they could but most importantly myself. I continued asking myself was it the food I gave her that morning to oily or salty? Did I stress her out? I panicked and fell to the floor screaming  because I couldn’t bear with the fact I lost my mother, my other half.
Therapy wasn’t my first option for handling grief. My dad worried about me because I was too quiet. When someone ask about the situation, I would avoid the main subject which was her dying. I would talk about her death as if she had never passed away and she was still alive. I told my dad I prefer talking to him about everything that I felt and that I just need different opinions on how to handle the situation. He suggested for me to go to therapy because they are more professional and have more experience with incidents that deal with grief. I’m not comfortable with the fact that therapy was one of the options because of my trust issues. My views on therapy was that the therapist was only there to pass your personal information on to the next person. The therapist will take your deepest darkest secret and go home to their families, sit down at the dinner table to share their day at work. “ She told me that she says she’s the reason for her mother’s death. Isn’t that ridiculous?”. See what’s ridiculous is taking my trust for granted and that’s the last thing I needed.

My first therapist was someone that understood me. My first session of the three sessions we shared were mostly about what happened and how I felt in the moment. I hesitated at first but I went on with the story and she told me how she felt the same pain when her father passed. I felt more comfortable because not only did she  have a family member that passed away, this family member was her parent. Our first activity together was a goodbye letter I wrote during our second session. The goodbye letter was a source for letting out what you might want to say to the person before they passed. In my letter. I wrote about how my last words shouldn’t of been “I’m sorry” It should of been “I love you” or “I admire you” or “ you’re the best”. She read my letter and asked if I need a moment and I told her no. I felt relieved and more free to say whatever I felt about the situation and how I am dealing with it because we shared similar experiences. My third and final session wasn’t really a session. I arrived to the appointment late and she was heading out the door. “I have been assigned to work for another company. I needed you to be here on time so we can talk about you meeting with the your new therapist. You’re going to receive a phone call from NHS in two weeks to set an appointment. Nice working with you.” Then she left and I was angry. It was bad enough I had trust issues and told my personal business to someone I barely knew. Then that person leaves and takes my business with them to pass it onto the person.

I received my therapist three weeks after I decided I didn’t want to continue going to therapy. I was still stuck on the fact that I opened up to someone and now they’re gone. What possibly could encourage me to continue telling my business to another person who don’t know me besides the fact that I am grieving? I ended going to my appointment anyway because I still wanted different perspectives on how to deal with grief. That Tuesday afternoon, I went to my session and waited twenty minutes into the 1 hour session. The twenty minutes felt like hours and I just wanted to go home. She finally came down and we walked to her room on the second floor. She opened her door and offered me to sit anywhere but I choose the corner because she is a stranger. I sat down and she asked me about the situation but I looked at her like how doesn’t she know about it already. My thoughts were she wanted to hear the story to pass time and that old my therapist didn’t go over the details from the previous sessions I’ve had. I just told her the story because I wanted to see how she feels about it. As she took notes on her computer, I asked what kinds of activities are we going to go over to help with my grieving issue. She told me she had the “5 stages of Grief activity” which is an an article that is going to help with seeing where my emotions lie within the situation. For the next session we went over the 5 stages of Grief which are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. She had a list of questions and I would answer these questions so that she can see which of my emotions fall under certain category. The results were I was mostly angry at the situation and I was accepting the fact that I was the reason for her death. For the rest of the session we talked mostly about why I feel like I’m the reason. I explained to her I only felt like this because I was there at the moment with her, when she collapsed, when she was taken out of the house, when she was in the ambulance. She told me that it is good that I accepting the fact that she is gone, which really means that I am not in denial about her passing away. She comforted me by telling me that we will work on ways on how not to feel like I am the cause of her death. I went home that night thinking that therapy might not be so bad after all. Maybe putting my trust into my therapist is for the greater good.  I know my mom would have wanted me to give it a chance, now I feel like I’m doing it for us.

Little things in life will lead to bigger things. Having school work, coming home to a house full of people who are loud, helping my little brothers with their school work, cooking dinner, and getting myself together for the next day day are just the little things. The bigger thing in this case, would be maintaining my own lifestyle without out my mom. Setting my opinions and my feelings aside to benefit myself is the best choice I have made so far. What I learned was that putting my pride aside should only be done if I feel comfortable enough to do so. I have also learned that making choices for myself shouldn’t have to start with me being “O.K” it should start with how I want to feel in the end. Trusting my therapist just a little should help with adjusting my trust issues with other people. My mom’s death gives me strength and knowledge to know that I am putting my trust into something for a reason. Knowing that my guardian angel is watching me makes me feel proud to say that “I am going to be O.K”.


Unwilling to Tell

Over the course of life I really just struggle with death. Life has became a stress. Its like im dealing with a fight over and over again. Death is a rocky point, I just been dealing with this for a while. Funeral after funeral just waiting to know when will it stop. No beating or hearing is the only thing that was going through my body when I get announcements that I have l lost one. Death has impacted my life so much that I am lost when I just think about anything else. The thought of it changes my life for the better and not for the worst. I feel so empty. Emptiness is where i feel the most useless and worthless in this world. How come I can’t get a break you may wonder. Well it’s because I been struggling with death my whole life.

     On July 4th blood rolled from his head and nose, As his friend in the car is gasping for air. All you hear is a loud siren noise heading towards the car. Reporting live from north philadelphia area. There are two men right now that was rushed to the hospital in cruidel conditions. I lost my favorite uncle in the whole wide world, this had a huge impact on how i live my life today. I really celebrate on the 4th of july just so that it feels like he is still here with me. He passed away on july 2 and his birthday was the 4th of july. I sat and cried and cried. Screaming and screaming as the family mourned all together. Thats my bestfriend I said to my dad as he than thought about how this would affect me the most. My dad just thought about how would the family work as one again because he was the life and the support of us. As we was watching the news that night, it appeared on the news channel:

   Reporting live from the scene where this car as hit a tree. The two men are in the hospital but we just got word that either one of them made it. Shawn Carter and Greg ford. My grandmother passed out and we couldn’t do anything but give her time to really think and process what happened in this moment. The doctors room was filled with puddles of water and heartbreak.

        We really enjoyed each other time and we loved to hang out as a family. This was one of my favorite things to do I just really enjoyed every moment with him. We spent basically every weekend together because I just loved being around him. I really just got stuck on what to write so that's all i can say right now. We use to have fight parties at my house. We would go out and celebrate on the 4th of july. We was always the party type. I love the way that my relationship is with him. He makes me so happy. We would go out to eat like every other weekend. I would think about all the good time every other weekend. We would go to Fridays every friday because that is my favorite place. I cried out. I really just loved when i seen him. He made me feel so happy. He was my favorite cousin. He was really the best. My family thought about how he was always the life of the party. When shawn came in that's when the party arrived. He would just make us all happy and thankful for living life to the fullest. We laughed as a family, we danced as a family, we even fought as a family but with when it was all said and done shawn was our rock and nobody in this world could change everything that he has did for us.

     This essay is hard for me to right because this is the most triggering spot in life. I really just think about this moment and these people everyday man. Everytime I think about this topic i get crushed and I feel like im a piece of cookies just crumbing to the ground. This topic is not something that I normally would express because i told myself that I would not keep letting people get into my personal life. But when the birthdays and the holidays come up I just can't stop thinking about them and everything they have ever did for me. I wish I could say i can’t wait for them to see me graduate. This has been a rocky road for me and I'm done with talking about this. I feel like my emotions are coming on very strong on i think about the goodness and what they have done for me over my life. If it wasn’t for the world and my family i don’t know where i would be today. This has been a emotional road but I am happy to say it is over and now I can move on and just think about how I know that he will always be here with me. I just think as for my family I have to be strong and I have to think about where my life can take me from here. This has been a very tuff topic for me and I hope you guys are all thankful for me sharing this.


Best personal essay- Raymond Rochester


When I first listened to Eminem It was my freshman year of highschool and before that I was never huge into rap. I had a small selection of random songs that I actually liked but none of it was rap. But In highschool that all changed for me when I got into rap. Its weird how it all worked out but I got into rapping before I even Got into listening to rap.   I've been rapping for all of highschool now and actually kind of took a break last year because the way the lunches were split up so most of high school. I even made a song and is still working on some more music, not as a serious career path but for fun and as a little bit as a hobby. Even though it isn't anything serious I still like to put it out there on social media and getting feedback from people. All the feedback has been positive which is great for me. The fact that i'm just playing around a bit is pretty big for me.

At lunch It was common for the upperclassmen to host rap battles and cyphers with each other.  I seeing one of my friends hanging with them decide to go over and listen and was asked to “spit”. This being my first time ever considering rapping.  I gave rapping a a try and rapped poorley not even reaching the status of sub par on a good day. Weeks passed and after many failed attempts at spitting something actually good or remotely close to fire, I kept trying. Eventually with each attempt getting a little better and better. I soon started to spit stuff that wasn't that bad and on some occasions pretty good.  To be honest I don't exactly remember how I ran across Eminem's music but I do know he's the first Lyricist i've listened to and at his first song I instantly liked it and had a huge respect for his craft.


Im 95% sure that the first song that I listened to made by Eminem was “The Real Slim Shady” which is still one of my favorite songs and a great one to work out to. After a week and a half to 2 weeks of listing (maybe longer) I somehow found Tupac's music which not only his music stuck with me but also his image and the persona that he made for himself. With his music was my first ever look of what's considered gangsta rap.  

I first started out with Eminem which whose lyricism   grew on me very quickly and opened me up to more rappers like Tupac, Biggie, Big L, Big Pun, and other rappers of the 90ś which was known as the gangsta rap era. I also like rappers of today with a old school style such as Hopsin.  And nonstop that's all I listened to and that's still for the most part all I listen to till this day. But the more that I listened to the songs of my favorite artist, the better o a rapper I became. I was able to get a flow together to most beats, I was able to come up with anything on the spot, and people have even said when I rap I have an old school flow. Listening to people who influenced me and practice taught me how to freestyle wich also helped freestyle savage become my brand.

Eminem’s music changed my taste in music and put me on to other rappers.


Also in freshman year I have to admit it wasn't my strongest year. Although I was adjusting to highschool I did it pretty fast. But I did more joking around that focusing on my work. I had a never stress go with the flow mentality so I did not stress about grades and how much work I turned in. I still have that mentality but now but I work harder and take more pride in my grades. I definitely try harder in school and did better and better each year. I am a harder worker than I use to be and a strong work ethic is something I strive to perfect as I follow the path of what I want to do as a profession





The changes that I have made throughout high school were mostly mental changes and also a bit maturity too. High school has had changes on me that I think will last a lifetime other than friendships. The high school experience has changed my way of thinking and perception even on music part about the rapping and rappers aspect this was how My high school year has changed y life. I was introduced to Rap in my freshman year of highschool and it as had a huge impact on me from then till now and years to come. So thats how my years of high school and its huge impact that it had on mehas changed my life.


High School

My hands wrapped around the chilled handle as I pulled the heavy door open. When  I walked through, I realized I was finally in my soon-to-be high school.  Before I was in, my parents had to fill out the last little amounts of paperwork that would grant me my admittance. I was nervous, mainly because just a week ago I was surrounded by my friends I’d known since fourth grade. Maritime Academy, my old school in Northeast Philadelphia was relatively big. It was a traditional school, with textbooks and paper. We would only use computers for special occasions, or classes orientated around them. I knew that I wanted change, so I sought out Science Leadership Academy. My intuition lead me to these very doors. I was nervous, to the point where my stomach churned with every footstep I took.

“Hi, you have to sign in before heading upstairs,” said a woman dressed in a black uniform.

My mom nodded in agreeance and explained to the woman, that we had a meeting with the principal.  We were pointed to the elevator, and proceeded to go up. I could feel my stomach drop with anticipation as the elevator glided up to the second floor. There were kids laying across the floor, throwing balls and blasting music.

“What is this lunch? What are they feeding these kids? They're practically bouncing off the walls,” said my stepdad.

This lead us to all chuckle in sync to our shared confusion, but the laughter did not uplift my nervousness. Mainly now, because I didn’t know where I would fit in this social atmosphere. I was invisible, as we passed through the hallway. It was a narrow yellow hallway, but somehow broad enough to fit every student possible. The hallway to the office was a straight route, but we somehow found ourselves making twists and turns to avoid the bodies that were in the way. Everyone seemed like they knew where they belonged, and how everything worked even though they all looked like freshmen just like me. Similar to Murph and Bartle, my world was changing right before me. The only difference, was they were going into the unknown of war and I was entering my first year of high school.  Although now I reflect, and although it may sound exaggerated to me it felt exactly the same. Time seemed to go slow, but we finally made it and were greeted by two men. One was relatively casual, dressed in a button up shirt and jeans. The other man was dressed in a suit. They were the complete opposite of each other. My parents filled out the paperwork, we shook their hands, and then left. I  was now a student at Science Leadership Academy.

Summer was finally over, and so was freshman year. I was excited for a new start. It seemed like the year before went completely over my head. I was excited at the thought of being surrounded by a new class of people, and new teachers. I met my boyfriend upstairs and was greeted by my friends from last year.

“Did you hear about what happened this summer?”

I was pulled aside, and was told of all the fresh gossip that would make me up to date with all the current affairs at school. The whispers of unknown truths and lies filled my ears and my jaw opened in disbelief. I was so into what was being said, I hadn’t noticed my boyfriend, Jahmar, had walked away in frustration. I had let my friends know I’d be back, and went to find him. When I finally did, he was by the huge windows on the third floor. His back was against the cool blue lockers, in which truth be told needed some remodeling. The light from the windows over casted the whole hallway, making it nice and warm from the sun.

“What’d I do now?”

“Nothing, I just don’t like the fact that your supposed friends always bring you into drama. It’s not good, because it’ll distract you from why you’re really here. You remember last year?”

I nodded in agreement, and suddenly all my mistakes from freshman year flashed before my eyes.

“You were so focused on making friends and fitting in, your grades weren’t the best. You know you can do better,” he said with a slight frown on his face.

I knew it was time to focus on bettering myself as a whole, but what about my friends. Were they really my friends? I nodded it off, gave him a hug and we went our separate ways, class was about to start. As I headed to class, I was stopped again. This time it was casual conversation, from a group of girls I hadn’t talked to all summer. We exchanged numbers and talked about everything we heard so far about the people in our grade.

“Did you hear that she had like four boyfriends this summer?” Said one girl.

“That’s disgusting, she needs a thorough cleaning.”

I stood there, stunned by the fact they were talking about their own friend. By the time the conversation was over I was fifteen minutes late to class. I didn’t care though, there was too much to be talked about, and too many people to talk to. So I slowly made my way to Biochem.

As soon as my foot touched the other side of the door frame, I was welcomed with an angry tone.

“Oh nice of you to join us, we picked seats but since you were late you were assigned one.”

She pointed to a chair in the front of the class. I couldn’t do nothing but roll my eyes, and trudge my way to my seat. I pulled out my notebook, and got through all the first day of school antics.

The next day, before school my boyfriend and I went to get breakfast from Arch Gourmet. It was basically the hangout for science leadership students. It was so bad, that the principal literally had to come everyday to pull students out for school. Once we got our food we headed across the small street, and into the two glass doors of the school. We went our separate ways, when I finally reached the fifth floor I let out an exasperated sigh.

“Were you talking about me?” Said a voice from behind.

“No, who told you that?”

“Don’t worry about it, and don’t have my name come out of your mouth.” She was so loud, it seemed like almost on purpose. Everybody stopped to watch. I heard low chuckles and conversations, obviously about what was going on. She walked away with an agitated grunt, and went back into her class. It was like she was waiting for me, but at the same time she came out of nowhere. I was confused but, I continued on heading to class. When I got to class, I texted Jahmar to tell him what happened.

It’s like she came out of nowhere and knew where I was like it was planned. The other day her own friends were talking about her, I just was around them. Somebody in that group had to have said something to cover their own butt. It makes no sense.

He replied quick, almost if he knew I was in distress.

You just need to think about who you’re around, and who really is your friends. They were all probably talking about you too. You never know.

Those last three words stuck to me, every time the same group of girls came up to me to say hi. From that point on, I was fine being by myself. I realized trying to make peace with everyone in school I in a way lost myself. Before coming to SLA I was passionate about drawing and my work, but when I only thought about the social aspect of school it slowed me down. It went from me doing my work or drawing occasionally to not at all. Days went on, I started to only worry about me and my boyfriend. At lunch, instead of being energetic and practically running around the school, I sat and did my work. It became a routine, and I finally came to the conclusion that it was okay.

Having this experience made me okay with being in tune with myself. Before, especially during freshman year and sophomore year I wasn’t. I think when you hear about high school or see it on TV. They focus mainly on the social part. Compared to the complete dynamic of school as a whole. When I first heard of SLA, I thought the school was the absolute perfect fit. When I came to tour I saw everyone getting along, it was a friendly and free atmosphere. Kids were in groups, wandering the halls and blasting music.When I finally did come to the school, I was ultimately alone. I wasn’t okay with that, so I tried to fit in with everybody. I Came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be able to please everyone and drama would occur somewhere down the line. The social norms of highschool doesn’t really fit everyone. There’s is more to it compared to the polished ideal in myself and others head.


https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_wYLO5D7SEzz8Y3ZMFhAY2nhekmAeTWd

The Ingredients To A Perfect Disaster

Sharron Norton

Personal Memoir

Ms. Pahomova

3 English

The Ingredients To A Perfect Disaster

They tell you don’t forget where you came from. I regret where I came from. The manifestation of my existence was solely based on the desire of skin and a placeholder to fill the missing piece of a father’s love. There was no love in my making, nor is there today. No happy white picket fence type of family. Instead what was left of this mess was a 15 year old high schooler with clothes that looked as if it couldn’t barely fit her small petite body always with a big snow coat on, rushing to the bathroom. And to your surprise, hiding me.  

I never really knew the details surrounding the circumstance around my coming into the world.  I was left to soak up whatever my mom or grandma desired to slip out. I was left to suffer the longing to want a father. I’m independent and I had to learn that the hard way. I learned dependability, for it was a gateway to disappointment. Do you know how it feels to always feel alone? Do you know how it feels to always be disappointed, to always feel drained by the disappointment? I do not want your pity. I don’t need anyone to tell me that I’m better off, or that my life's better without him in it. I’ve understood this from a young age. I’ve understood that two can sometimes be better than three. When the last one is only there to anger you. All that I am is all that you see. My heart not being placed on my sleeve is no longer a defense mechanism, but a way I’ve chosen to live my life.

So I live taking one day at a time. But sometimes the noise gets too loud. The clamor begins to suffocate me. And just before I lose the grasp of what really matters after I worked so hard to get to that place; I slip back into my old ways. A place of solitude where my mind was beaten to believe I was nothing. A place where I was pushed into blaming myself.  A place where I envied others lives, and punish myself every day for it.  For it’s a sin in my religion. I tell myself it’s the color of my skin, but it’s not that simple. I know I am beautiful on the outside. But ugliness was linked to the environment I lived in. I envy the innocents my peers have had growing up when it has been ripped out my bare hands with my permission. I had no voice. For was silenced by my emotions on the lost of him that if I expressed how I felt then he would once again leave and this time it would be my own faught. So I endured the misery. I took comfort in it for it made me feel. The inflicting torment it gave me constructed agony in the best way. A love-hate relationship, I guess you can say.

But with this self medicate came along the nastiest type of anger. I would put on this personification that I was okay and that it didn't affect me but inside, self-hate dominated. I hated myself, for how could I have wanted somebody in my life that didn’t care about his only daughter? A person who had the money to care for you but choose not to. How could I want a man in my life who purposely disrespected my mother constantly and caused the feud between our relationship? The load of regret became too heavy and all at once it towered down. All that was left of the ruins were brokenness. He left me with nothing. The only thing this man gave was the color of my skin and my appearance. Everything else he selfishly possesses in his childish soul. Everything he took from me that prevented me from access to a world of both parents to happiness of a little girl, innocence, and peace. He denied me access to feel the love from a father.  What he stole from me was the opportunity on how a man should treat you. I have to learn this on my own for there are just some things a mother can’t teach you.  He says, “ All the things that you went- Nu, I never meant to put you thought it”. He explains this to me as if he wants me to tell him how to right his wrongs. But I couldn't and wouldn’t. He was too stubborn for his own good to see that he was the cause of my despair. And like father and daughter,  I was too.

I felt lost in this world. All that went through my head was that no one could understand how I felt. In the aftermath of it all, I felt that I would never be truly cherished. But in the midst of it all, I got the chance to actually feel loved by someone. This person was very dear to me.  But I let my fear of letting someone into my life misguide me and letting a great opportunity fade away. I had been beaten into submission into thinking that all the good things that came across my life would never work. I was so used to believing that all men were the same. I let fear and the anger of my father, once again, rob me of what I was to be awarded of. And still today I am troubled by my decision. Trouble from how my life could separate such a great relationship. How it's baggage dressed in sheep's clothing took the responsibility to purposely shout out to destroy happiness when I need it most. I was arrogant, thinking it would actually last right? Yeah, I know.  

I blame my failure at a true relationship all on me. I didn’t know how to handle all the emotions. For so long I’ve had all of these emotions bottled up because I am ashamed of my thoughts. I can’t talk to my friends even my mother, who is my closest companion, about how I feel because I have no words it. And if I try to speak on my body will drown in it all. And I carry this burden with me every day. I don’t feel anymore. I used to be sad but now I’m just numb. And now, all of a sudden I feel really tired. Like the world had drained me of everything that I had. And suddenly,  I decided it was time to change. To not give this man the satisfaction of feeling he won. To live for my sisters. Live for my mother and do the best I can so I won’t be classified as another stereotype. But I do have my bad days. Someday I feel the world can be just a plane of my existence and nothing more, just repeated streets and highways, to remind me that the world never changes. And during those days, the only consistency I enjoy is sleep.






What You've Done - Lauren Brown's Personal Essay

Lauren Brown
Ms. Pahomov
English 3
22 December 2017
What You’ve Done

It’s not easy to believe that anything good can come from your own best friend’s death, but I’ve found that changing my mindset is really the only option that will make life without you more bearable. That constructive and positive mindset is the only thing that brings me a step closer to the myth they call ’acceptance.’ That mindset is the only thing that helps me to portray optimism. That mentality is the reason why I no longer despise him. It feels silly to say that I began to hate you after you died. It feels silly because why hate someone that’s not alive? It feels silly because why hate someone who you call your best friend?
On March 3rd, 2015, I went to sleep happy. Nothing seemed to be going wrong. I was an eighth grader with a lot of good friends, a healthy-ish family, and high grades. Money wasn’t important yet, I still got good sleep, and Ed Sheeran was releasing new music. Everything was good. Or so I thought. On March 4th, I woke up to a text from my classmate, Elizabeth. I was immediately confused when I saw that she begging me not to go on Instagram. Why was she trying to convince me that everything would be alright? What the hell was she talking about? Obviously I went straight to Instagram to see what she was trying, but failing, to shield me from. Image after image after image on my timeline were photos of your beautiful face with the understating word ‘MISSING’, plastered across the bottom.
For the next four days, I followed the same helpless routine. I woke up at 8 AM every morning and walked two miles to the Chestnut Hill Library. I would print out as many ‘MISSING’ posters as I could afford and post them all over my town. Do you remember the one summer I that worked there? At that painfully grim library? When you would stay on the phone with me until I got there safely and then laugh at my dreading the rest of the day? I remembered those phone calls for those next four days. You wouldn’t answer the phone no matter how many times I called. My worry gradually turned to anger the more and more times I tried to reach you. I couldn’t understand why you would ‘run away’ without telling me. I was hurt and confused I felt like I hadn’t done my job as a friend if you couldn’t even trust me enough to talk to me about it.
I remember that my dad kept saying to me “Karyn, if you know where he is you need to tell me. We can help him. I promise he won’t get in trouble; his parents just need to know he’s safe.” I would cry and yell at him and tell him that I wish I knew. To be honest, I didn’t care at all whether you got in trouble. I just wanted you to be found and to be home safe. I felt the pain of not knowing simply as your friend, so I couldn’t even try to imagine how your parents were feeling.
On March 7th I got a phone call from an unknown phone number while I was hanging signs in a Starbucks. I answered eagerly and was disappointed by the strange deep voice that greeted me. For those four days my heart jumped whenever my phone rang. I had this ongoing hope that it could be you. To my surprise it was a detective; He started by apologizing for ‘bothering me’ and explained that I wasn’t in trouble. He said that the reason he called was because I was one of your most frequent contacts and was hoping I could help him. He began to interrogate me immediately. The questions he asked about you were really intrusive and personal, but I answered every single one honestly and to the best of my ability. I remember being frustrated when I didn’t know the answers to some. I just wanted you to be found. He told me to save his number and not to hesitate to call him if I found out or remembered anything, even if it seemed irrelevant.
Then there was March 9th. That day was the worst of my life, Cayman. My mom and Jeff had taken me out of town so that I could put more posters up. They forced me into a lunch break and I listened to our favorite songs through my headphones to block out their chatting. I had heard enough ‘maybe-this and maybe-that’s’ and it didn’t make things better. Then the food came and I put my phone face down on the counter. Suddenly, my mom’s phone started buzzing against the table and I saw the caller ID pop up. It said “Gene.” You know my parents cannot stand each other and they do not talk at all. I knew something was wrong. Then came the moment that I will never forget. For the first time my mind allowed itself to go into its darkest corners. For the first time I actually considered the possibility of you being dead.All of a sudden everything added up. I looked at my mom’s face and I just knew. My mom reached to pick up the phone and that’s when I screamed. I don’t remember much that happened after that.
I woke up in my bed, tucked in with Ed Sheeran playing quietly. My mom was sitting at the foot of my bed, rubbing my leg and staring at me. The white walls of my bedroom seemed to be growing father and farther apart and I felt so far from everyone, so alone. I tried to convince myself that the day would come when it wouldn’t hurt as badly, but I could not believe that. I did not believe that there could possibly be any reason for you to be gone. Or worse, for you to choose to be gone.
For a long time I thought that there could be a single person to blame. First I tried to blame myself. I was convinced that I could have done something to prevent it or that I should have somehow known. You always complimented me on how observant you thought I was. How could that possibly be true? I didn’t see that you were hurting; I had no clue. 
Next I blamed you. My sadness quickly turned to anger and for a while I was sure that you were simply selfish. My confusion and frustration caused my anger to turn into hatred. I’ve often felt like I hate you more than I love you.
Your suicide really caused a lot of change. Some ways for the worse, and in some ways for the better. Yeah, I miss you somehow every time I breath, but I’ve tried to enhance my perspective.
I’ve told you enough about the bad things your death has caused. I feel that it would be wrong for me not to tell you the ways that my life has changed for the better since the worst experience of my life.
Living without someone as good a friend as you made me want to be a better friend to the ones I have. I’m trying to be more supportive if someone needs help. I’m now even more loving to the people I care about because I now recognize that time really isn’t promised and you never know when will be the last time you will see that person. My appreciation for the people in my life increased immensely.
Less relevantly, I now know that suicide will never be an option for me no matter what happens to me because I’ve experienced it first hand and therefore I know how badly it affects people. The cliché “Everything happens for a reason” used to be a lot harder to believe. Although it is sometimes seems untrue, I’ve seen how my relationship between myself and the changing world has changed in ways in for the better.

Zaire Personal Essay

Have you ever felt like something was holding you back from really living your life? I once felt the same way. Every. Single. Day. I couldn’t enjoy my life in the way that  I wanted to because I was different from “normal people”.

Imagine being in elementary and having someone watch over you the whole school day. You go to recess, she tells you to stop or you’ll hurt yourself, or slow down or reminds you that you can’t play that way. After, you have to be taken out of class to take medication to keep you free from injuries, and having things be the same way outside of school. That was me. I felt like my walls were too small for me to explore, I was trapped in a box. I started to hate this part of me and wonder when I could enjoy myself like other kids. I hated that I was different from other kids in my neighborhood. This is what Hemophilia did to me. What that means is my blood doesn’t clot normally. What that looks like can be pretty awful.

For example, about 4 years ago, my brother and I were playing at the park downtown. The park had large game pieces for decoration. I stood up on one of them,  looked over to the next one and told myself I could make the jump. I ran and jumped off into the air. As soon as I landed, my foot slipped and I injured my leg by hitting it on the side of the game piece. I thought I was fine at first so we went on with our day. As I was walking my leg began to ache really bad. I lift my pants leg up and my calf was swollen really bad, the whole thing was purple and bruised. We went home and I took my medication. I waited a week for it to get better but there was no result. A few days later my mom took me to the Hematology clinic. The nurses ran a few test on me. They told me I had an inhibitor. My medication wasn’t working properly for me so the healing took even longer after getting hurt. Not being able to walk, stand or even sleep the way you want to for almost a whole month, are somethings you wouldn’t want to live with.

I didn’t want to miss anymore days of school, so I was told to use a wheelchair until my leg was fully healed. The first day back at school  after the incident was annoying for me. I had a lot of different people I knew, and some that I didn’t know, come up to me saying things like, “What happened?”, “How long until you can walk again?” or “Dang, I wouldn’t want to be you.” The entire time I wanted to respond, “Do you think I would want to be myself right now?”Day in, day out I have to suffer from my own life of living with a disorder I didn’t ask for. I can’t even go to school and perform  simple tasks, such as writing or walking, without getting a  messed up leg or having my finger having a spontaneous swelling. Yeah it seems like  something small but knowing things like that will happen again constantly leaves no room forgetting used to it. Who would want to be me?  

Throughout my life I’ve loved sports, watching and  playing alike. My favorites are basketball and football because I understand what’s going on, unlike with other sports.  Do you remember point of time when you were younger had that perfect career for the future in mind? I always wanted to be a football player. It didn’t matter what team I would play for, as long as it was a good team. My position, quarterback or Wide receiver. When I was old enough to play for a team, I asked my dad if he could sign me up for a neighborhood football team. I remember him looking at me and doing a short laugh. Then he saw that I was serious.

He told me what I always hear. “ Listen, I know you love football, I would sign you up tomorrow if I could. But you know you can’t play a sport like that, it’s too rough for you. Just try to look for something different, and?” There was no point of trying to argue and getting my point across. I wanted to hear something different like “Yeah you can play but just be careful” or “You’ll need extra gear to protect you.” I would’ve done anything to play football. The way I felt that day, it was truly heartbreaking. As life went on for me, I began to feel like I had no purpose, but to go to school and get good grades. I hid my pain deep down inside and accepted the box I was living in.

My freshmen year of high school, I took my father's advice and looked for different things I thought I would enjoy. I went to a few robotic club meetings at first but it was boring, really boring for me. Later in that school year, I started to go to art club because some  of my friends thought I was really good. I did go to a couple art classes at Moore College of Art and Design back in middle school, so I thought why not improve my drawing skills. I enjoyed it but I didn’t stay for long. I felt like I was missing something. Something like the excitement, that adrenaline running through my veins. Competition. I wanted something that would keep me going and motivated. My sophomore year I tried out for a sport I wasn’t so good at, track & field. I was a little nervous at first, I was afraid I wasn’t fast enough but I tried out anyway. track & field wasn’t on the list of sports I couldn’t play, neither was baseball, but I felt more comfortable with track. My first year of track, I was disappointed with my performance. I have a lot to learn so I planned to continue my junior and senior year.

At this point of my life, being more mature and accepting that space I was stuck in for so long, helped me see that this box has so much to offer to me, and I was blinded by the things I wanted most. When everything I needed was right in front of my face. Growing up, I believe so much was given to me for having Hemophilia. I’m giving a big thank you to St. Christopher’s Hospital,Hematology specifically. They provide so much for me and my family, things such as being able to see different events for free. Santa and Channel 6 news coming to my home and giving us with amazing gifts twice, and being selected by Make-A-Wish Foundation. My wish was having a whole week vacation to Disneyworld and Universal Studios Florida. When there’s something bad in your life, you always have to look on the bright side. I believe God gave me this blood disorder for a reason and I just have to find it while I’m still young, instead of complaining all my life about how I can’t do certain things. I’m starting to understand, there's a lot of things I can do in the world and have accomplished. I once felt like hemophilia was holding me back from living my life, but being different can lead to different and amazing possibilities.


Archive XXX: How Change affects the Self or A Summer with a Pencil

Hello, once again. It is I, your ancestor, Julia Furman. This archive will discuss my opinions on change. I usually don’t like change, as I am (well, in this case, was) one who liked to follow a routine. The only kind of surprises I liked were the kind you get on birthdays and Christmas, and the twist endings in mystery novels. However, in retrospect, some changes had a very good effect on me as a person, making me the lovable (yet EXTREMELY quirky) person I was at the time. However, I know for a fact that some aren’t so lucky, and a change can completely ruin their lives.

I know an example of one of these life-changing moments, but it didn’t actually happen. Not in real life anyway. It happened in The Yellow Birds, a novel by Kevin Powers. Before I go into the details, I would like to give some background on The Yellow Birds. The novel follows Private John Bartle and Private Daniel Murphy, two soldiers in the Iraq War, and the bond they formed during their time together. The book has received a lot of praise in my day, but I personally found reading the book very soul crushing and torturous. I was really sensitive, and reading through the more graphic sections were painful for me. For example, a soldier and an old woman were killed off in the first chapter, and it didn’t get better from there. However, I do like the way Kevin Powers described the scenes. They had a poetic feel to them, which I admired. I also appreciate how it displays the mental effects of being in a war. This makes sense, since Kevin Powers himself was a soldier in the Iraq War too.

With that out of the way, the change in this case is the death of Murphy, and the effect it has on Bartle. Spoiler alert, Murphy does die. It’s actually revealed very early in the book. Anyway, Murphy’s death had many impacts on Bartle. Two of them are the deterioration of Bartle’s mental state and the new sense of responsibility he felt for the life of his fallen friend. In the beginning of the book, Bartle made a promise to Murphy’s mother that he would bring her son home safely from the war. While he didn’t take it very seriously at first, after Murphy died, he felt more at fault for the life he promised to protect. This caused him to feel guilty (obviously), and on top of the stress that comes from fighting in wars that I can only imagine, Bartle’s mental state started to deteriorate. There was literally a part where he imagined himself dying. I take that as him thinking that he should have died, which is not a sign of a sane mind.

This change just happened to have a negative impact. Change can also have a positive impact. For example, I have a personal story about how a change in my world impacted me in a positive way. The story is about how a knee replacement and a boring summer helped me make progress on my personal writing projects. For the record, I was not the one who got the knee replacement, my mom did. The story starts, when my mom was 14. She tore cartilage in her knee. After two surgeries to remove the torn cartilage, one at 16 and another at 21, it was time for her to get it replaced. For the first couple weeks, she couldn’t really get in her car, so we didn’t really go anywhere that summer, and we hung around the house a lot. I helped mom around the house, but when I wasn’t doing that, I did small things to occupy my time. As I mentioned before, one thing I did was write. I had just started writing novel-like stories the January of that year, when I was in eighth grade. The project I was working on at the time, and that I’m still working on at the time of this recording, is a series based on the popular sandbox video game, Minecraft. I won’t go over the main plot of the series too much, as there are other archives that go into more detail. However, it features the main characters solving the mysteries of their home while fighting to save it. One particular mystery is that of the red dragon, which was extinct for years until a baby red dragon hatched at the end of the first book, A Legend Reborn. Fun Fact: The red dragon was planned to be in the actual game, but it was removed. The series has 28 books in total, and over the course of that summer, I managed to finish the first and second ones, and start the third one. I feel that the experience has made me a better writer, and I am grateful for the progress I made.

Screenshot 2017-12-21 at 5.33.58 PM
Screenshot 2017-12-21 at 5.33.58 PM

This is a rough draft of the second book in the series, Miners of the West Sea. For more information on what I wrote, see the other archives, if they are not extremely popular in your time. Otherwise, you can probably easily find them.

As you can see, I believe that change has many effects on the self. Change can be negative, but it can also help one grow, or even discover or improve something about themselves. I wonder how much the future has changed since my time, as I most likely won’t live to see it. Honestly, I worry about the future a lot. I suppose if one, the earth isn’t destroyed, two, we haven’t been invaded by aliens, three, robots don’t rule the world, four, the country isn’t composed of a capital and 13 districts and every year, a young boy and girl are gathered to fight in a battle to the death filmed on live TV, or five, any other dystopian future scenarios thought up by us in the past have not come true, I’m sure it’s not that bad.

https://vimeo.com/250437612

The Tormenting Tyrant

Sean DeSilva

Ms. Pahomov

English 3

3 January 2018


Developing as a person requires openness. Being open about certain things will help people develop their habits throughout their life, developing character in the long run. But something that we need to take into account is that not all people are the same. Hiding certain beliefs or just keeping secrets from one another is known to be a common thing from any age. As humans we observe many characteristics in people. The way they greet you, look at you, help you and how they are involved in your daily life. Us, being humans keep secrets from one another thinking that it would solve the troubles we go through. I’m not saying that keep secrets from a loved one, a friend or someone important in your life is necessarily good, but it helps slow down the pain in the beginning.

From personal experience I can account for how keeping a certain secret made a significant impact on my life. It was my 5th grade year in middle school. Being 10 years old, I was ignorant about many things, but still willing to try and understand. I was a very social kid, in and outside of school. I was willing to make friends wherever I went and help others. But I hadn’t known the feeling of emotional damage. He was the new kid in town, named Justin. He was very quiet but still had that “I’m tough” look on his face whenever he sat down during class. At first, I was intimidated by him, I thought to myself “Should I say hi? He is a new student after all.” It was time to go to lunch, we had just been taught some mind boggling fractions in math class, I know right?! I went over to Justin, since he was two students away from me in the lunch line and I said, “Hey, nice to meet you my names Sean!” With a big smile on my face. Justin replied with a relaxed but yet insensitive tone, “Sup.” I thought to myself, “Well I guess he really doesn’t want to talk...I’ll just go get my lunch and talk to my other friends.” “Uh...I’m going to go get lunch.” I replied as I tried to make our quick conversation less awkward, walking away in embarrassment.  

Once I got my school pizza, something that all middle schoolers dream about getting, that fresh five star school lunch quality, I sat down next to my other friends in my class as we began to talk about what games to play after school. Time flew very fast and it was time for recess! We quickly lined up to go outside in the warm sunny weather, it was the start of the school year after all. I walked in a group of friends as we reached the light that was outside. I’m not kidding, when our vice principal opened the door, it was really bright! But it was probably because of how bad our school lighting was. We all rushed outside screaming in excitement, to have forty-five minutes of freedom. As I traveled in the group of my friends, that was when I saw Justin all by himself. I went over to him and I invited him to play dodgeball with us and he accepted. I thought to myself, “Cool! Now we can be friends.”

Once we began the game of dodgeball, my favorite sport next to swimming, Justin gave me an intense look. A look that to this date, I cannot forget. It screamed “You’re going down.” I was very intimidated but I didn’t think too much of it in that moment. We started throwing the “spherical orbs of death” as I liked to call it, at one another. Justin came out of nowhere and throw two dodgeballs at me, and not on the arm. One hit me directly on the face while the other one collided into my left ear. The pain was a sting, a burn, a bad feeling. I immediately stopped the game and screamed at him, “What’s wrong with you?!” Soon after my eruption, the vice principal came over and assed the situation. He took Justin out of the game, to the office. My group of friends came over to make sure I was okay, I said “Yeah...I’m fine.” I walked away from the group and sat in the corner of the playground waiting for class to start back up again. Class resumed and the school day was regular as always, except that I had a gloomy look on my face until the school day ended. One thing I noticed during class was that Justin wasn’t there anymore. “I know what happened to him...He probably got expelled!” I thought to myself, smiling…”That’s what he gets.” I continued thinking about the severe punishments he can get. The school day ended, my father came to pick me up and we went home.

Although the school day ended, the actual day didn’t end. My father asked me if anything interesting happened at school as he handed me my sandwich since school lunch really didn’t satisfy my lunch. I told him, “No, same old, same old.” But being my father he knew something was up, and I knew that he knew. So I tried to look away from him whenever he tried to see my face. He saw a bruise on my face and asked me “What the hell happened?!” As rage consumed his eyes. I told him that I feel during recess and tried to laugh it off as I covered my tears. My father replied with a reassuring “Alright. But be more careful next time.” I responded with a “You got it!” trying to make myself seem fine so my dad doesn’t find anything suspicious.

The next day, I had school...Again! I know right? Five times a week for an entire year...Yeah tell me about it. My friends greeted me with big smiles as I waited outside the gate with my dad waiting for the school doors to open. “I really hope that kid Justin isn’t here…” I thought to myself, as my worried eyes spoke for me when my friends looked at my gloomy face. “Good morning!” The principle shouted. “Have a good day, Son.” my dad told me as he kissed my head and patted me on the back, “See you soon” I said as I tried to force a smile out of my resisting body. I walked up the mountainous steps for a 10 year old, to the auditorium. Just to be greeted by the vice principal and next to him, Justin. “Justin would like to say something to you, Sean.” The vice principal said to me in a firm manner as Justin looked at me, teary eyed. “I’m sorry about yesterday, Sean. I got too aggressive when we were playing.” “Oh, it’s okay! Let’s be friends, right?” I asked Justin as my day felt like it was beginning to shine once again. “Yeah! That would be cool.” Justin responded as we shook hands and walked to our classroom.

The day presume, regular classes, regular me. Once recess approached, I asked Justin if he wanted to play tag with my friends and me. He replied, “Yeah, I love tag dude!” “Ha! Me too.” I said smiling as I reached out for a high-five. He rose his left hand up high, to what I thought was a high-five coming back at me...But it wasn’t. He slapped me across my left cheek, causing a red mark to appear on my face. Once he had made contact with my face I immediately thought to myself, “This kids insane...I try to befriend him but he just wants to hurt me. No wonder he’s alone.” Tears quickly fell down my face, the pain was nostalgic. I looked at him, with rage and sorrow, uttering these words, “I hate you.” I’ve never actually said that to someone and meant it...But in that moment I knew I meant what I said. Justin looked back at me, cocky, grinning and heroic. He asked me “Oh, yeah? Well what are you going to do about it?” “Just wait…” I said, threatening him as I was hurt emotionally and physically.” I walked away, I walked to do the right thing. I tapped the vice principal on the shoulder as he patroles the playground. “Justin’s bullying me!” I said with anger, wiping my tears off my face, looking at the vice principal in the eye. Justin ran over to the principal nad I, exclaiming that he didn’t do anything “wrong.” The vice principal and I both knew he was in the wrong, due to his prior actions. The vice principal called my dad over to asses the issue for good.

Justin and I both walked to the office to resolve this issue. My dad walked in a couple minutes after, as our house was close to the school. “Sean? I knew something was going on!” My dad shouted in rage as he entered the office. I’ve never seen him this angry, but not at me...At Justin. “How could you do this to my son? I assumed that the vice principal had informed him of the bullying Justin had done to me. “All he wanted to was welcome you and be your friend!” He continued, Justin looked like he was going to cry, but he held back. “I-I’m sorry...I really am.” Justin muttered as a tear rolled down his face, onto the ground...Splashing like the ocean had dropped onto the dry ground of the Earth, expanding onto the cracks of the ground. “It’s okay, Justin.” I said quickly, before my father went off on a further rant. “I understand where you’re coming from.” I said when I really didn’t. “Just make sure to be kinder to others, because not everyone's tough as you!” I said laughing to bring some humor to the tension. “Dad, it’s okay, he’s learned his lesson.” I said to my dad to calm him down. “Alright Son.” “Thank you.” My dad said to the vice principal, as pulled me out of school early. We walked home, I didn’t want to look back at Justins face, but I did. I saw him crying, but I knew it was for the best, for him to learn his lesson and become a better person.

I’ve learned throughout the 16 years that I’ve been on this planet, that not everyone's the same but we all sometimes desire the same thing. That “desire is to seek help when we are on the needing end. Many people, like you and I, may go through strife once in awhile but the main question that rises is “How do we deal with it?”


Best personal Essay Ever- Overcoming a nonverbal learning disability

Overcoming having a learning disbilty 

 Have you heard of nonverbal learning disability? A nonverbal learning disability is a condition based on the brain that makes everything in life more difficult. People need to be tested to be diagnosed. The limitation is also called Right-hemisphere disorders. People with the learning disability have poor motor performance, poor vision, poor organizational skills, poor with personal space. People, with the learning disability, also have a hard time processing and reconciling nonverbal skills and sloppy handwriting. There is no cure for the learning disability but people who have it get accommodations, I have an IEP (individual learning plan) this gives me accommodations such as using a calculator because it is hard to remember basic math.  To be diagnosed with a Nonverbal learning disability you need to be tested by a psychologist. Who gives a standard IQ test. If the certain areas are low you are diagnosed with the learning disability.  When I was in kindergarten, I was tested, and the test found that I have a nonverbal learning disability. I was diagnosed at a young age which means that the issue was caught early. Now I am versatile, but I have a hard time remembering stuff, but when I remember the thing I remember that thing well, this means I struggle with math. I struggle with remembering specific steps and equations. I struggle with spelling test and vocabulary test because I just can not remember all the words. My handwriting has improved immensely, but I am sure past teachers in middle school would agree I had very sloppy writing. I find history to be my most active class because I remember a lot of history and when I remember something I Remember that fact very well.

   Many might know that I am athletic, yes I play hockey and recently quit baseball due to having pain in my elbow and enjoying hockey more. Many might not realize that baseball was hard for me because I had trouble seeing the baseball when hitting and also when fielding.  I played catcher, and the coach would make signs for different pitches, this was hard for me because I could not remember the signs and I had to write them on my arm because I could not remember the signs.

For many years I overcame this and played baseball. I play hockey full time out of school, meaning when I am not in school, I am usually at the rink. Hockey is a high-speed, intense and violent game. If you don’t play them with the right position, the puck will end up in the net for the other team. I have been playing hockey for seven years now, and I know the positioning by heart. But it did not start out that way. When I was first starting playing hockey, I was not playing at an elite level, and merely positioning did not matter because everyone sucks at hockey at a young age. When I started playing at an elite level, this changed. We as a team began to go over the positioning on a small whiteboard, and I struggled immensely with the positioning because I could not remember the correct positioning. In hockey one of the most basic, the winger (my position) job is to get the puck out of the zone at all cost because you don’t want the other team to score. The first thing you do is skate to the hash marks on the left or right side. The second thing you do is pass to the player who is playing the passion center. I Know this might seem simple, but I struggled with doing a breakout for a long time. The hockey puck unpredictable, you never know what bounce or turn the frozen piece of rubber will take. The hockey puck plus my vision sometimes does not make a good match because sometimes I can’t see or predict where the puck is going to go.   

   I got to give credit to my hockey old coach who helped me with this; my old coach would take his time to explain everything and make sure I understood everything. If I made a mistake my coach would not be mad he would again make sure I got everything down. My coach would state “ I don’t care if your mistakes, just make sure you try and skate hard.” I give credit to him for helping me with hockey. My old hockey coach is probably the only reason I am still playing today because he gave me confidence and the skills needed to be good at ice hockey.

 I have a learning disability, and I accept that I have learned that having a learning disability doesn't define me as a person. I have proven that if you have a disability, you can still live your life. I have exceeded the expectations placed on me. Playing both sports took time and patience, but I have overcome my learning disability to play both ice hockey and baseball. I also realize that things take time; you need to be patient, and the right things will happen. You can’t be perfect at something at first, when you first attempt then you may struggle;  Things take time. The more you practice, the better you get. Although there is no cure for this, I have become well versed in navigating the world and finding ways to manage.




My Attitude Towards Studying Through the Years

It’s very difficult for me to concentrate, focus and not be distracted while doing my homework. Even if I only need to spend ten minutes to finish my homework I am not able to do it since I find myself being lazy, slacking off, checking my phone, watching videos, playing games, you name it I do it. I can’t even count how many times I have found myself doing this over the years. 
When I am able to focus and regain my concentration I wonder why and think why do I have this horrible habit and when did this horrible habit begin? Most of all I say how could this have happened to me?
How do you get this habit? 
As a kindergarten student I rarely caused any trouble in class. My grades were above average, my behavior in class was good, and I never cheated on quizzes and tests. I knew nothing about the world, no pressure in my family and was always happy. Maybe that’s the reason why I did great in kindergarten.
Why do you not just change this habit?
When I was in first grade, I made more friends in my class. We learned the same things in the class, ate lunch together, played together during recess, and took the same tests. I thought that my attitude I had in kindergarten would have stayed with me during my primary school’s life, but thing didn’t quite stay that way.
Did you even try to change it?
During the years of second, third and fourth grade I continued doing well in school with no problem. But there were more students in class that disrupted the learning and those that that to repeat their year. But still that did not change my attitude towards studying. So far…
Why can’t you stop it yourself?
Grade 5, Oh Boy. Things are not going the way it should be...somehow. My brother and I changed schools because the school we attended was too far from where we lived. Sadly we said farewell to the students we had known and went on to our new school. The students in our new school had a much different attitude than the students from my old school. In the new school, half of the students in my class just did not want to study, at all. They talked a lot during in class, had poor attendance, did not hand homework on time, and even cheated on quizzes and tests. My brother and I were in different classes. For me this was the start where I began to have a similar attitude as the other students finding myself not involved with school. I did not realize it how my attitude changed. I started not turning in homework, sleeping during the class, breaking some minor school rules, and even cheating during two tests. All of this lead to my grades turning bad, failing tests and exams, and getting scolded by teachers. The sad part was, this continued in 6th grade but minus the cheating part because I realized I should not do that again. Doing it once and not getting caught was enough, My mind now tells me I should stop writing because it is getting worse talking about it.
Why did you keep doing that if you knew it is a bad habit?
After finishing 6th grade, I went to middle school for grade 7 where my brother and I were finally in the same class. The students in that high school, Oh God. Some of the students along with myself at times worked hard in the class and behaved well in front of teachers. But other times, they played with their phone under the desk, chatting, sleeping, being lazy, not handing in homework, cheating on tests and exam, etc. And me, it was getting even worse grade than in grades 5 and 6.  I did not hand in homework on time because I was doing other stuff while “doing homework” at home. Other stuff means playing, idling, daydreaming. This even happened when I was studying for exams. I was not able to concentrate on my exams even when I was in a different classroom than the other students to take the exams. This scenario repeated again in grades 8 and 9. And it was getting even worse than ever. The students were not really bad, they just lazy to me.
You are really hopeless, aren’t you?
When I got the news of my brother and I were going back to United States to study for grades 10, 11 and 12, I talked to myself. I really, really needed to change this horrible habit. A new place, a new me. The school was chosen by my dad, and he did not make a wrong decision. The students in that school are kind, the teachers there like to help. I like it. Because of that, I started to work even harder at school and at home, to not let my parents hopes down. But the habit I have only has only slightly improved. I still have this habit and still, I wonder why?
When will it end?
I just can't stop it. I don’t know how and I don’t know why? I just can’t control myself. Everytime when I do work, I will play on my laptop or my phone, and ignore the work in front of me. I find that I am letting students and teachers that have helped me down, letting my parents down, and even letting myself down. I struggle to finish homework, and even struggle to finish this essay. Because of that, I have so much overdue homeworks. My heart struggles every time I did that, my sadness increases every time I did that. What is the reason behind this? Is it because one time I saw my brother playing with his computer while doing homework? Is it because I have ADHD? I don’t know. It’s grade 11 mid-term now, I hope to make a resolution change for myself, and it's to remind myself to do my work stop watching Youtube or checking my phone. I need to just finish my homework before playing. Maybe it looks useless for me but that’s my New Year’s goal I want to make.

Enjoyment That Would End up Fading

Alan Li

Ms. Pahomov

English 3

20 December 2017

Enjoyment That Would End up Fading

“Hello,” my mother said from a distance as I came home from school. Even after a stressful experience being in the fifth grade for an entire school year, there was some sense of enjoyment within me when I stepped into the kitchen only to realize that my mother was talking with her friend on the phone about something I was not aware of at the time. As she hung up the phone, I asked my mother what she was talking about on the call. She went down and grinned jubilantly at me while I was still baffled by what she was planning. Without any hesitations, she told me that she was planning a trip where she could bring me and my brothers to a bus trip to Boston along with her friend’s family.

Even if it would be my first time going to Boston, I did not want to go to a bus trip due to how much money it would have been for my family to pay for everyone traveling north to Boston. When my mother got up and walked away from the kitchen, my body was motionless with the worrisome thought of having to spend a lot of money just on a bus trip. At the time, I would have screamed or whined about not going on the trip, but I was not able to. That would have just deterred my mother of happiness and enjoyment. As I think of the moment of me standing still in a temporary trance, I was able to recall the bafflement my eleven-year-old mind had and how difficult it was for me to make a decision on whether to complain to my mother about the trip or not. It was as though the consequences of the choices I would have to decide were like barriers to what I truly wanted at the time.

   As my family and I headed towards the gray bus that would take us to Boston, we encountered a lady spotting us from the bus stop with her husband and daughter. While delighted to see my mother, the lady embraced my mother as they both smiled. She turned out to be the person my mother was planning a trip to Boston with. When the girl looked behind to see what was happening between our mothers, my eyes dilated in horror as I realized that she was Susie, who was one of my closest friends from elementary school. She was not a horrible person but having her witness me with the rest of my family made me want to reconsider complaining to my mother about taking me to Boston.

At first, before the entire trip was arranged, I did not think of Susie much besides a person who was one of the people I socialized with within the school building. Since it was my first time having a friend from school witnessing me with my family and what I am like outside of school, my mind felt as though it wanted me to forget everything that ever occurred and go back home. While everyone was getting on the bus, for a moment, I stood still as though it was that time when my mother announced to me that we were having this trip. “Alannnnnnnnn!” Susie called out from the window as I regained my awareness of what life would be like in a place I had never been to.

Like the first night, while it was my last night staying in Boston, I would glance the window showing me the night sky. However, unlike my first night in Boston, the reason why it was hard for me to sleep was not due to how foreign it was. The reason why it became hard for me to sleep was that of how a foreign place like Boston ended up being a place that became familiar to me for the first time. Throughout the trip, since Susie has been to Boston before, her and her family were able to help guide my family time and time again through a big city like Boston. Even with the enjoyment I had getting to this place not only with my family but with a close friend of mine and her family as well, there was still some uncertainty within me on what life can be like leaving Boston and having to get used to life in Philadelphia. Hours went by as I lose consciousness bit by bit and the fears I kept throughout the trip slowly disappearing into the night.  

As the sun was preparing to leave the trip, my family and Susie’s family gathered together near an airport. Her mother wanted to say farewell to my mother. In return, tears poured down my mother’s eyes. I was not aware that I would not be able to see Susie after the trip was over. My mother knew all along that Susie and her family were going to move back to China after the trip was over; however, despite her awareness, tears came out of her eyes as she embraces Susie and her family. I stood still scared of not knowing what to do next. I did not want to say anything so it would not have been as sad as it was. Knowing too well that it was my last time seeing Susie, I decided to give my farewells to her and her family and they head towards the airport.

When I went back home and tried to sleep, I looked up at the ceiling while I was awake without the ability to sleep. Even though I was in Boston for like two months, it felt as though I was used to having a new life different from the life I always have had. However, since I knew that I would never see Susie again, it felt as though the life I had before the trip would not be same anymore. It was almost the first day of school by a few days and the feelings of joy I had during most of the summer quickly faded as the days gone by. I knew I would only end up at the same school—the place that gave me a lot of stress such as the high amount of homework and tests—again but without Susie—a close friend of mine that had been in the same school as me until now.

Looking back at the trip and the life I had after the trip, I realized how enjoyable life can be and that the reason why people can be disappointed is due to how those moments of enjoyment can end. By accepting my mother’s decision to go to Boston over the summer, I ended up learning what it was like being with someone from my school who I did not know would have a lot of significance in my life outside of it. I only realized how much that means to me when I got to see Susie and her family for last time as they were leaving for the airport, which reminded me of how much turmoil could come from losing someone who had a significant part of one’s life. Even though my trip to Boston was not the only moment of my life where I had enjoyment, I think it is significant to my life because I was stressed out before the trip only to end up stressing out again after the trip was over. Despite the enjoyable moments in my life only being temporary, it makes me feel better when I think of those moments of my life and how experiencing new things can even be enjoyable for me. To that, I want to thank my mother for planning that bus trip I would otherwise miss out on if I complained.


Script


After my fifth-grade year ended, my mother was planning a trip to Boston with a friend of hers. After she placed back the phone, I wanted to whine because of how expensive it was for my parents to pay off. However, I could not. I knew I would have only disappointed my mother if I did. Instead of whining, I just stood there, wondering if the trip would be worth it.

By the time we went to the bus stop, I ended up meeting Susie, whose mother happened to be friends with my mother. Since Susie was a close friend of mine from school, I did not want her to think weirdly of me. As I got on the bus, Susie noted that she and her family had been to Boston before. Although I felt awkward at that moment, I decided to ask her questions when it came to Boston. We ended up getting carried away as we talked about random things throughout the first day.

When it was my last time in Boston, I was not able to sleep. I enjoyed being in Boston, which was a place I got to learn more about because of the help from Susie and her family. I did not know she would end up becoming one of my best friends outside of school and how much enjoyment I would have with someone from my school. As we left Boston and headed to the airport, Susie’s family gave their farewells since they were moving back to China. My mother was filled with tears and before they left, I gave them my farewells in return. Without Susie being in my middle school class, my life felt stressful again as sixth grade started. Even though moments of enjoyment can be temporary, the reason why opening up to new moments can still be cherishable is due to the values they can have towards a person when moments like these are gone.


The Lessons I Have Learned

Eli Zimmerman


Ms. Pahomov


English 3


January 8, 2017



I have seen my mother cry once in my life. I remember I was eight  years old when I walked into my parents bedroom, the room was near pitch black and the air was stale it seemed as if the life had been sucked away from the room. I walked up to the lump covered in blankets and pillows, it was my mom. Her face was buried in a pillow and she was crying softly.

“Every year she would call me on my birthday just to catch up and see how I had been.”

“Do you want anything, maybe a glass of water?”

“No I’m fine thank you, I just need sometime to be alone.”

To me my grandmother was someone that made my parents smile, someone who gave me presents she was nothing more yet nothing less. Unfortunately this is all that sticks with me when I think of her. Did I really love her? Should I have loved and cherished the times we had? The simple answer to the deep hitting questions is “I don’t know.”

She died when I was seven. Her name was Janet, she lived in Rochester Minnesota, home to some incredibly cold weather and the world famous Mayo Clinic. The to of us were never all that close due to her sickness she had been isolated from the outside world, including myself. I at the time was much too young to comprehend what had happened, frankly I still do not know the full detailed story because I have been too scared that I will trigger another negative reaction from my mother, which I have no intention of doing.

My feelings of grief are only directed towards those who knew her for who she was, a strong hard working mother of two who was the binding agent in her household. Although I respect these attributes greatly I do not feel a hole in my heart where my grandmother's presence should have been before. I know I have felt love, the embrace of my friends and family, the home cooked meals my mother is always eager to whip up for me, and the passion and drive of my father to make me happy. But love has never been taken away from me. I see friends and family who have gone through the some of the hardest situations anyone can imagine, yet here I am untouched by loss. It makes me feel for the people who have experienced loss. Why have they been selected, why not I? I guess I am greatly fortunate to have not yet been touched by the inevitable effect of loss of someone I love.

I have come close to this event was when my uncles girlfriend of 15 years was diagnosed with a serious form of pancreatic cancer. Once my father had told me the news I cried for a long while. I stayed up, my head churned through the memories of a woman who had babysat me for many years. To think someone who had always been a part of my family may disappear from my life as soon as I woke up kept me up. I had constants butterflies in my stomach I was anxious and weary. This unnerving feeling lasted until I saw her again, when I saw that the diagnosis did not put a damper in her spirit I was finally able to get composure. One who has not experienced this awful disease could not fathom the hardships that a patient must go through.    

This memory of my mother has taught me many things in life, both the imperfections and the good things about death. It has taught me that there is nothing harder than losing the one you love, to have their body and mind be stripped from your grasp brings the person to a sunken low point. But in this pit of despair there is love and compassion for the person that you so dearly care about it results in congregation, like that wonderful ceremony that was held to honor Janet’s legacy. Her ashes were spread in the woods to memorialize her spirit which remained wild and free until the end. The loss of my grandmother has shown me that when people pass they’re remembered through the people that loved them. The time my parents had with my grandmother and even physical attributes, like how I’m constantly reminded I have my grandmother's eyes, blue as the middle of the atlantic. My mother honors the spirit of my grandmother through other things as well, like the fact that she liked marzipan, or long walks in the woods. For not knowing my grandmother all too well she sure has lightened the dark world around me.

The first time I saw my father cry was when we were returning from a basketball tryout that I had completely bombed. At this time I was a small chubby kid that had a bone to pick with running, so when the coach made us run laps I decided to hand in the towel and tell my father to drive me home.

In the car we got into a yelling match for a reason at the time I thought was not deep. He explained that it’s not a good habit for me to get into, quitting at the first sign of difficulty. He digressed as a steady trickle of tears began to fall from his face. I could see the frost from his breath as it intensified. It was 7:30 at night in one of the colder months, like January. He took a deep and began to tell me why quitting without reason was hard for him to tolerate. My father talked about how he started his own architectural firm from nothing. He talked about how he had been fired from many jobs because he was deemed to have a poor work ethic. So obviously the importance of persistence and determination were the key points to his speech.

I at the time was mad at my father for not siding with me and my acceptance of defeat so I remained speechless. The car did not hear another word from either of us for the rest of the night. The only things to be heard were my fathers sniffles and the heater. Deep down I was confused, my mind was racing and I could not conjure up anything to say that would support my argument that quitting is ok. Everything I could think of I knew my father would know how to counter it. It wasn’t till much later that I understood the importance of that lesson.

I didn’t think highly of the things my father explained at the time, in fact it made me want to quit basketball because I felt as if I had to put in a great deal of effort for a sport was wasn’t even that passionate about. In reality the effort I had put in wasn’t enough, my hustle and determination had only shown a mild interest in the sport, I wasn’t even that good but I didn’t notice that at the time.

The importance of my fathers lesson is near priceless to me and the fact that it occured in a time that was swirled with emotion roots the morals in my brain so that they may never be removed. I have learned to try my best and I have learned that the long road of defeats is built to slow me down, but I am aware this is where we strive and push on till eventually we come out successful.  


My Mother...

People say your mother is your best friend. She's a person you lean on. Your mother is like the earth. She is supposed to provide the breath you breathe. Your mother is supposed to shape and care for you. I guess that's always what I thought my mom was to me. My mother was and is my best friend. There is no one else like her. It's impossible to find anyone who looks, talks and walks the same way she does. See my mother goes and went through the same things I went and go through as a young woman. So when she broke from the same story of her childhood it hurt me. Maybe my mother didn't want us to be the same; maybe my mother wanted something better or nothing at all.
     I was born into a family like none other. We didn’t have any mixed children or people who married anyone who wasn’t black. We hadn’t travelled the world thousands of times. We aren’t Christian although both my grandparents family were heavily into Christ. I come from an African American Muslim family. My grandparents started the biggest Masjid in the Philadelphia area. My family is the center of my world and will always be the biggest part of my life. But my family is also sometimes my only enemy in the world. As Muslims, we are taught to only fear Allah. For the longest time that was my only fear in life. Until my fear became a for thought and the only thing I could think about was my mother and sister. 
    When I made it clear to my mother she needed to come home or me and my sister needed to stay with her, she didn’t listen to me. I don’t know how I was supposed to take that, but it was a hit to my heart that cut deep. In that moment I became my sister’s mother, not her older sister. I became my dad's personality to lean on. It made me the person I am today. There are still cracks in me and my mother's relationship, but I don’t think we can heal those until she learns how to apologize, but what do I know. She tells me all the time “I’m just a kid. Kids  know nothing.” Of course, my mother thinks I didn’t know my dad and she had relationship problems. Most parents always want to live in a bliss of my child is stupid when really I knew more than she did. I knew my parents weren’t going to last before my mother knew how to run from her problems. My mother eventually took what I knew and went through, for face value because that's all she could do.   
My parents aren't everybody else's parents, but then again no bodies parents are the same. I lived in a house full of love, yes, but it was a hard kinda love. Clearly, I knew I was loved. Getting a divorce isn’t bad. I have no regrets as of today for why my parents left each other. My parents made it seem like them getting a divorce was normal. It was normal for me. To this day it rolls off of my tongue easily. I don’t care. I have fallen in love all over again with my sister because although they are our parents my sister and I have learned to rely on each other because we don’t know who is going to be with us next. During my parent’s divorce, my sister lived with my mother and I lived with my dad. That was a time that I walked through life like a zombie because my sister was my lifeline. 
I previously said my mother leaving me and my sister made me mature and that's true, but my goals and dreams came together on December 10, 2009. That was the day my sister was born. I had 11 siblings I barely saw, but we loved and cared for each other. When my sister became number 12, it hit me that my siblings all had each other and I had no one. Before my sister, it was me and my mother. The only person I could lean on and tell my truths to was her. Then my mother got pregnant and the world rushed at me; I had to run with it. I was eight years old when my sister was born. Thinking back to when I was eight is hard. My parents were always happy and we smiled. My father and I were closer. 
I still remember the day my mother told my dad she was pregnant. Mind you my parents were actually trying to get pregnant this time. Little did I know. My mother told my dad and he told her to stop lying. I busted it out laughing, my dad is a true jokester. If this was a time of kings and queens my father would be the jester. After I told my dad it was true he told me it wasn’t. Then I didn’t know if he was playing, I mean for a few seconds I thought maybe my mother cheated until he started laughing. My dad stood in our old kitchen laughing at me in awe face with my mouth hanging over waiting for someone to give me a drink of water. I will forever remember that day. It was the last time my dad and I laughed in that kitchen. The year 2008 was a fast one. One moment my father and I were laughing in the kitchen next came 2009 and my mother was having my baby sister. 
Unlike most people think I actually was afraid of my sister. I didn’t hold her. I didn’t feed her nor did I try and wash her up. I stayed away from my sister for a few months until I was forced to love her. She became my baby that was alive. She breathed and ate and went to the bathroom. My sister was everything I didn’t ask for. I never wanted a sister, I always secretly wanted a brother. I still do want a brother, well little brother. I have two older brothers who I love very dearly.  Having a sibling was a dream for me because I asked for one so many times. I had many siblings, but I always felt like an only child. I can’t explain having so much of something, but not believe you do.  As I got older so did my sister. My sister even today follows me. She knows that no matter what we go through or have been through that I will never leave her. I will never give up on her because she is my lifeline. My sister has never felt abandonment from not one of our parents and I am happy for her. 
I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Although my mother is back in my life and for good. I lost my father after the gain of my mother. I always wonder if my mother never came back into my life would I be any different. Would I be more hateful? Would I be less motivated? I look back on when I used to ponder about if my parents got a divorce who I would live with. I always said I would live with both my mother and father. My father and mother together add great characteristics and life lessons to my life that I have learned to balance. Then when I actually had to choose, I chose my father. Whether I knew it then, I know it now. My father's 12 children are his lifeline and I don’t ever want to take away what helps motivate someone to get up. For most of my first year in high school, I was independent. I had no mother. I had no father. It was just me and my baby sister. I guess not having my parents did create a hole somewhere that I can’t see and won’t feel. At the end of my first year in high school, my mother and I prepared our relationship and every day we seal a crack. My mother will always be the first best friend I ever had, but we haven’t been best friends in a while. I guess me and my mother have finally understood the roles of mother and daughter. Maybe my mother didn't want us to be the same; maybe my mother wanted something better or nothing at all. My mother told me she doesn’t want me to grow up like her, she wants me to be better. I am my mother's second chance and I hope with her back in my life I will be what she dreams and wished for. 
https://www.wevideo.com/hub#media/ci/1050058703

Being Jewish on Christmas-Avi Cantor

Avi Cantor

Ms. Pahomov

English 11

Being Jewish on Christmas

It’s January 2nd, 2018 and I’m sitting on my beanbag chair writing the draft of what Ms. Pahomov has assured the class will be the “Best Personal Essay Ever”.

If I was part of the majority of students in Ms. Pahomov’s Air Stream English Class who “celebrate” Christmas, I might have been able to blame my procrastination on Christmas. I could’ve given the reader an excuse like “Oh I had tons of family over and we were all so wrapped up in the exchanging of gifts and all the other fun stuff that is involved with Christmas.” But I can’t because I’m a conservative jew (which is a branch of Judaism just like Catholic or Protestant etc) who has quite possibly one of the most jewish names ever. Adding on to the in-your-face nature of my unusual name, I am the exact stereotype of a jew on Christmas Eve and Christmas.


I rolled over and squinted at my old alarm clock. The red blocky numbers read “11:07”. I pulled the covers off of my body and stumbled lazily downstairs.  “Guys we should go see Three Billboards,” my dad started, “Woody Harrelson’s in it. You know right? The dude from White Men Can’t-


“Abba (dad in hebrew), I know who Woody Harrelson is,” I said matter-of-factly.


“Ooh it has the woman from Fargo! I’m down,” my mom exclaimed. My brother walked down the fading grey carpeted stairs sporting blue and green plaid SLA pajama pants. He was on his way into the kitchen for breakfast when my mom asked him if he wanted to go to the movie as well. He lethargically shrugged his shoulders as he stumbled off of the wooden step and turned through the doorway into the kitchen. Minutes later he brought a pair of strawberry Pop Tarts into the living room and abruptly dropped into the seat of a green one-armed chair.


“When are we going?” he mumbled through a mouthful of Pop Tart.


“Soon as you finish eating,” my mom responded in an eager tone.


“M’kay,” he grumbled.


After my brother changed, we headed to the movie at the Roxy Theater in Society Hill. As we drove, I spotted tons of signs with “LAST CHANCE CHRISTMAS DEALS” or “MERRY CHRISTMAS, PHILLY!” printed on them with huge red and green lettering. But not one that mentioned anything about any other holiday. Being that I’d seen signs like these since I was little, it didn’t bother me that there weren’t any signs about Chanukah or Kwanza or any other seasonal holiday. Our car bumped along on a cobblestone street until we found a spot across the street from the theater.

✦✦✦✦

As Lonely by Yung Bans and Lil Skies’ bubbly and video game-esk instrumental started to become less resonant in my headphones, I started to slowly slide my legs out of bed. I stretched out and looked outside my bedroom window. The PECO building lights stuck out like a sore thumb against the pitch black sky. The numbers “6:48” jogged across the top of the building as I began to stretch my groggy limbs. I walked downstairs to my mom sitting cross legged on her computer and my dad fast asleep on the couch smothered in a red and blue yarn blanket. My dad finds football games as the ideal soundtrack for a nap while my mom finds the games to be perfect background noise for working on the various things that come in her job description.


“Oh Av. You’re up. I was thinking that we could go to Chinatown for Christmas Eve dinner. What do you think?” My mom asked, suddenly looking up from her computer.


“You want to go to-”


“Sang Kee Noodle House!’ My brother exclaimed walking out of the kitchen with a newly peeled orange.


I gave my mom the “he has a good point” look and she shrugged. “I’m down.”


Ten minutes later, a Lyft arrived at the door of our small brick row home. We climbed into the driver’s sedan and drifted down to the bottom of our street. “So, you guys got your Christmas tree up yet?” The driver asked. My dad casually answered that we had, a typical move from a man who doesn’t enjoy hostile or uncomfortable confrontation. Many Jews who I’ve been around are as passive as my dad when it comes to questions about Christmas. However, my mom isn’t one of those people. She viciously bit her lip as her eyes narrowed. Her arms were flexed just above her lap and her fists balled up so tight I thought her hand would split open. My dad continued to make small talk with the driver for most of the ride, seeming unfazed by the man’s remark.

The driver dropped us off in front of the restaurant, gave us a stiff lipped smile, and drove off. We entered the restaurant and were guided to a table near the restaurant’s glass doors. Seconds after we’d sat down, my mom started to voice her dismay at the driver’s inability to recognize that many people don’t celebrate Christmas. She continued to argue that America is notorious for not recognizing people’s cultural backgrounds and making generalizations that allow people to think that everyone celebrates Christmas. Her point really resonated with me as I continued to explore this concept throughout the night. Her argument made me realize that watering down culture and our differences is a value that is deeply embedded in American culture. Digging deeper into this theme, I realized that commercialism has made a similar effect on Christmas. Commercialism turned the holiday into an excuse to spend money on meaningless items and has seemingly lost all religious ties to Christianity.  I went to sleep that night asking myself what the point of Christmas really was.

I woke up late the next morning to my dad shaking me and telling me that we were going to my aunt and uncle's house for a Christmas-ish lunch. My brother and I stuffed Pop Tarts into our hungry mouths and hopped into the car. As we drove over the South Street Bridge, I looked at various people’s Snapchat stories and watched as they ripped open presents. I scrolled through three or four stories that were all variations of boasting what they got from their parents and/or loved ones. But then I saw one story that stuck out from the others. After ripping open presents, the girl got up and gave her mother a huge embrace. While hugs aren’t exactly a commodity in the world we live in, this hug made me really think and helped change my view on Christmas entirely.

I realized then that while Christmas is often the forefront of seasonal advertising and that consumerism has become an integral part of the holiday, at the end of the day, Christmas is about being with family and going out of your way to do something nice for someone else. Christmas gives families an opportunity to bond and reconnect and to be a part of something greater by giving to others. Thinking critically about Christmas made me realize that going to my aunt and uncle’s house meant that I was “celebrating” Christmas in my own way. I got the opportunity to reconnect with family and celebrate our time together with food and exchanging time from our busy lives to spend time together.


This theme of an intense familial bond and being a part of something greater is one of the overarching themes of Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried. In O’Brien’s various stories, he shows how being together for every hour of every day force the soldiers of the Alpha troop to form fervent familial connections to everyone in the troop. The beginning of the book lists every single thing that the soldiers carried with acute precision. This acute attention to detail shows how well O’Brien knew his troop. As for being a part of something greater than yourself, all of the men in the Vietnam war were fighting so that their families and country would have security in their lives.


concrete

Deja Winfield

Personal Memoir

Larissa Pahomov

3 English

Concrete

This essay is going to be difficult for me to write because it has been two years, but it feels like it’s two days. I can still feel the hole in my heart when I absentmindedly look through my contact list and her number isn't there. Or when I’m at my dad’s house and I see her picture. The only photo ever taken of her. When I go by 52nd Street and her stand is there, but she’s not.  Or when I get stopped on the train and get asked how she is and have to explain that she died of lung cancer. Or worse, when my father is to explain and he gets a knot in his throat and you can hear him get more choked up with every word. Or seeing his eyes for the last two Februarys cause her birthday is on the 25th and we can’t hear her voice. Slowly forgetting what she sounds like What she looks like, or trying to act like everything is okay.

There are so many things I could write about. My life is a road with hundreds of potholes. Some of my stories could enlist the 86 pages of my own medical record, or growing up with two fathers who aren’t partners but best friends. These things have affected my life greatly, but nothing affected me as much as losing my grandmother days before the end of my freshman year. She was someone who help me fill those potholes. My grandmother helped so many others fill their potholes.

My grandmother played the role of cement in a world of concrete but she was not always cement. She was impossible to break without a sledge hammer. She grew up with a mental disorder, that she never told her children about. She never let a single one her four boys, know the name of her sickness, but her late husband saw it, and took them away from their home in California to move them to Rhode Island. Leaving her alone to sink deeper into her sickness. Soon after she moved to Philadelphia and begged to have her sons back. They had known their mother and the bad she done while sick and refused to go back to her unless she had gotten help. She would do anything to have them back and fought for them to be back in her life.

She began taking medication to bring herself back into reality. Her sons began to see her again but only for hours at a time, and months apart. She wanted them back in her life full time. But their father couldn’t allow for that. She begged for one of them, and the same visitations with the rest of them. He allowed her the youngest, my father. A young boy, of six years, torn away from his brothers and father, to live with a woman he barely knew. She raised with as much love as she possibly could. She broke down his concrete walls, and filled his potholes with cement.

When he turned 21, he begged his father for the right to know him. His father agree. But couldn’t keep his promise for long, losing his life to a heart attack only two years later. The word father was a word in the dictionary to my dad, and nothing more. He did not know the roles of a father or the challenges of being one. In two years he would begin growing his family. He would have to step up to the plate and understand what it meant to be a father. My grandmother stepped up to show him that there are many steps to climb and that you may tumble down them now and again but you will never hit the bottom with your child as long as you keep trying to climb. In another two years time my father would be on his fourth child, only two of them biologically his, but all four his children. He was and is a amazing father. A man I am proud to called Dad, even though he has fallen a few times, he's gotten back up to come back harder. And I thank my grandmother for this. Without her I don't know where any of us would be.

She passed away in a time I needed her the most. She was there through many of my battles. As well as I for many of her. My grandmother had gotten breast cancer when I was 11 years old. She fought a 2 year long battle and won. I cried for hours when she had told me that she was better. I didn’t return home that day. I went straight to my father home to hug her knowing for once that it wouldn’t be my last hug. But just because she had won the battle it hadn't meant she had won the war. Days before I turn fifteen she went into the hospital and was found to have lung cancer. And in that moment my only wish is that she lived until my sixteenth birthday so I could show her the gratitude that she deserved from the world. She wasn't given her life expectancy, we weren’t given if she would live or die.. She continued going for chemo until the day she died.

I watched one of the strongest women I knew start to become weak. I watched as she began to give up. I watched as my name began to be forgotten from her memory, I watched as she forgot how to walk. I watched as she began to forget how to talk, how to eat. I watch this women lose herself in her final days until she passed away at the age of seventy, five months before my sixteenth birthday. The day I had found that she had passed I spent a two hour train ride to my father’s house in tears. I felt my limbs get numb as I cried harder. I didn't want to lose her. I never wanted to lose her, but seeing her in peace in her bed I knew it was time. But seeing the tears streaking my father face like he had been out in a rainstorm, I lost myself. I couldn't returned to school. I need to be by his side. And I need to be the strong one. I couldn’t let him see me break down because we had to be strong for each other. I missed school for days, I went to the grave yard to pick out her plot, to choose the font in which her name was written on the gravestone. I was there when the mosque was chosen to host her funeral, and I was there when they placed her into the ground where she will now peacefully rest.

The day of my grandmother funeral also happen to be the day of Advisory Day at school, and. The park that hosted my classmates laid across the street from the service. I was able to make out the faces of my classmates enjoying themselves and being happy to be in that space. A space I wish I never have to be at again. It hurt me to see so many people happy when I felt that it'll be a long time before I’d be that again. And it did take a long time. It took four months for me to stop wishing that it was me, or that I had no emotions. It took a long time for me not to feel the hole missing from my heart at all times. I still feel the hole when I need someone to speak to or someone just to hug.

Can you imagine losing someone you thought you could never be lose? It was hard losing her. She made me feel like I belong, when no one else could. She made me feel as though labels couldn’t be put on me. She made me feel loved. I had wished for many months that I could have something of hers that would make me feel closer to her, but my father, as well as his brothers, couldn’t bare with losing things of hers, so they kept it. Two months after her death, they went into her apartment, the apartment that they had continued to pay rent for even in her passing. It was the one thing they could do for the mother who would risked her life to save them. They paid her rent for the five years of her living there. They made sure the money was in on the first of the month every month. But when she passed it had become routine for them. The order in which they paid never changed. Charlie, then Mark, the Terry, then Jonas. My uncle Charlie paid January, May, and September. Uncle Mark paid February, June, and October. Uncle Terry paid March, July, and November. My father paid, April, August , and December. Every year played out by clock work. My uncles would visit her when they came to pay the rent, but my father was there every day. But for the two months after her death her door was never unlocked. It was never visited. But one day, after many days of hesitation they decided to unlock the doors. They each carried a single box with their first initial on it. They each took exactly what they wanted, which was everything. But one thing they had found when looking through her things, one thing they couldn't keep was a small teal box, with a small tag with 11/11 printed on it. That little teal box holds the most important thing in the world to me. It was pair of earring that she had brought a month before she had died. They were for me to wear on the day of my Sweet 16, and I wore them proudly that day.

Losing my grandmother was difficult, but I soon understood that it was time. That she couldn’t keep endure the pain any longer than she had already. She wasn’t happy anymore. She was hurting in ways that many will never understand. I don’t know if she was ready to go. She was cement for a long time but in her final hours she had harden to become concrete again. She had to throw up the white flag and declare her truce with the war she was fighting.







Sibling things

Me and my sister tried to kill each other, LITERALLY. Her name is Bryanna and we are 18 months apart. On T.V you see siblings fight of course, but not like we did. Siblings on T.V (girls especially) fight about makeup and borrowing each others things without asking. I can kinda see what had started the fighting; It was jealousy. My mom had me at a young age and ended up leaving my life when I was two so it was just me and my dad for a while until my sister was born. I didn’t like the fact that she had both parents and I didn’t. But my sister was jealous of the fact that I mainly had our dad’s attention because he was my only parent he wanted to give me as much attention as she got from both parents combined. I can only remember but so much. Here’s the first incident that I remember. “Push her” my conscious said.

“NO!” I tried fighting back.

“Just do it, you know you want to and it will be funny.”

“NO! I’ll get in so much trouble”

“Push her now!” Splash! Is all you heard when I pushed her in. It was hilarious to my six year old self.

“Imani!” My big cousin screamed. I turned around so quick and she was right in front of me, I knew I was in a lot of trouble. “I can not believe you just pushed your sister in the well!” my cousin said in anger as she tried to retrieve my sister from the deep water.

“I didn’t mean to, I promise. I tripped.” I tried to cover my ass.

“No she didn’t she pushed me!” Bryanna said as she was sobbing. I gave her a dirty look and started faking concern for her.

“Bree are you ok? I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“Yes you did, you’re a liar!”

“Hey!” My big cousin said to her because that’s a word that we were told not to use. I was able to get out of trouble that day. I always wondered how I got myself out of that one. I knew my sister would retaliate so I kept my guard up, even at six and four/five we were pretty smart. I would always watch her around my food and I’d wait till she fell asleep to go to sleep. I knew she wakes up before me so I even tried to wake up before her. It wasn’t that I was scared of her, I just wanted to make sure she couldn’t get to me. A few weeks after the well incident, she got me back. She got me back real good. I was on the floor playing with my DS, and my dad was ironing his clothes. He walked out of the room to grab his shirt from his room to also iron.

“AHHHHHHHHHHH” I screamed in pain when the hot iron hit my chest. I got up and I saw my dad running back in to see why I was screaming. I jumped up and down crying and yelling at my sister. I couldn’t believe she went that far. For once, she actually got in trouble. -- but not because she pushed it on me, because he told us not to go near the iron. After that we went in. I mean we really tried killing each other. “What’s this dad?”

“Boot cleaner put it down it’s not a toy.”

“OK!”  The night of the ear spraying incident my family had a little get together. Of course it was a no kids allowed thing so me and my sister stayed upstairs in our parents room. It was bigger and because it wasn’t our room we loved to be in there. I was such a night owl so of course my sister fell asleep before I did. I began to mess with her, she was a heavy sleeper. I started pulling her hair and trying to push her off the bed. I got bored with doing after a while. I saw the boot spray again. I wasn’t gonna do it because I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to ease my way out of it. I ended up doing it anyways. She woke up when I did it and she went right back to sleep. I didn’t expect her to wake up screaming a few mins later but she did. My dad her mom ran up the steps to see what happened and why she was screaming. I threw the boot cleaner across the room so they would think that she was just screaming. She fully woke up and told our parents what had happened. I tried to lie but come on I couldn’t ease my way out of this one. She got special treatment the whole time I was on punishment. She was able to pick the food she wanted to eat and go to the store as much as she wanted. I hated it. The special treatment did not last for long though. It was about a week after I got off punishment and we were upstairs playing. Our parents then soon told that it was time to go to bed. We had made the stan that held the T.V. up wobbly. We didn’t say anything to our parents simply because we did it on purpose. When she was laying in bed I was getting my night clothes out from the dresser that was attached to the stand. She started to kick the stand and the leg finally snapped and the T.V. fell on my head. I screamed in pain. I had blood coming from the top of my head but I didn’t feel it till it got in my eyes. I screamed some more. My dad came flying into the room to see what I was screaming. He saw how much blood was coming from my head and rushed me to the hospital in his house coat. He didn’t ask questions so when the doctor asked what happened I had to explain. I ended up getting 4 stitches that night. My dad was instructed to keep me up for four hours because I had a concussion. I didn’t go to school the next day and he stayed home with me because I was up all night. My sister and I had done many other things to each other that if I went into details I would be writing a twenty page essay. As we got older our fighting turned into little bickering that you would see t.v. siblings fight over. For a few years after the trying to kill each other stage was over we didn’t really feel like sisters. We wouldn’t talk to each other much unless we had to. It did upset me knowing that my little sister didn’t want to talk to me and I didn’t really want to be bothered with her. Around the age of 13 and she was 11 my grandmother sat us down and told us that we need to start acting like sisters because at the end of the day family is what will always be here for each other. We really did listen to our grandmother and started acting like sisters should act. Now at the age of 17 and 15 we are inseparable. Our parents ended up splitting up and she now lives with her mom and I am with my dad. We go out and talk on the phone all the time now. I love her to death and it’s vice versa with her. I don’t think that I would change our past relationship because we both reminisce about all the things that we did. I can say that my grandmother’s words of wisdom really shaped a great relationship between the two of us.


https://spark.adobe.com/video/LSwTgwt9XZzDz

Pain & Numbness - My Personal Essay & Video

Sydney Rogers

Ms. Pahomov

English 3

10 January 2018

Pain and Numbness

I’ve thought about death before. What it is, what it’s like, and people’s last words and thoughts. I’ve also thought about cancer. I’ve thought about what that’s like and what I’d do if I had it. But those thoughts were always in the abstract. I’d never imagined that when I went to a dentist consult simply because they were going to talk to me about my wisdom teeth that they’d inform me about the fact that there’s a giant cyst in my jaw and there’s a possibility of having cancer. I never thought those abstract thoughts would become reality.

Over the summer I went to the dentist's office to talk about getting my wisdom teeth removed. I’ve always despised dentists and felt the worst feelings towards them, but I never thought they’d be the ones to give me the worst news I’d ever gotten. When I went in a man in nice dress pants walked in. He talked to my mom and I about how he needed me to get an x-ray done before he could really go into more detail about the procedure so he showed me to a few nice ladies in scrubs and then walked away. Once we were done, the dentist came back into the room and leaned up against the counter. He started off by asking me a few questions that I thought were a bit odd, “Do you ever have any tooth pain in your back teeth on your right side?”

“No, not really. I have occasional tooth aches but not in one place consistently that I can really think of right now. Why?”, I said a bit confused. After a couple minutes of answering his questions he ended his streak by informing my mom and I that there was a cyst in the lower back area of my jaw. My mom took a deep breath and the doctor looked sympathetic. The doctor and my mom explained that basically a cyst is a ball of abnormal cells and they’re either benign, meaning harmless, or they’re cancerous. Once I heard that my eyes filled with tears. I didn’t want to cry in front of the doctor so I looked up and stared at the lights above me, trying to dry my eyes. He told my mom and I with sad eyes and pointing fingers that the cyst was about the size of a golf ball. He pointed to the x ray and showed me that there was a nerve that ran through my whole jaw and part of that nerve had been absorbed by the cyst, and the cyst had also absorbed the root of one of my teeth, the farthest back tooth closest to my wisdom tooth. Basically I was now at risk for, cancer, death, numbness of the jaw, and immense pain. All things I was far from expecting when I walked through the front doors of the dentists building.

I didn’t want to tell my dad or even the majority of my friends. I only wanted my mom, my brother, and my best friends to know. I didn’t want people to look at me or treat me differently just because there was a scary possibility of me having cancer. I didn’t want to be “cancer girl.” I wanted to be me. Regular me. I didn’t want people to tell me they were sorry or felt bad because that wouldn’t do anything and I wouldn’t feel any better about it. I wanted things to be normal and stay the way they were, or at least how they used to be.

A big part of me wasn’t scared. I just knew that I didn’t have cancer. I felt like my body and mind would have told me, there would have been warning signs or something. Every part of me knew I didn’t have cancer. I was scared of course but I had convinced myself that I would be okay. It was early in the morning and the sun hadn’t even come up yet. I remember driving down the pretty streets of South Philly. I remember trying to appreciate every single bit of it. I was so grateful for life and the things I’d experienced. I thought of my friends and family and every single breath of air. Because who knew if those were my last few moments believing that I was cancer free. I wanted to say thank you for every single aspect of life. It was all so beautiful, those moments were purely blissful.

When I got to the hospital I went through the standard pre-surgery procedure. I met eight doctors. The last thing I remember before my surgery was laying on the operating table, strapped in, staring up at the lights on the ceiling and having a gas mask put over my face and then the strong smell of artificial oranges, then it went blank and I was numb.

When I woke up I didn’t feel anything. My face was numb and it felt big and bloated. Some nurses came over and I said they’d let my mom come in soon. I fell back asleep for I don’t know how long, but when I woke back up I was in a room with curtains all around me and my mom and her best friend were by my side. My moms eyes were happy and filled with tears, but she was keeping her cool. “The doctor said it’s not cancer. It was just a bone cyst.” That was the first thing she told me. When she told me that I was cancer free I didn’t feel any different. I didn’t feel a huge weight lifted off my chest. I only felt numb and like I was floating on a cloud. I felt no pain. I was hoping that I would feel like I just received the best news in the world. But it wasn’t amazing, I felt like this was old news.

Pain and being numb are two different things. Physically, I can say that I would rather be numb than be in pain. I would rather be numbed by any drugs that doctors prescribe me as supposed to enduring the pain of having five teeth removed and a giant cyst. Even months after my surgery I still felt numb. I felt pain in my mouth and I was numb mentally. I didn’t feel happy or excited about things that I would have usually been happy or excited about. The cancer scare had a bigger effect on me than I realized. I felt like I was eternally numb for such a long time until I slowly grew out of it and I fully realized that I was okay. After my surgery, I told my classmates, my dad, and the other people who I didn’t want originally knowing. It changed who I am. It made me appreciate life more and every single beautiful aspect of it. It also helped me learn more about myself and how I react to bad news. I became more understanding about people who said they always felt numb. I could now relate to them and I understood how hard it is to explain. The only word that will suffice is numb. Everything I went through during that time helped me become who I am today, someone who is grateful for this life, appreciative of the small beautiful things, and more understanding and much stronger.


Austere.

“What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?”

Robert Hayden

I.

I saw my father and two men hang their overcoats on the rack, drooped like wet anthers on a matte flower as they proceeded into my humble home. Their footsteps impressed the floor all at once in a proud symphony as they made their way to the dining room, where they sat themselves down at a roundtable in jolly laughter and hearty enthusiasm. Their echoes became giants through the classic Corinthian-white halls, traveling lightspeed as I sat wide-eyed watching them brag themselves out the boredom of that winter Sunday. I was spellbound by the thickly dressed ebb of their baritones, though I knew not much of the matters they speak on. Manly matters, I supposed. The bellycheer and conversation flowed as patient as tree-sap runnels, eventually finding its way to the familiar discussion of manlinessa discourse in which their stubborn egos would war relentlessly under the table. I saw battle in their eyes, broad-shouldered armies resting at attention in the buds of their pupils. Here, I learned the bane of all men; I learned of pride and power, of braggadocio and esteem defense. I gazed on in fear, in intrigue, in bloodrush fanaticism against my own father. For a small pocket in time, he did not seem like the same person. He was not the ripe-hearted hero I had once imagined him to be. He was a mere man, crowned with the halo of hubris that would soon change the way I thought of him, and thought of myself.


This was the day I first confuse love with fear of my father. I learned his percussive footsteps, heavyweight yet spacious like redwood branches falling to the ground in rhythm. When I was in trouble, they were the stimulus inspiring shockwaves of nerves and regret. When I was virtuous, they were more like a forewarning of his impending presence, snapping my conscience into full-fledged attentiveness.


His usual declaration to me was, “I’m going to make you into a man.”


“A man?” I thought, “Only God can make a man.”


I found out the hard way what make a man meant in his mind. I have early memories of his command to stop putting my hands on my hips, which he designated as a feminine pose. For a long while, I could not even define the word feminine, but from the sober tug of his voice I could tell that it is something no man should be. The look in his eyes when he chastised me over trifles is one of shame, something I learned to perceive in his deeply hickory and full iris. When they interrogated me, I, too, felt shame well up inside. I felt like an impostor of a man before I was given the chance to become one, or know what it meant to be one. In that shame was the simple irony that I had at one point in time studied and revered my father, with pure lovelight and high regard. Now, I dismissed him as a contemptible and prejudice autocrat, drowning me out in his antagonizing eye.


The years turned like pages of the same book under my father’s house as he chaptered his mannerisms into sanguine obsessions. Everyday, he made me a “man,” as if the maturation to manhood were a Rocky training montage. I had digested the stigma of wearing flip flops, the humiliation of the color pink. I found repercussion in picking nosegay flowerheads from the ground and then knew that to my father, masculinity was not something that grew like foliage, but an inborn fire. I could not bring myself to reconcile with what he thought I should be. Sometimes, it felt like he wanted to rid me of sincerity, for I was not born as an emotionless slab of concrete he seemed to be. I was very much so a lover who saw paradise in all things sensitive and kid-gloved, and the only shame I had about it was that I knew that deep down he was disappointed in me, so I thought. I could not emotionally handle this shame and so it turned to conviction as my relationship with him grew standoffish, especially when I nestled under my mother for all the empathy and acceptance he would not give me. During this time, we were two plates of simultaneous drift apart, unable to synchronize the passage of time and movement. I thought that was just the way it had to be. Our happiest moments were like phantoms of a distant past, our laughs like dying ripples in runnels of muddied water. We were two of a kind, with a strict boundary of love and contempt dividing us. Then, I would have sworn that I knew everything there was to know about my father. I would have sworn that I that I was innocent and he was guilty, I was the victim and he was the offender. The truth is, I was indeed a victimbut my own ignorance was my only offender.


II.

The climax of our cold war came last August, when unbearable humidity cloaked our days only to have the heroic breeze disrobe it at night. The heat that day had made my house a house full of hotheads, which meant no good for both me and my father. He sat on his kingly couch, swamped with sweat and temper, his thickened brow quivering with tension as angst ran rampant through the household. I, marked with the same temper, had an unusually low tolerance for annoyance that day as well, and so the inevitable always has its way.


My dad noticed my casual wear, my flip flops and faded pink shirt. It was a cardinal sin of mine. I knew it would draw a reaction from him, and yet I did not care enough to avoid it. I was ready for his worst, as I had stiffened my ego so that he may not crush it. I expect him to strike, to spike his breath and raise up from his seat disturbed.


But worse. He dismisses me, his unattending eyes deciding to focus on something of more significance. His following words pierced me like the very head of a knife ready for bloodletting.


“I can’t believe one of my sons would wear flips flops. How can a man wear flip flops this much?”


The gravity in his voice sunk my shadow deep into a trembling blackness. Time became a bony oblivion. I was not mad. I was not filled with hate. I tried so very hard to be filled with nothingnot possible. But in that moment, the mocking was worse than a beating. It was worse than anything else he could have thrown at me. There, I saw a man knee-deep in his pretense and pride, all his inhibitions twining like beeswax angles in unarmed warfare. I had been rejected by my fomer beloved idol, who I then concluded was not changing, and would never change, even for the love of me. I could not stand it. Fueled by fires of embarrassment and dejection, I stormed off alone to pity myself in my misfortune.


My poor mother saw it and immediately understood what had happened, but did not chase after me. I see this now as a balking tactic. What she would soon disclose to me was her discovered secret, an intelligence that was in turn kept secret from him. I sought her out and asked her to help me cope with the situation. I retrospectively owe her much thanks, for it was her who assured me that my father’s love for me could never be snuffed when I needed the assurance most. I asked her anxiously why he was like this, what had molded such an irreversible blemish in character. Her spirit was visibly broken to pieces at my hopeless pleading. I could see she had a tentative answer, not because she was uncertain, but because the truth might not have been a truth I needed to know. It, in fact, was.


When she began to talk, it was in her tale voice that is the sound of wind thickening through the sky. It was soothing, it was intelligent, and it signaled that the uninhibited truth shall be told. She told me of her suspicions from hints she had gathered gradually over the years: my father, an excellent student and very charismatic young boy, had a teacher in 8th grade who he had a rather close bond with. The teacher had numerous times invited my father over his house for minor menial labors and conversation. The teacher, as my father had accidentally recounted in an absent-minded recollection, was murdered in his home in 1988 for allegedly being a predator on young boys (she, perhaps very wisely, left the connection up to me). And though the pieces of mystery come together as such, my father had never confessed to being sexually abused. Out of fear, maybe, out of embarrassment, out of denial. I understood my mother’s point: perhaps ego is just his disguise of deep pain.


It at last hit me that that was the dawn of his spiritual necrosis, his enduring and mute philosophical suicide.


I leveled my breath as a spiteful silence mobbed my throat’s pit. Between the distracting knot in my throat and the stubborn weakness in my legs, there was a masquerade ball of emotions all dying to dance, my gut the dancefloor beneath all those anxious feet. In that moment, of all the emotions I felt, I above all felt sorrow. Not a pity-sorrow, but the sorrow of realizing that I foolishly assumed that my father was a pastless villain. Throughout all my fits of childish myopia, I hadn’t bothered to think with concern for him, but rather conviction. I had designed a self-pitying plight that vilified a very broken man; once a fatherless, alm-clothed boy from Detroit’s skid row, everyday vying for attention from an affectionately unheeding mother. He was the lone man of the house, coerced into what everyone under his own roof and beyond told him a man was. He only knew such pain; he was a victim of a delicate defeateach of the civil twilights that ended the day a victor against his will to be what he wanted. Then, in this awakening, I understood that his hidden baggage had been my confused pulse, his internal demons like running axles in my own esteems. Only then did I realized that he was more broken than I ever was.


I, looking deeply, found the insulting irony in the situation to be that I had failed my father the same way he had failed me. I had thought it standard for a man to have no internal weakness, and for this I was just as guilty of the same prejudicial thinking that plagued him. Deep inside, I wanted him to be the strong, unwavering hero that I had imagined every fabulous father to be. And so, I indeed failed him. I denied him the human right to be imperfect and still beloved. In my catharsis, I found my thoughts to be mirrors in a house of mirrors, my light bending obediently to form a distorted image of my fatherteary-eyed, wanting to be loved but unable to ask. It was not a pretty sight, but it was beautiful. It was beauty in the sense of revelation, raw and flowering truth undaunted by me staring into it.


For my father, and for myself, I wept that night, long and gently. I was unashamed, for that is what made me more of a man.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGmtpXH9dos