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Can Your Life Change?

Going to the beach is supposed to be fun. You are supposed to have the time of your life. Swimming, hanging out with your friends or family, playing beach volleyball, going out afterwards, and so many other things that you can do at  beach, that makes that a day you can never forget. Wearing all shorts or swimwear, with flip-flops, is a look for the beach. Everyone at the beach will be wearing those. Me? I try to avoid the beach as much as possible. Up to a certain point, I am okay with the beach. When we get to the flip-flops part, I start to hate it. It’s an embarrassment to me when people see what I have on my foot. Trying to hide something, that can’t be hidden is almost impossible. Digging and dragging your feet in the sand isn’t as fun as it may sound. Coming up with different ways to hide, becomes a challenge for me and surely not a fun one. People start to look at you like you’re crazy, and you can’t stop trying to hide, but if you did they will see what you don’t want them to see.

Some may see what you’re hiding, and they may come up to you and ask, but that makes it even more difficult. It will reveal your history.

I always enjoyed history, and the things it tells you about your past. I know many people who couldn’t care less about your history, but then again who am I to judge. I love how one little detail can tell you hundreds of little things. In everyday life you can’t do that. As the saying goes, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. In history, “judging a book by it’s cover” can happen, and does happen a lot, but at the end, the real story is found. In real life people, “judge books by their covers” a lot. They see a person, and automatically make an assumption about them, even though they don’t know the real story behind that person.

I’m seventeen years old and have experienced much things that played a role in shaping my life, even though there’s more ahead of me.  At the age of seven, I made a big mistake that today I can’t change. Though I can change it’s appearance, I can’t change the experience that it carried.  

I can’t remember much things before the age of four, but I can remember most things after that age. I do remember that I was outgoing and was someone who always got in trouble. That would change very soon. I would become someone who is a completely different person from  that  “outgoing kid”.

Waking up early in a spring morning is beautiful. Just like every saturday, I woke up, did my usual morning routine, and headed outside to play with my friends. That morning, most of my friends had not come out, and the only people that were outside was one of my friend, and his little sister. I joined them and we started talking about what had happened the day before. The day before we had gotten in trouble at school and we talked about how everything that had happened was very unfair. One thing after another, and we moved the conversation into toys. I had recently gotten a new toy and my friend had not seen it. His sister went inside their house, and he came into my house. We started looking at my new toy, then we started playing around the house. I had not eaten breakfast before I got out so my mom asked us what we wanted for breakfast. My friend didn’t want anything because he had already ate, but I asked for scrambled eggs. My mom went into the kitchen and started cooking. We started to play again. As we started to play I heard my mom say,

“Don’t go in the kitchen.”

Even though she did say that, I didn’t listen. Right after she said that my little sister came up to us and said,  

“Can I play with you guys?”

We didn’t want to, so we started to run around the house and my little sister chasing after us. It became a game. Our first thought was go in the kitchen, because for some unknown reason my little sister was scared to go in the kitchen. I hid next to an open space near the oven, while my friend hid in the pantry closet. My sister couldn’t come in the kitchen because she was scared, so she ran back to her room. We both heard her leave, so we both got out of our hiding spaces, and tried to get back to our game. My friend got out and was head towards my room, I was dusting myself off from being next to the oven. As I walked towards exiting the kitchen, something poked my arm. As I turned around to see what it was, my eyes caught a pan dropping to the floor. My arm had hit the pan. As the pan dropped I felt something wet on my foot and on my sock, it was the oil that was inside the pan. I instantly thought I was in trouble. Than I felt the sizzling oil, sneak up on me. It was excruciatingly hot, and very painful. I ran around the house screaming and crying. My friend was frozen in place, wondering what he could do. My mom heard me and she ran after me, telling me  

“Everything is fine!”

She thought I was scared of getting in trouble. She didn’t know what had happened. I couldn’t speak. My ability to speak was muted by the pain of what had happened. My friend had broken out of the frozen state, and explained to my mom what had happened, while I was still screaming and running around.

My mom had called my dad, so we could go to the hospital. He was the only one who could get me there. He had the car. My dad was the calm one, he was able to calm both me and my mom down. On the way to the hospital, I was in the back seat of the car, and still crying from the pain. While he was driving, my dad was also trying to calm me down, and check up on me. When I got to the hospital, I began to feel as the whole world was going to end. I don’t like hospitals, if there was a way for hospitals not to exist I would be the first person to agree with it. The doctors rushed me into the emergency room, and that was the last thing I saw . I didn’t see what the doctors did to me, I don’t remember the room, I don’t remember the doctor's faces, I don’t remember the way the hospital looked. Everything I had was focused on one thing and one thing only, the never ending pain.

I remember suddenly opening my eyes, and the first thing I wanted to see was my leg. I wanted to see if it was real. My foot was wrapped around with bandages and I realized that everything I remembered had really happened.

For the next few weeks I couldn’t put my heel down, I was too afraid to. The right foot always took steps on it’s toes. I still had to go to the doctors and they checked my foot once every week. Before the bandages got put on, the doctor rubbed a medicine on the burn and that made the bandages stick to the foot. Every week I was scared to go to the doctor because of the pain the medicine caused.

For two months I couldn’t do anything. The doctors told me I couldn’t go to school, which meant I would stay home even after school was over.

As days passed, my foot started to get better, and I began to walk normally again. I began doing things like I used to, I even got cleared from the doctor that I could play soccer, and I could do all the things I used to before. Things got better.

One of the most beautiful days I have ever seen, turned to one of the most horrible and horrific days for me. Everything that happened also reminds me of a book I have read. A book about war and soldiers journey called “The Things They Carried” strangely reminds me of my story. In the book some of the soldiers have a hard time adapting to their normal lives after the war, and the main character doesn’t have any trouble adapting at all. After everything that happened I had trouble going back to one hundred percent of me. Which is why today I try to hide my scar from people, and stay away from active kitchens. What happened that day, I will always remember as life changing.

Another regular day at school, I was copying down notes as usual. It was my 8th grade year, so a lot was going on. I was involved in the student council, so that meant I had to help arrange trips, fundraisers, etc. All I can remember thinking was,

“Wow, we’re going to be high schoolers soon, we’re growing up, and soon enough college is right around the corner!”  I was content, 8th grade was going to be the best year ever for me! Yet, I felt like everything was happening so quickly, growing up too fast, things  became too serious.

I just wished I could enjoy my days as carefree as I used to,  I would go to school and come home, finish up the little work I had, and just play. I was not allowed out, but I got to play at home, lay around, stress free, and that meant a lot to me. Everyone, including me was stressed out trying to prepare for the halloween party, out of nowhere my best friend surprised me with a gift, a wind-up toy. I was so happy and honestly I was surprised by how happy I was, I never thought I would be so touched by such a small childlike toy. Believe it or not, I kept it on my desk in every class I went to for the whole week, sounds a bit silly, someone might think, how can a wind-up toy be special? Well, it meant so much to me, because for the first time, in a long time I had felt like a kid, and I was so happy that I was still able to feel that way. I felt the same rush of happiness like when I was a child and was given a new toy.

As people grow up, they tend to let go of their childish characteristics or grow out of their interests and love for being a child completely. There is nothing wrong with that, but for me, I just can’t. I had always loved toys, even til today, as a 17 years old. I had always looked forward to getting stuffed animals for birthdays EVERY SINGLE YEAR, or any special occasion.

That time of my life, the things I really wanted were always considered childish. Is having stuffed animals take up about one fourth of your room so wrong?  My mom would say,

“Let’s donate some of the stuffed animals you have, you are too old for them now, you don’t need them.”

I would ask, “Why mom, what’s wrong with me liking what I like? I’m still a kid remember? Every time I asked you something you would say, “because you’re still young.” but now I’m too old? Like I’m too old now, so I need to do chores and help, but when I want to go out I’m too young?”

It’s not just from my mom, but my family, people who are older than I am, who see my love for things they think are for children. They are always asking one similar question,

“Why do you still have them? Why do you like them so much?”

I never fully understood why they would ask such similar question. Is there really an age limit on when to like what and when to stop?

The wind-up toy is such a simple thing, yet it brings so much joy to me. There’s not really a specific reasoning on how or why, it was just the moment and time I received it that shaped how I felt about it.

In the book, “The Things They Carried”, the soldiers carried many things with them, some arguably very strange.  One character has an ex-girlfriend’s underwear wrapped around his neck, another carried moccasins. They were off at war, and all carried something that kept them feeling safe or secure, even when things weren’t looking like they’d work out. To others it might seem strange, but everyone has their own little thing that means a lot to them regardless what the actual object might mean to others..

I carry my wind-up toy everyday in my bag with me, everywhere I go. Ask me why, I would say, I honestly don’t know. with a smile of course, because I really do not know. I love the ticking noise it makes when you wind it, tic-tic-tic-tic, and then it starts to move. It’s so amusing to me.

It’s very dear to me because it makes me feel like a kid, a piece of childhood I can carry around with me everywhere. Knowing I have it makes me feel a sort of comfort that I won’t lose it, or the feeling of what it was like to be a worry free child, that I can play with it anytime I want to. Growing up, I usually feel stressed about many things that you have to worry about during this period in your life, school, worrying about college, taking the SAT or ACT.

My mother once said, “Such an old head already, and still playing with toys!” Trust me, it sounds a lot funnier when she says it in Khmer.

I remember those times when my family asked things related to my wind-up toy or love for toys, because I realize that every time, I would reply differently, because it makes me feel differently every time. That is why it’s so special to me.

Now, all I see today is little kids watching egg surprise on youtube, how they would open it, and a toy would be inside of the chocolate egg. Well, I had never opened one, and I was so excited to! So I bought one, and I opened it up with my best friend. I ate the chocolate, and this was not too long ago, it was actually this year, I’m a junior in highschool. I remembered saying,

“Guess what, guess what! Close your eyes! NOW!”

“Okay, Okay, what is it?”

I happily placed the egg surprise in the palm of their hand. I remember the face of confusion.

“Ohh, haha, It’s an egg surprise!”

“I know, isn’t it so cool? Okay let’s open it!

We then opened it and ate the chocolate like kids. And then there was a yellow like case that was needed to open. We then squished it together, then POP! The surprise was so cute! they can be stacked on one another. It was the first egg surprised I open, I was so excited. Of course, I kept the toy to myself. I was opening the surprise with my best friend, but I was the one that got to keep it. Wow, that sounds selfish, but it’s the truth. I now take it with me everywhere, along with my wind-up toy.

Everything around me is changing, everyone is growing up, I find it important to really make yourself happy, because it’s your life. People deal with it, in many different ways. And me carrying the two toys means a lot. It’s not always on my mind, I usually don’t always think about it, or even remember it’s in my bag everywhere I go. It’s only when I actually look for something then I see it again unexpectedly, and feeling happy just like I did the first time.

People are changing and growing, so am I. Sometimes I get caught up with growing up, and not actually enjoying my teenage years. Everyone is so into growing up and being able to do what they want, going where they want, that they forget about the good aspect of not being able to. I catch myself wishing I was older, so I can do this and that, have my own place, and what not. I didn’t realize that getting older, means more responsibility.

But now, I find myself still feeling attached to the toys, yet sometimes prefer other things than just the play toys, that other thing is my phone. I have to admit, I carry my phone with me everywhere. I carry it to school, to the store, even to the bathroom, I literally meant everywhere! In the end, I love that I can still act like a child, still playful around the ones close to me, love the things I loved my whole life. Just have a good fun time, stress free, not worrying about a thing. That’s the most important thing to me.

The inspiration for my personal essay is from the book The Things They Carried. In the beginning of the book, one of the characters, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters, which reminded me of a personal experience. It also reminds me of how the world sees love as a thing that two people should share. Now, I have a better understanding of what love really is and what it entails.

I will never forget the time I thought I was in love. It was two summers ago.

I thought that I was in love with a girl named Eleonora Guzman. Her real name was Eleonora but everyone she knew called her Ellie. We graduated from our middle school, A B Day, together. We knew each other since the fifth grade,  what would be eight years now . Ellie and I were in an on and off relationship since the 7th grade, going up to the 9th. It wasn’t like we were in a relationship, then broke up and got back in a relationship a week later. What happened was we were together in the 7th grade and broke up a few months later. We got back together in the 9th grade and broke up a couple months later.

In my 9th grade summer she was in a relationship with one of my best friends, Dontae. At first, I was cool with it, but out of nowhere I caught feelings for her again.

Well, not exactly, “out of nowhere”.

Eleonora and I had a conversation one night, and  she said something that really made me feel some type of way. We said some things that weren’t appropriate. We said things that I knew Dontae would not like. A few nights after Ellie and I had the conversation, Dontae saw the messages and he found out that we were talking and he saw what we were talking about. Dontae and I stopped talking to each other after he found out.

Everyday Ellie and I would write each other letters. We wrote letters because her mom was very strict and she didn’t let her outside, and she wouldn’t let Ellie use her phone because she knew that Ellie would use it to talk to me or Dontae. I would get her the letters by dropping them off to her apartment window every morning after dropping off my younger brothers at summer camp.

In the letters Ellie wrote to me, she would say how she thinks I’m a great guy, but she loves Dontae, and she doens’t want to leave him. In my opinion, when we were together, I treated her better than Dontae did, so I didn’t understand why she would want to stay with him if I treated her better. But I cherished those letters and read them as if she would leave him and stay with me forever.

One day, I wrote her  a letter asking her to come to bible study at church. It would have been one of our only chances to see each other, and she took that chance.

Somehow, Dontae found out that Ellie went to church and he showed up with one of me and Dontae’s friends, Jahsil. Jahsil came inside and told Eleonora “Dontae is outside and  he’s really mad. He said coem outside.”  I stood up to see Dontae, and Ellie stood up and pushed me

down telling me to stay.

Ellie stepped outside and I didn’t hear anything but the sound of her and Dontae’s voices yelling at each other. She came back in and said nothing, and we didn’t say a word to each other for the rest of the night.

A few days later, I was playing kickball with some friends and Dontae walked up to me. As he was walking up, his demeanor looked as if he was going to hit me. There were two kids with him. One of them was Jahsil,  and the other one was a kid I didn’t know.

“Why didn’t you tell me that Ellie texted you the things she did?” He asked me

“I didn’t know how to tell you, I wasn’t thinking.” I told him.

“You are supposed to be my brother. You are supposed to be like family. I trusted you and you did me dirty. You’re a crazy bull .” He said as he walked away shaking his head.

“You should have hit em’. Knock him right out.” One kid whispered to Dontae.

Yea, you should have hit em” “another kid agreed.

I didn’t even finish playing dodgeball. I went right home after that.

That night I sat in my room and I listened to music. I listened to music for hours. From Tupac to Kendrick Lamar,  Nas to J. Cole, and Childish Gambino to Chance the Rapper.

After 5 hours, I stopped listening to music, and I started to think.

I thought for hours.

I realized a few things. One thing I realized was that I couldn’t let this whole situation ruin me and Dontae’s friendship. We’ve been best friends since kindergarten, and we never did each other wrong.

Another thing I realized was that I didn’t really love Ellie. I thought I did. I didn’t really love her, I just loved the good times we had. She would have good moments, but she wasn’t a good person.

A few days later, I decided to go to Dontae’s house to talk to him about everything. So after I dropped off my younger brothers at summer camp, I walked to Dontae’s house.

I walked up to his door and rung the doorbell. I could hear his mom’s footsteps come down the stairs as she came down to get the door

“Who is it?” She asked. as she walked up to the door

“Vaughn” I answered.

She opened the door and welcomed me in.

“Dontae! Vaughn is down here to see you!” She yelled.

“He is in the shower. He will be out in a minute.” His mom said.

“Vaughn, I haven’t seen you in a minute. How have things been?” She asked.

“Things have been a bit rocky between Dontae and I.” I replied.

“What happened?” She asked.

I explained to her everything that happened with me, Ellie, and Dontae. Dontae came downstairs by the time I finished explaining everything to her.

“What’s up.” He said as he gave me a handshake.

“I came to talk to you about everything. First off, I  sincerely apologize on my part of everything that happened. I should have told you that she sent me those messages. I admit that I was wrong.” I told Dontae.

After that we talked for almost an hour about where it started, and the things we should’ve did, and Dontae apologized for how he acted.  

At the end of the whole discussion Dontae and I agreed to never let a girl make us mad like we did. We agreed to never let a girl get in between our friendship again.

It took us about a week or two to get back on good terms. Dontae and I did a couple things before we became really cool.  We played videogames and we played  basketball  for long periods of time and we had more one-on-one conversations before we really got things like they used to be.

Morally, I learned that I didn’t love Ellie. More than that, I learned she didn’t love me. This taught me that you can love someone, or think you love them, and they don’t love you back. A poet from Mumbai named Sanober Khan said herself, “the saddest thing is to be a minute to someone, when you’ve made them your eternity”, and to Ellie, I was a minute instead of an eternity.

“Okay, who wants to go with dad this time? He’s going to Maryland for a solar panel conference.” I ask my bed full of stuffed animals. Everyone raises a paw.

“You can’t all go!” Some of them looked discouraged, but they don’t give up. Everybody wants to go on the trip with dad, including me. But I am not allowed to go with him.

“Rabbit, you went last time. So did you Sparkles! Let your friends have a chance.” I look around at all of their eager faces.

Finally I decide. “Okay… This time Maggie and Meridian get to go with dad.”

__________

When I was younger, my dad used to go on business trips two or three times a month. His job would send him to places like Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, and even Ohio once or twice for conferences or meetings. I would have given anything to go on a trip with my dad. Since I wasn’t allowed to go on his business trips with him, I would always sneak one or two of my stuffed animals into my his suitcase when he wasn’t looking. I switched it up each time, being careful to not show favoritism towards any one stuffed animal.  

I first sent stuffed animals with him to keep my dad company on the trip. When he was by himself in the hotel room he would be reminded of me by seeing the stuffed rabbit, cat, panda, or giraffe I slept with every night. Since I couldn’t be there with him, I decided that my stuffed animals were the next best contenders for the job.

My stuffed animals were my best friends. They kept the monsters away while I was sleeping, kept me company while I played in my room, and were the only ones to whom I told all my secrets. Who better to keep my dad company and watch out for him in my place? By sending one or two with my dad it felt like I was there, similar to the mementos carried by the soldiers at war in the book The Things They Carried. Each soldier carried a different object to remind them of what is waiting for them at home. For me, my dad was a soldier. He was fighting a war of work, long days, and hotels in which there was no family to greet him. Sending stuffed animals with him was my way of reminding him that we were waiting for him when he came home, with lots of hugs and love to give him.

Every time he left for a business trip my world changed because he wasn’t there. So much of my life included him, that I had to get used to him not being there for days at a time. I learned to cherish the time I had with him when he was home. Knowing that my world changed so much when he was gone, I wanted to make sure his world didn’t have to change as much as mine. Stuffed animals made everything better.

Over the years, my dad switched jobs and no longer had to go on as many business trips. He was home more and I still cherished his presence. Our relationship became stronger and deeper. He was finally home.

__________

“Hey dad! What’s up?” I was visiting Washington D.C. with my friend and her family for the weekend. It was an early Sunday morning in April 2015, and we had just sat down to eat bagels. A call from my dad came through my phone and I answered.

“Ari? Are you with your mom right now?” I could immediately tell it wasn’t my dad’s voice. I recognized my neighbor’s raspy voice. Only this time his usual calm, slow voice was panicked and quick.

“No, I am in Washington D.C. Why do you have my dad’s phone? Is everything okay?” This time he paused.

“Yes, do you know where your mom is?”

“She is at Sunday School with my brother. Where is my dad? Is he oka--”

“Yes.”

The phone hung up.

I could not understand why my neighbor had my dad’s phone and why he was so alarmed. Thousands of things raced through my brain, but my mind automatically went to the worst case scenario. The only reason my neighbor would be calling me on my dad’s phone is if my dad was unable to call me himself, I thought to myself. It was early Sunday morning, my mom and brother were at out and my dad was home alone.

I started to panic, I called my mom to see what was happening. After she didn’t pick up, I started to worry more. Next I called my other neighbor, my dad’s best friend, to see if he knew what was happening. His wife, a nurse, picked up the phone. She explained to me that my dad was throwing-up uncontrollably and had an intense headache -- the ambulance was on the way. They thought it was some kind of stomach bug. I didn’t get a lot of details from her, but it was enough to validate my frenzy of fear. I tried calling my mom again. She didn’t answer. All I could do at this point was wait; so I finished my bagel.

What felt like hours later, but was only 30 minutes, my mom called me back. My dad had collapsed at home and could not stop vomiting. First, he called 911. But, as he described it later, he couldn’t answer the 911 responder’s questions because he was in so much pain that he couldn’t stop screaming. So he called our neighbor, at that point he couldn’t move and could barely talk. “Thank god for speed dial,” my dad says, looking back on that morning. My dad was rushed to the hospital and after many hours of tests, they discovered that my dad had bleeding in the brain. A subarachnoid hemorrhage. Normally, your brain is surrounded by Cerebrospinal fluid. Instead, my dad’s brain was surrounded pretty heavily by blood, which caused the pressure in his brain to be too high, and become damaging.

He spent five weeks in the ICU, a step-down unit in the Hospital, and rehab. Five weeks filled with doctors, procedures, therapies, and pain. Five weeks from which he remembers almost nothing. Five weeks where I couldn’t just send a stuffed animal in his bag to make him feel better.

My mom, brother, and I visited him everyday. Every time I left the hospital, I felt guilty about leaving him alone. I didn’t want him to feel abandoned.

One day he cried when we visited because he didn’t remember that we had visited everyday. He cried because he thought he was alone, because he didn’t know that we were there for him. After all those years of sneaking stuffed animals into his bag, it broke my heart that he couldn’t remember we were there for him, and always had been.

They don’t know what caused the bleed or if it is a one-time thing. They called it idiopathic, medical speak for “random.” It started off a normal day of bagels and shopping in Georgetown, and ended with random event that changed my world as I know it. Tim and Kiowa’s idiopathic event was being drafted into the war. My dad’s idiopathic event was this brain hemorrhage. One random medical mystery caused my dad’s life to go from a run to a crawl, without asking for permission to ruin his life. When your world changes, you are forced to change with it in fear of getting left behind. After my dad’s brain hemorrhage, I learned to adapt. I helped him heal and get through the hospital and rehab. Things are starting to get back to normal, but I think we need to create a new definition of normal.

I can never un-live the near-death experience of one of my favorite people. He laid in the hospital bed and said goodbye to me. He prepared himself to die. He, again, was fighting a war. Like a soldier in a battle, allowing death to be expected. Except this battle wasn’t in Vietnam or on a business trip, it was inside his body.

I grew up believing that stuffed animals made everything better. As much as I wish I was still so naive, I have learned that I can’t always just send a stuffed animal in a bag to make my dad feel better. When times like those arise, when I feel helpless and confused, I turn to my stuffed animals for comfort.  

“Dear Diary, I started skipping meals again. I feel fat and ugly and I just want to die. I am worthless. I don’t deserve to live, I take up space that could be used for someone who is pretty and a better person. I think if I died today the world be better off without me…”

This is a diary entry I wrote. I never told anyone about this and I had never planned to. I guess it’s because I thought no one would understand. Now it’s time to try and make them understand.

Let me start by saying that the worst feeling in life is that death is the only way to rid yourself of pain. Once death resonates in your mind it never leaves. It followed me wherever I went and living with that burden is extremely hard to deal with. Constant questions swarmed my head. “When does the feeling go away? What did I do to deserve this punishment?”

I know these feelings all too well. I live through this nauseating pain of feeling like death is my only way out of the constant darkness I’m feeling. For a very long time, I wanted to hide from what I was feeling. I thought all the scary thoughts would go away and I would get better over time. Ignoring how I felt is something I did regularly. I didn’t want to acknowledge that something could be wrong with me. Thinking that there was something wrong with my mind made me on the edge and I thought I wasn’t normal. I am now a 16 year old junior in high school struggling to find reasons to live. My existence is something I constantly question. I always ask myself whether my life was worth living.

I recently tried to commit suicide and that lead to me being in a mental hospital. I have attempted suicide twice in my life and I never told anybody about the first one, until the second attempt happen. It was a normal day for some but for me, life was becoming a burden that I couldn’t carry around any longer. I took my brother to school and the whole time I had this empty feeling. I felt that I didn’t belong and overall, I was so exhausted with all the mixed emotions I had going on in my mind. I tried to jump in the train tracks but there was too many people around so I stopped myself. I was completely zoned out for the remainder of the day. I couldn’t focus in school and I didn’t know how to just come out and say I tried to kill myself. How do you do just tell someone, hey I feel like dying or I tried to kill myself today. I was a danger to myself and needed medical attention. I wanted to hide from these feelings and ignore them.  Last thing I thought about doing was explaining it.

I remember saying to my mentor Mr.Kay “I’m really scared of myself and I don't trust myself anymore. I’m afraid that I’ll do something to harm myself again…”  

I  mustered up enough courage and told Mr.Kay, who then told Ms. Siswick, which lead to me being placed in a mental hospital. Going into the hospital I had no idea how to explain to my mom what was going on in my head, who was just hearing about my suicidal thoughts. I couldn't find the right words to describe my constant loneliness. Our conversation did no justice for me or her. It was something like

“ Why do you feel like this?”

“ I just don’t feel important in life, like the world doesn’t need me.”

“I don’t understand why… like what made you feel this way?”

Frankly, I couldn’t explain what I was going through enough to where she would understand.  I came to the conclusion that no one will understand how feel. I started feeling angry with myself, because I couldn’t explain the thoughts that lead to my suicide attempts. Even now I don’t ever think I can come up with the right words to describe what my thought process was during my suicide attempt. In the hospital I thought maybe I could learn to better explain my feelings.

There's this stigma related to mental hospitals and it’s nothing like the movies say. There are no straight jackets or padded rooms. It’s like being in a college dorm that you can’t leave from. My first day there was a wave of questions.
“Why are you here?”

“ How are you feeling today?”

“ How come you feel suicidal?”

“ Why don’t you like the way you look?”

“ You don’t feel important, why?”

Questions after question,  no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to answer any. There were kids there my ages, some younger and some older. The children in there were either there for anger or because they were suscial themselves. The suicidal ones understood my reasoning and I didn’t need to explain myself for them. They just knew the battle I was fighting. We were all fighting a battle with our minds. Nothing about it was like jail like people make it seem. You go to school you can have play time. There are groups that help with coping techniques. Being there was nothing like I expected it to be and I wasn’t going to hide being there from anyone.

Coming out of the hospital I tried so hard to explain what it’s like in a mental hospital and my reasoning for being there. Once again I realized that I could explain that process enough for them to understand. I felt like I just got done war and now I had to answer all these questions about it. How do people from war explain their experiences to others who have not gone through it. Reminds me of a book called “The Things They Carried.” The main character Tim and another character names Bartle go through something similar as me. Bartle has been through a lot and seen some pretty horrendous things and one doesn't want to talk about it and doesn’t know how to talk about. Tim has a hard time trying to explain what happen in the war and why it’s happening to people who don’t understand it. I feel like a war soilder who has fought a bloody and gruesome war, a war with oneself, and now has to talk about the details.

Just like these men I can’t seem to find the words to explain it to people who don’t understand death. I came to the conclusion that death becomes apart of everyone's life and in some extent we will all be connected by that. For people like myself,  death becomes your best friend and your worst enemy. It follows you and haunts you every single day. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to find the words to explain to people how my depression and suicidal thoughts take over me. I’m not sure, I have to though. I realized I was doing it all wrong. I don’t need for people to understand my situation. It was more so accepting it as being apart of me and knowing that yes,I am going through this and damn right it’s extremely difficult. No one knows what it’s like until they go through it. They can only sympathize with you and give you support. I realized I was looking for support from others and not for them to understand my situation.

“She what?” I said. I needed to hear it again. It just couldn’t be true.

“Uuuuh… I think Quiyamah is the one who stole your mom’s ring…” Anna repeated.

“Where would you get that idea?” I said in disbelief.

“Well she’s told me about … how she’s stolen things from your house before.”

“What?!” I was shocked. There was no way she could’ve done this. She’s pulled a lot of shit on me but never this foolish.

“Yeah like some of your jewelry and makeup.” She said.

I had lost some jewelry before and just thought I had misplaced it. I can be pretty forgetful sometimes so it was pretty easy to convince myself that. I also never thought my best friend, since kindergarden would do something like this to me.

“Well- why didn’t you tell me in the first place!?” I asked. I was furious with her for not telling me, but part of me still questioned her story altogether, so I kept interrogating her for the rest of lunch.

“I’m sorry! I really am. I should’ve told you… “ Anna looked upset and disappointed in herself, but I didn’t know if this was genuine or not. At this point I didn’t know what to believe.

“ Makeup is one thing, but your mom’s ring? I can’t keep lying about this.” She said. I couldn’t believe she lied to me. I thought I would have at least one friend that stood by my side but I guess I was wrong.

“Why would she do this, or even think she could get away with this?” I asked in a fiery voice.

“ Well... she said it was easy because you were too naive and trusting to notice anything.” Anna said.

Well that stung. It was like someone punching me in the heart. I could feel the tears in my eyes and I tried to hold them back. I took a deep breath.

“I’m really sorry. I should’ve told you.” Anna kept repeating. We sat in silence for a few minutes. We were sitting alone at one of the lunch tables at the time, but I checked to see if any of the other 8th graders heard us. I looked over at Quiyamah’s table to see if she noticed us. Fortunately, she seemed distracted enough by her friend Marie to notice us talking.

“Well what should I do now?” I said feeling bitterly defeated.

“I think…” She paused. “Maybe you should tell your mom.”

I thought about it for a few minutes. Part of me agreed with going and telling my mom, but I was also scared to. What was I even going to say? That one of my best friends since kindergarten had been stealing from my house, and another friend knew and didn’t tell me  about it? I didn’t know if I could bring myself to do it, but at this point I had no other choice.

“After school.” I stated. “We will go to my mom’s office after school and tell her.”

Getting through the rest of that school day was awful. I thought I was going to cry, but honestly I was still in shock. I counted down every minute until 3:00 o’clock knowing I would finally be out of school only be trapped in my mom’s office where I would have tell the truth.

Once our teacher dismissed us from school, I went over to Anna making sure not to bump into Quiyamah or any of my other so called “friends”. We quickly left the school, but instead of going to my house we walked to my mom’s office which was in Penn campus.

While we were heading over I was texting my mom informing her that Anna and I  would be over to tell her about the stolen ring. I told her that we thought it was Quiyamah and that we would tell her more when we got over. While that was going on Anna was giving me more details on what she knew about Quiyamah’s past thefts. My mood became more upbeat when Anna and I planned out what we were going to say to my mom. I felt like we had a whole secret plan, and that maybe everything was going to turn out okay. At this point I was in too much disbelief to be upset so I started to just laugh the situation we were in.

The closer we got to my mom’s office the more anxious I felt, so by the time we got to her door I wanted to run back home. Once I finally forced myself to knock on the door we heard a voice “come in” in a somewhat serious, but affectionate tone. Anna and I let ourselves in to find my mother on her computer focused on her writing, papers covering her desk.

We stood their for a few second as she kept typing on her computer. She looked up.

“So...What happened?”

We told her everything . I did most of the talking, but Anna would speak up every once in while. I could tell she was frightened by my mother at this point who sat their with a very grim look on her face.

Once we stopped my mom took a deep breath and said “I have a class I have to teach in a few minutes. You join me downstairs, and then we will figure this out afterwards. Is that okay?” We nodded.

For the next few hours we sat in the middle of my mom’s classroom as they discussed if rich people should be obligated to give to others in need. It kept me distracted, but not enough to get rid of the anxiety I was feeling at the moment. After the class she took us back upstairs to get her things.

“Were going to your mom’s house now, “ she said to Anna sternly. “I think she needs to know what’s going on too.”

Anna’s mom was known for being an incredibly strict and tough mother so when wasn’t surprised that she was yelling loud enough at Anna for the whole street to hear. Although I have to admit I was still quite scared myself. My mom noticed how scared and upset I looked so she put her arm around me.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I lied. She knew it too.

We went back to our house leaving a sad looking Anna with her mom. My mom called my dad and told him about it, then Quiyamah’s mom.

“I just called your father, and we decided we are going to invite Anna, Quiyamah, and her mother over to figure out what’s going on. We’re going to try to get Quiyamah to confess too, okay?” She said. She looked me dead in the eyes. “You realize how angry I am about this right?”

“Yes.” I said.

“Okay, I love you very much .” She said.

“I love you too, mom.” I said.

That night proceeded to be one of the worst nights of my life. My mom, dad, Anna, Quiyamah, and Quiyamah’s mom decided to come over our house and figure out what was going on. The whole time I just sat their silently with my head down, half listening to the conversation, half of my brain in a completely different world. It wasn’t until my mom asked me what if any of my stuff had gone missing that I started talking, and even then I was a sputtering mess, and on the verge of tears.

Quiyamah never actually confessed to stealing my mother’s ring. My mom knew it because we noticed it was gone right after Quiyamah left my house, and my mom NEVER misplaces anything. She never confessed to taking any of my stuff either. In the end I didn’t really know what happened, but I knew Quiyamah wasn’t a good friend. She has lied, used, and talked behind my back before so I felt as though it was a sign once I found out about this situation. The only thing I regretted about the end of our friendship was not telling her off when I had the chance.

In life, protection is the thing everyone searches for, they feel keen when they have it, and show a sense of fear when they are missing it. Humans usually tend to protect things in which they care for deeply, so to say love, whether those things are materialistic or not is a different story.

In my life, I feel as though I become close to many people and many things, so my sense of protection over those things in tremendous. In my eyes though, I tend to protect a certain  group of people the most over everyone, which would be my families. Now I say families, because I feel as though I have two families, both my blood family, aunts uncles mom dad etc., whom I love deeply, and my hockey family, or in layman’s terms my team.

I believe that anyone who has played some sort of team sport, or even a club consisting of a team knows the bond that is built between that group, and I feel as though in a competitive contact sport the idea of protect pops up frequently. The opportunity where there is a need for protection, at least for me, comes up a lot more when with my hockey family, instead of my actual family. There are many of times in which situations come up on the ice where I feel the need to protect my line mates, everything from cheap shots, to poor choices in words, it just comes up more frequently.

It was a brisk November morning, around seven thirty. I was sitting in the passenger seat of a big red 2001 Dodge Ram pick up truck. We were flying down the expressway, it was a Saturday morning, so the roads were basically empty. I was on my normal pregame routine, headphones in blasting songs by Notorious B.I.G and Joey Badass and looking out the window. It felt like it was going to be a normal game, but you can never actually know. I got to the rink a little before everyone, which wasn’t anything new. I continued on with my routine, I got my golf ball out of my bag and headed down the hallway to the spot in which the stored the nets. I always work on my hands before games, it's just something to pass the time.

Eventually the rest of the team arrived to the rink, we did our pre game as a team, which was just a little soccer warm up consisting of us getting in a big circle in attempts to keep the ball in the air and then we got dressed and hit the ice. We skated our warm up, and everyone seemed to be feeling good.

The puck dropped and we were off, I remember fondly how quickly that game moved, not many stoppages, it was a solid flowing game. My line hit the ice and scored the one and only goal of the game late in the second period. We were flying up the ice on a break out, I took noticed of the pinching defenseman, and bolted to the open ice, calling out for the puck. I received a perfect pass and thought I was gone, until I realized that the other defenseman kept up with me. I turned my head and noticed my line mate Jimmy who put it in the net. We celebrated and went back to the bench. After that the game continued to flow. About three or four shifts later, something happened in which I do not think I will ever forget.

We were coming down the ice, it was a quick shift so I was not playing with my line at the time. I rushed into the zone, screaming for a pass. Louie, the one with the puck, tried to dish me the pass, but instead lost it in his skates. He looked down for a split second, but that split second was all it took. Someone on the other team came charging in, with an elbow out, drove louie to the boards, head first, concussing him and eventually keeping him out of the game for weeks. Anyway, this is where I came in, I flew into the pack, in which grouped up because of the hit. I went in for one reason and one reason only, to take care of the kid who laid the hit, but so did everyone else on the team. It relates back to the idea of family and protection. Everyone felt the need to protect him, because we all care deeply about him, he is a teammate, a good friend, and a family member, and nobody likes to see a family member get taken out. When telling this story, it always reminds me of a main key in the story, The yellow birds written by Kevin Powers. The key point I am speaking of is the promise that the main character Bartle made to Murphy's mom, that promise being that he will protect Murph at all costs, because he feels a great connection with both murph and murphy's mother.

Anyway back to the story, I came in a grabbed someone, at this point I was just trying to hold others back, because one of my teammates had already taken care of the kid who I wanted. I had grip on a kid who did not seem to want any parts of anyone except me. He turned around and starting pushing me and trying to throw punches. I did not really want to fight him, or anyone for that matter, so I just did what I usually do, and try to pull a penalty out of the mix by saying things to get him even more mad. I started to talk and next thing I knew I was on the ice face down. I opened my eyes and nobody was around anymore, They were all skating back to there respected benches. I got up, with a little help from the boards and skated back to my bench, I remember suddenly having a brutal pounding headache, but I was still curious as to what happened.

When I got back to my bench, all of my teammates were talking about how they got him, and saying his number over and over, “it was 30, I got 30.” I was still confused so I asked my linemate what was going on. He looked at me with an extremely puzzled look on his face and said “dude he punched you in the back of your head.” And from there everything started to make more sense.

This is another example of the idea of protection, as I spoke about earlier. They all gained a sense of protection over me when I was hit and therefore defenseless.

Now even though there are not exactly spoken promises in my life, especially my hockey life, I feel as though it is one of those things in which is unspoken, but known. It is almost as if it is an unwritten rule. As I said before, it all comes with the bond in which the team builds from playing together and spending so much time with each other.

The amount of protect within the world is crazy, the amount of people who protect others, guardian angels so to say are a great thing. In life people always will be there to protect you, and that is something in which I believe should never be forgotten, but you should also remember that you need to have a sense of protection for those whom you care about, like your family.

Under the Water

Happily nervous. If I could explain my feelings that day I would say I was happily nervous.

I woke up early with a smile on my face ready to go to the Assembly.

As Jehovah’s Witness every so often we have Assembly, where different congregation groups gather together. At these Assemblies brothers or elders give talks about a specific bible based topic.

I got dressed quickly in a new outfit for the occasion. I wore a dark purple pencil skirt with a lace stripe down the middle, a black flowy shirt with lace on the shoulders, and purple heels with a flower in the middle. We then get to the Assembly hall and since I am getting baptized, I had to sit in the front. I was extremely nervous to sit in the front because it would be the first time I sat without my family.

Everyone soon takes their seat as the Assembly starts. As the talks began I tried not to move too much, but not being able to help myself, I keep fidgeting and fixing my skirt. I couldn’t contain my thought or my excitement. My mind was constantly wandering, blocking out the Brother giving the talk, but I heard when he asked the others and I to stand. I heard him ask those two question I was so prepared to answer “ On the basis of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, have you repented of your sins and dedicated yourself to Jehovah to do his will?”

“Yes” I screamed with the others.

“Do you understand that your dedication and baptism identify you as one of Jehovah’s Witness in association with God’s spirit-directed organization?” The Brother continued.

“Yes” we all said.

After saying a prayer and singing the baptism song all the baptized candidates were asked to change for water baptism.

Gathering all my things I walk to the bathroom. Changing quickly into my bathing suit, I was soon ushered to where the pool was. Carefully I walked down the pool steps until half of my body was emerised, two Brothers were waiting in the water for me. As soon as I was in the water one of the brothers walked over to me placing his arms around me.

“Place your left hand on your nose, now place your right hand on your left arm. Bend your knees.” Before I knew it I was dipped under the water, I was brought back up hearing the sound of my family and friends clapping.

On December 13, 2014 I was baptized as one of Jehovah’s Witness. This is a day I will always cherish.

Changing back into my regular clothes I walked back to my family. I was greeted with hugs, congratulations, and cameras. Later that evening we were having a small celebration. I was given some small gifts, but the greatest gift was given by my parents. It’s a silver heart shaped engraved with my baptism date, 12/13/14. The necklace is like a family tradition, my sister was given a necklace when she was baptized as well.

This date symbolizes that I have decided to fully dedicated my life to being a Jehovah’s Witness. Unlike many other religions, where you're baptized at birth, my baptism was completely my choice.

Ever since I was young I have been one of Jehovah Witness. Being a witness entails many responsibilities even for a young child. I have been taught to follow in Jesus footsteps, this means basing my life off the bible. While unlike Jesus I make many mistakes, I still try my best to follow his example. One example would be in celebrating holidays, Jesus didn’t celebrate any holidays so we don’t celebrate holidays. Another example would be that Jesus preached to his neighbors, so we interturn follow his example and preach to many of our neighbor. To be baptized means a lot in my religion, it means that you are willing to dedicate your life to fully serving Jehovah and doing his will. A choice of this size is very difficult to make.

There were many factors in my decision. The main factor is my love for Jehovah God. Even though I have loved Jehovah my whole life baptism wasn’t really on my mind but what really made me think of this decision was that my friends were getting baptized. So I started thinking if I was ready to take such a huge step. By chance, the same year my friends were getting baptized, my Uncle asked me “What is holding you back?” I honestly didn’t have a answers. I love preaching, I loved studying the bible and I love God, so what was really holding me back? That question made me consider what could possible be holding me back, I was already following in Jesus footsteps so why shouldn’t I make it official. After thinking it over I found that nothing but my own insecurities were preventing me from getting baptized. I went and talked to my parents to see what they thought, they thought it was a good idea. From there I had to talk to the brothers of the congregation, to ensure that I was spiritually secure and ready to get baptized. They felt that I was prepared but to make sure they asked me a series of spiritual questions. We agreed that we would set a date when we could start the first session of questioning. To be baptized there are three sessions of questioning that have to be answered. I got through all the questions and was cleared to be baptized at the next Assembly.

I guess you can say it all started back in 8th grade. I had the best group of friends a girl could ask for. But there was that one friend, LuLu.

She seemed to involve herself with every boy in her path and not just any boy. It had to be one of our ex boyfriends or someone we used to have a crush on. Anyone we had feelings for, she would involve herself with. At one point I knew it was going to happen because it was not the first time she betrayed the trust of one of us the way she did. One of our friends, Ezzy, had a major crush on a guy and they were so close to one another that when she claimed that she no longer liked him. We could see it in her eyes that yeah she did not like him, she loved him. Of course LuLu did not get the message and went after him anyways.

It was none of our business on why she would do it, but we wanted to know why. We could not stand the dreadful thought of her hurting one of us again or hurting the next person in her path. Who knew that the next victim involved in all of this would be me. Maria, one of our other friends, did not know what was going on, and she was the closest one to LuLu out of all of us. She did not find out this until a week before we graduated middle school. I was not told anything about it and neither was Ezzy or Jen aware of the situation. Maria promised LuLu that she would not tell me or anyone else about what had happened between her and my “ex” crush. At that point in time I thought I no longer had feelings for him, but I was wrong because a boy named Juan.

“You know you look like you have a crush on me” he brought up.

“What of it” I asked him

“Well, I know you truly don’t. I know that deep down inside of your heart, you still have feelings for Ethan” he said bluntly. In that moment I thought “what would he know.”, but my heart was beating so loud in my ears.

“Maybe he is right” I thought. I still had feelings for this one guy and did not seem let him go. I was just looking for someone to make me let go of these feelings.

“Thanks” I told him

“For” he questioned. I smiled at him.

“For making me realize what my true feelings were” I said.

The next day I decided to talk it out with my friends.

“Hey you know Juan made me realize something yesterday”. I began to tell them during lunch, but it seemed like Maria had something more urgent to say. She did not tell me until the next day. The way Ezzy had to do a whole lap around the school building and came back on the verge of tears proved it. The way Jen seemed to have the air knocked out of her proved that. The way Maria seemed so genuine, ready to comfort the waterworks to come proved that.

The next day was the worst. English class had a whole other meaning to it. Once I was told the way LuLu betrayed me, I was done for. Those clear words are ones I can not write down for the simple reason that they bring up emotions that I do not want to feel again. Ezzy almost cried because she thought of him as a brother and thought of him doing that was downright awful and unbelievable. I cried because I thought he was better than that. He allowed himself to be easily manipulated by her, which was the worst part. Of course we were all curious to know if the whole thing was true so we asked Chris, who was his and one of our friends. The seven of us were close, so in a small group of friends like that, things were bound to be said. When we asked him, he was clueless.  

“Hey did Ethan tell you anything about him and a girl” Maria asked

“No, from what I know he is with nobody, why do you ask” Chris said

“Just asking” I told him

“Don’t lie, what happened, what did he do” Chris asked

“Lunch, we will tell you at lunch” I said

“No, tell me” he demanded

“Lunch” Ezzy said ending the conversation there.When we told him at lunch, he flipped out.

“That has got be a lie, that’s bull” he said, but Maria shook her head as if saying “it is not a lie”

“I thought he was better than that and he did not tell any of us” he said disappointment dripping off of every word. When Ethan and Tommy walked back over to our table we hushed up. Ethan was the most suspicious. We told Tommy later, but we ignored Ethan. Just to my luck he asked me to be his date to the dinner dance for the next day’s graduation. I of course said yes, but never let go of what he possibly did. After the graduation and after the dinner, the next day he texted me and we began to talk. Out of nowhere he brought up the crush I had on him and then brought up what he and my friends had discussed.

“That is a lie, are you seriously going to believe rumors” he texted me, but when high school came the last thing I expected to be brought up once again. A friend who was not even involved and left halfway through the school year managed to find out about it. That was when I knew it was true. What had been a “lie” actually did happen. So I confronted Ethan once again and demanded the truth without a single little lie. He spilled it then and there. I needed some time away from him so I didn’t talk to him for a while, but I slowly started to forgive him because at some point in some of our lives we will be easily manipulated into doing something. We of course are really close friends now, but I find it hard to trust others now. Trust can be easily lost and hard to gain when it comes to me after what had happened. I gained and lost respect for people, but it is something that burns in my memory. I think the reason I never forgot was to remember that even those close to us manage to break us apart and hurt you where it hurts the most. To remember those things still hurt and will continue to hurt and things will happen, but we will eventually forgive and maybe we will slowly forget. I am glad and happy that I was told the truth, that I got the answer that was needed. I did not get the answer I wanted, but as long as it was the truth, I was fine. I do not enjoy sugar coating things when I talk to people, and I do not like it when people sugar coat things when they talk to me. The truth can hurt a lot of the time, but it is something that people just need to know. This was inspired by many moments in “The Yellow Birds”. Every part of the book was true to the events they described. Every detail was included into the book and although the wording made it seem as if everything was a dream, a false hope. It was true all of it was true.

I found inspiration to do write this personal essay when I read a scene in The Things They Carried: "The truth," Norman Bowker would've said, "is I let the guy go."  When I read this, I thought of when I was attack by a dog because after the attack I lied, saying the dog just randomly attacked me. What really happened was very different.

It was May 26, 2007. I was 8. My mother and just born sister was in North New Jersey helping prepare for a family friend's baby shower. Meanwhile, my brother Ato, my father Paul & I went to my dad’s friends house near Saint Joseph's University on cityline avenue. His friend Mr. Chicago was hosting capoeira event where many of his students and friend came. He lived in a huge three story house with about one fourth of an acre of land with a huge Willow oak tree with branches expanding everywhere. There were a jungle gym with a slide, rock climb and three swings with a little one story house with a full living room and couch. When we got there, there were kids running around everywhere, parents talking and eating. In the mini house the adults played on Berimbau, Pandeiro, Atabaque, Agogô, Reco-reco and more. They were so loud you could hear it down the street. Me, Ato and my dad greeted everyone and then went our separate ways. My dad went inside the mini house and played for hours while me and Ato went to the food section. There was vegetables, fruits, meats, desserts and many more. For many hours me and Ato ate food, played with friends and chilled in the main house for a while. I had a very bad stomach ache after eating so much food, so I went to the bathroom for a while. When I came out Mr. Chicago’s dog, a large black and gray color akita. He was as tall as my chest. I have never ever been afraid of a dog before in my life and I was not gonna let this my first. Me and Ato joined back together and played with the dog for awhile. We even ate more food together. We followed the dog around and the dog followed us around as well. I felt like we were really friends. Boy I was wrong.

Me and Ato were swinging on the swing set and I turned to my right to see the dog eating rice and beans off a plate some kid left next to the swing. In my mind I was trying to save a dog’s life from either death or diarrhea. I started staring at the dog until I gained the courage to reach down with my left hand to try and take the plate from the dog. That was the worse decision made in 2007. The dog jumped up and bit into my wrist. As soon as that happened my entire world stopped. I started to ask myself questions like, why am I here right now? Is i'm dreaming right now? Im very tired. This is gonna hurt. Time speeds up again and I see the dog shaking around my arm. I let out a bloodcurdling scream, it didn't hurt at all but I felt like I was supposed to scream. It let go and then jumped my forearm and shook me more furiously. The dog threw me to the ground on my butt. The sudden adrenaline rush made me back away from the dog. The world stopped again for another three seconds and I was able to look into the dog's eyes and it scared the crap out of me. It eyes were icy blue and were focused on me. The world sped up again and the dog started running towards me. I had no time to think. My body, without thinking, flipped around and I laid on my stomach protecting my chest and stomach. Sadly my back was exposed and the dog jumped onto my back and began tearing up my back. I looked over to my right and to see my Dad running at full speed towards my attacker like he was the iron titan from attack on titan. He ran into that dog like Clay Matthews when he’s sacking a quarterback. The dog flew ten feet away from me and dad and two other guys grabbed the dog. While that was happening I managed to get up and climb as high as I could onto the jungle gym crying and in shock from what happened. My dad came over and tried to grab me but I was to scared and pushed his hands away. I wasn’t moving until that dog left. While thinking this in my head, I realized that i’m bleeding a lot so I decided it would be smart for to go with my dad. Him and a bunch of other guys took me to bathroom and probably did the dumbest thing ever in this type of situation. They took a fresh unused bottle of CVS hydrogen peroxide a basically poured it onto my cuts. I screamed until one of my dad's friend made the suggestion of me going to the hospital. My dad came to the realization that, that was actually better than what they were doing act that moment. My father picked me up and carried outside to the car. I was still in pain but the combination of shock and adrenaline leveled me out. I was meet with outside with a yard full of confused, concerning stares. My day was pretty going really badly at that point bad luckily my dad let me sit in the front and rolled down the window for me. Got from the outskirts of philly to center city in probably like 3 minutes. It was probably more like 10 minutes but the mixture of shock and adrenaline sped time up for me. When we got there the security guards took me out the car and put me in the wheelchair and rushed me into a operational room. I sat there and waited for the doctor to come in and tell me that all I needed was bandages and no school but, instead I had to be given stitches which sucked. When the doctor asked what happened I lied and said I was reaching for my gatorade bottle nowhere near the dog and it  just randomly attacked me. I felt bad for saying it but also I thought I would get in trouble if I told the truth so I just lied. As the doctor was sticking needles into my back and arm I screamed the whole time even though they gave me numbing medicine and I only felt a little I just felt like it was an appropriate time to scream. When the doctor was down he informed my dad that I was given 18 separate stitches. After about 20 minutes my mother came rushing in freaking out about how i'll be scarred for life and I must be feeling sad and scared about though I was alright because I got mcdonalds and was watching spongebob and laughing my butt off. Eventually the doctors had to kick us out because their were others kids who needed help. When I got home I started to feel really bad about what I said because they were going to unitize the dog but, I still didn't want to tell, so I waited a couple of months later and then I told my mom. It turned out that she wasn't mad at me and it was all right. The dog was gonna die anyway. Still to this day I have scars from the attack but, I still also have no prejudice against any dog.

Dear students, put yourself in my shoes:

In February, you get rear-ended on your bicycle and end up in the hospital. You’re not seriously injured, but the doctors come to you before they release you to let you know: They found something strange in your CT scan, you’ve got a lesion in your left hip. What’s a lesion, exactly? You know that a lesion on skin is a kind of wound. What does it mean when you have a lesion in your bone?

Two days later, an oncologist at Penn explains: it’s a tumor. No, it’s probably not cancer. But whatever it is, it’s slowly eating your bone from the inside out. You’re going to need a biopsy to figure out what it is, and whatever it is will have to come out sooner or later, or else your left femur is going to turn to mush.

If this all sounds a little foreign, imagine how I felt sitting on the examination table, trying to take notes on a whole lot of concepts I had never heard before.  I mean that literally -- I had a notebook with questions I had dutifully writing down before the appointment. And sure, I wrote down the answers to what I thought to ask.

But that encounter was the very beginning of what I would come to understand over the next year: I knew almost nothing about what was going on with my body, and even less about what treatment and recovery would be like in the next months.

Here’s a brief summary of what the medical interventions were like.

The Biopsy. You take a day off work to go to the hospital, and get put in something called “twilight anaesthesia,” where you’re awake but not really in touch with reality. They then put you in a CT scanner so they can spot exactly where the tumor is, and extract a sample with a long needle. At the end, you have to hang out for a few more hours to make sure the narcotics have worn off. Your husband volunteers to get you food from the cafeteria, which is great because you haven’t eaten anything in twelve hours.

The Pre-Surgery Meetings. Turns out you have Giant Cell Tumor, which is exactly what it sounds like: the cells are getting really big, which means they are getting soft, which means you will have a collapsed femur one of these days if the malignant cells aren’t removed. You set a date for surgery and meet the anaesthesiologist. “Do you have any problem with transfusions?” He asks. No… but which religion does, again? And then all of a sudden you are talking about the amazing blood recycling machines that they use Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Surgery. You go to the hopsital at 5AM. Your husband kisses you goodbye at 6. Another couple is parting ways at the elevator. The woman in the other bed is crying, a little. You’re not crying. A part of you judges her for crying. The other part of you thinks, what does she know that I don’t? The medical residents spend a lot of time looking for a vein they can see. The surgeon initials your hip with a sharpie. This is one of many times they ask you to confirm exactly where they are going to cut. The OR room itself looks kind of like an alien examination room, except it’s very well lit and they’re playing Justin Timberlake. Everybody seems like they’re in a good mood. “It’s Monday morning,” they tell you, “and we like our jobs.” They give you some warm blankets, and that’s the last thing you remember.

The Post-Surgery Follow-Up. Two weeks after the surgery, you go back to the surgeon’s office. You’ve followed all the instructions: take pain meds when needed, change the dressing on your incision every three days, shower but don’t scrub at the staples. You lay down on your side and the physician’s assistant uses pliers to pull them out and drop them in a small metal tin. Click, click, click. This, strangely, is the first thing that has hurt more than you will expect it to. At first you try and count the number but after a while you just focus on breathing. Once it’s done, she shows you the x-ray of your new titanium-enhanced femur. “It looks great, healing well,” she says, only you don’t really hear her because you and your husband are just staring at the X-Ray. What is that, you think. I had no idea it would look like that.

This sounds like the end of the story, but really it was the beginning. A new beginning where I was everything that I used to be, except now I was also a member of a rare disease club, a survivor of major surgery, and the owner of an implant. I posted the X-ray image on Facebook. “You’re bionic!” My friends cheered. I started going to physical therapy, slept a lot, and was cautiously optimistic I would be able to ditch my cane by the time school started in September.

This was foolhardy. But it reflected my mindset at the time: this was a thing that would pass, it would be difficult and then I would go back to being “my old self.”

I’d like to say that I disposed of this mindset quickly, but I actually clung to it even as my condition worsened. Going back to work was a relief, because I had something to do, but the muscles in my left leg did not agree. I wanted to act like everything was fine, but walking became a real ordeal, and I spent many hours between classes face down on Siswick’s couch with an ice pack wedged into my hip joint.  Despite this, I thought it would be a good idea to go to a black tie event in New York and wear high heels. I paid for that for weeks.

According to my surgeon, everything looked fine -- no tumor recurrence, no messed up implant--which in a way was even more frustrating, because there was no definitive explanation why my body wasn’t playing nice. It just wasn’t. The worst was the occasional muscle spasm -- kind of like a charlie horse, but faster and more intense. My whole leg would seize up and I would just have to wait it out. Speaking was not really an option when these happened. The first time one hit me, I had just stood up on the bus to get off at 22nd and Chestnut, to go to school.

As the bus slowed for the stop, I started to panic: I can’t move right now, and I can’t really ask for help. What if the bus passes my stop? The thought of having to shuffle down an extra block to work was almost worse than the muscle spasm.

It was around this time last year that my juniors were reading “The Things They Carried” and we were talking about how you convey a unique experience to others. They all knew I was still recovering from surgery. One class in particular was good about telling me to sit down already when I kept walking around to work with them.

I tried my hand at explaining the phenomenon of the muscle spasms. “Have you ever seen those videos of hot lava, once it’s flowed away from the volcano? How the lava cools on the surface, but you can see it slowly shifting around underneath that surface?”

They nodded their heads.

“Well, it feels like that.”

I got a lot of shocked stares. “You mean, it feels like your muscles are on fire?”

Well… not exactly. I tried a different approach.

“Who in this room has some kind of metal implant in their body?”

To my mild surprise, several kids raised their hands. One had a few screws in his hand. Another had scoliosis as a child, and now had a rod in her back.”

“And, can you feel it?”

“Yeah, of course. If I twist really quickly I can feel it bump up against my spine.”

This got even more weird looks from classmates, and a couple of gasps. The student and I shrugged at each other.

So, what’s the point of this story?

I still haven’t really figured out how to explain to people what it’s like to have your body get used to a foreign object. I am still saying, on occasion, “I wish I could have you feel what this feels like.” Not to take the pain off of my hands, but just so someone could get it.

And yet: I’ve come to realize that one of the strange gifts of this whole experience is that I get it, with “it” being many kinds of physical trauma. I know how to coach someone through physical therapy that takes months. I can commiserate with new moms who have had an epidural, because I got one after my surgery. And when a close friend of mine had to get bone surgery herself, on her hand, I was there when she woke up in the hospital, there to tell her that the pain would pass eventually.

So it’s not so much that I am seeking to explain to people what this experience is like. It’s more that if and when they come into it themselves, I am here to greet them and help them make sense of what on earth is going on. I have a small lead on them, but I am still figuring it out myself. Which is kind of the point: I am still me, because I am still building who that person is.

Dear students, put yourself in my shoes:

In February, you get rear-ended on your bicycle and end up in the hospital. You’re not seriously injured, but the doctors come to you before they release you to let you know: They found something strange in your CT scan, you’ve got a lesion in your left hip. What’s a lesion, exactly? You know that a lesion on skin is a kind of wound. What does it mean when you have a lesion in your bone?

Two days later, an oncologist at Penn explains: it’s a tumor. No, it’s probably not cancer. But whatever it is, it’s slowly eating your bone from the inside out. You’re going to need a biopsy to figure out what it is, and whatever it is will have to come out sooner or later, or else your left femur is going to turn to mush.

If this all sounds a little foreign, imagine how I felt sitting on the examination table, trying to take notes on a whole lot of concepts I had never heard before.  I mean that literally -- I had a notebook with questions I had dutifully writing down before the appointment. And sure, I wrote down the answers to what I thought to ask.

But that encounter was the very beginning of what I would come to understand over the next year: I knew almost nothing about what was going on with my body, and even less about what treatment and recovery would be like in the next months.

Here’s a brief summary of what the medical interventions were like.

The Biopsy. You take a day off work to go to the hospital, and get put in something called “twilight anaesthesia,” where you’re awake but not really in touch with reality. They then put you in a CT scanner so they can spot exactly where the tumor is, and extract a sample with a long needle. At the end, you have to hang out for a few more hours to make sure the narcotics have worn off. Your husband volunteers to get you food from the cafeteria, which is great because you haven’t eaten anything in twelve hours.

The Pre-Surgery Meetings. Turns out you have Giant Cell Tumor, which is exactly what it sounds like: the cells are getting really big, which means they are getting soft, which means you will have a collapsed femur one of these days if the malignant cells aren’t removed. You set a date for surgery and meet the anaesthesiologist. “Do you have any problem with transfusions?” He asks. No… but which religion does, again? And then all of a sudden you are talking about the amazing blood recycling machines that they use Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Surgery. You go to the hopsital at 5AM. Your husband kisses you goodbye at 6. Another couple is parting ways at the elevator. The woman in the other bed is crying, a little. You’re not crying. A part of you judges her for crying. The other part of you thinks, what does she know that I don’t? The medical residents spend a lot of time looking for a vein they can see. The surgeon initials your hip with a sharpie. This is one of many times they ask you to confirm exactly where they are going to cut. The OR room itself looks kind of like an alien examination room, except it’s very well lit and they’re playing Justin Timberlake. Everybody seems like they’re in a good mood. “It’s Monday morning,” they tell you, “and we like our jobs.” They give you some warm blankets, and that’s the last thing you remember.

The Post-Surgery Follow-Up. Two weeks after the surgery, you go back to the surgeon’s office. You’ve followed all the instructions: take pain meds when needed, change the dressing on your incision every three days, shower but don’t scrub at the staples. You lay down on your side and the physician’s assistant uses pliers to pull them out and drop them in a small metal tin. Click, click, click. This, strangely, is the first thing that has hurt more than you will expect it to. At first you try and count the number but after a while you just focus on breathing. Once it’s done, she shows you the x-ray of your new titanium-enhanced femur. “It looks great, healing well,” she says, only you don’t really hear her because you and your husband are just staring at the X-Ray. What is that, you think. I had no idea it would look like that.

This sounds like the end of the story, but really it was the beginning. A new beginning where I was everything that I used to be, except now I was also a member of a rare disease club, a survivor of major surgery, and the owner of an implant. I posted the X-ray image on Facebook. “You’re bionic!” My friends cheered. I started going to physical therapy, slept a lot, and was cautiously optimistic I would be able to ditch my cane by the time school started in September.

This was foolhardy. But it reflected my mindset at the time: this was a thing that would pass, it would be difficult and then I would go back to being “my old self.”

I’d like to say that I disposed of this mindset quickly, but I actually clung to it even as my condition worsened. Going back to work was a relief, because I had something to do, but the muscles in my left leg did not agree. I wanted to act like everything was fine, but walking became a real ordeal, and I spent many hours between classes face down on Siswick’s couch with an ice pack wedged into my hip joint.  Despite this, I thought it would be a good idea to go to a black tie event in New York and wear high heels. I paid for that for weeks.

According to my surgeon, everything looked fine -- no tumor recurrence, no messed up implant--which in a way was even more frustrating, because there was no definitive explanation why my body wasn’t playing nice. It just wasn’t. The worst was the occasional muscle spasm -- kind of like a charlie horse, but faster and more intense. My whole leg would seize up and I would just have to wait it out. Speaking was not really an option when these happened. The first time one hit me, I had just stood up on the bus to get off at 22nd and Chestnut, to go to school.

As the bus slowed for the stop, I started to panic: I can’t move right now, and I can’t really ask for help. What if the bus passes my stop? The thought of having to shuffle down an extra block to work was almost worse than the muscle spasm.

It was around this time last year that my juniors were reading “The Things They Carried” and we were talking about how you convey a unique experience to others. They all knew I was still recovering from surgery. One class in particular was good about telling me to sit down already when I kept walking around to work with them.

I tried my hand at explaining the phenomenon of the muscle spasms. “Have you ever seen those videos of hot lava, once it’s flowed away from the volcano? How the lava cools on the surface, but you can see it slowly shifting around underneath that surface?”

They nodded their heads.

“Well, it feels like that.”

I got a lot of shocked stares. “You mean, it feels like your muscles are on fire?”

Well… not exactly. I tried a different approach.

“Who in this room has some kind of metal implant in their body?”

To my mild surprise, several kids raised their hands. One had a few screws in his hand. Another had scoliosis as a child, and now had a rod in her back.”

“And, can you feel it?”

“Yeah, of course. If I twist really quickly I can feel it bump up against my spine.”

This got even more weird looks from classmates, and a couple of gasps. The student and I shrugged at each other.

So, what’s the point of this story?

I still haven’t really figured out how to explain to people what it’s like to have your body get used to a foreign object. I am still saying, on occasion, “I wish I could have you feel what this feels like.” Not to take the pain off of my hands, but just so someone could get it.

And yet: I’ve come to realize that one of the strange gifts of this whole experience is that I get it, with “it” being many kinds of physical trauma. I know how to coach someone through physical therapy that takes months. I can commiserate with new moms who have had an epidural, because I got one after my surgery. And when a close friend of mine had to get bone surgery herself, on her hand, I was there when she woke up in the hospital, there to tell her that the pain would pass eventually.

So it’s not so much that I am seeking to explain to people what this experience is like. It’s more that if and when they come into it themselves, I am here to greet them and help them make sense of what on earth is going on. I have a small lead on them, but I am still figuring it out myself. Which is kind of the point: I am still me, because I am still building who that person is.

It was May 14th, 2006, and I was walking to the dentist with my mom. I had been to the dentist a few times before, and I was starting to get used to it. It was getting to the point where I was looking forward to each visit because of how clean my teeth would feel afterwards, but it all changed on that day. When we got to the office, I jumped up on the chair and held my mouth open for the dentist.

After a few minutes of poking and prodding my teeth and gums, he said “Hmm, this doesn’t look right...” which is something you never want to hear from someone who is looking at your mouth. He asked me to stay in the chair, and he went to go talk to my mom for a bit. However, because of six year olds’ natural tendencies to run around and not do what adults tell them to, I got up and wandered over to the waiting room door. That was when I heard the exact six words I didn’t want to hear, “We could just pull the tooth,” come out of the dentist’s mouth. My eyes instantly widened, and I had to hold back a yelp so that they wouldn’t find out that I was listening. I went back to the chair, my eyes as wide as frisbees. When the dentist finally came back in I put on the best poker face that I had ever done. I felt a sense of dread as he walked up to the chair. I knew what was about to happen.

He said “Sorry about that, I hope you didn’t get too bored.” I could only squeak out a tiny “Please don’t pull out my tooth.” “Don’t worry,” he said, nothing more. He didn’t say if he would or wouldn’t, which only made me even more scared. He laid me back in the chair and went to work. It was the same old stuff at first. Scraping, rinsing, and flossing. I thought that maybe he wouldn’t pull my tooth after all. Maybe I would just be able to go home and still be able to chew on that side of my mouth, but I was wrong.

Before I knew it, I looked over to see him pull out literally a pair of pliers. No special tool or anything, just some plain old pliers. I thought I saw some rust on the tip, but it could have been my imagination. I instantly started screaming and thrashing, trying to escape the unbearable pain that I knew was coming. I knew that I was just delaying the inevitable, but I kept struggling on the off chance that he would give up, leaving me free to live my life with my molars intact, but I wasn’t that lucky. A dentist from the next room over came in to see what all the racket was, then she left and came back with a gurney, complete with medieval style straps. If you have ever seen the movie Saw, then you know what it looked like from my eyes. After much more struggling, kicking, and screaming, it was finally over. I felt around my mouth with my tongue, and noticed a huge, gaping hole in the side of my gums. I felt betrayed. The “nice dentist man” wasn’t as nice as I had thought.

From then on, I never wanted to go to the dentist. Every six months I would pretend to get a very violent case of the flu, which would last from when I found out about the appointment to the second it was too late for me to go. It only worked for the first few times before my mom started to catch on to the act. One day she woke me up by saying “Hey, Colin, we’re going to the store to get ice cream!” I jumped up, got dressed, and sprinted outside to the car. On the way there, I noticed that we passed the store that we usually went to. I thought there was a chance that I’d been deceived, but it was two months earlier than usual, and we weren’t going to where the dentist was before. My mind started racing. My mom looked over and saw my worried look, and she said “Oh, yeah, we’re going to a different store. This one has better ice cream.” “Ok,” I said, but in the back of my mind I didn’t completely trust her. If the dentist tried to dupe me into giving up a tooth, then could my mom do the same thing? That was when we pulled into a parking lot, and I saw the word “Dentist” written in huge, chrome letters on the building across the street. Immediately I tried to run, but she anticipated this, and she picked me up, threw me over her shoulder, and started walking towards the office. “Please don’t make me go to the dentist!” I yelled. She said “It’s for your own good, Colin, you’ll understand when you’re older.” The next half hour was filled with apprehension and fear that something unexpected would happen. I never truly got used to going to the dentist until a few years ago, which is when I eventually decided that it wasn’t worth worrying about, and figured that it would go faster if I didn’t struggle.

For a long time after that I thought that being scared of the dentist was an uncommon fear. Even after overcoming it, I still felt that it was unusual. I wondered if it was completely unreasonable, and that I was just being a wimp. Then, this year in class, we read The Things They Carried, which contained a chapter called “The Dentist,” where a character, Lieutenant Curt Lemon, has to overcome his fear of the dentist, even requesting that one of his teeth be pulled out in order to prove to his squad-mates that he wasn’t a coward. It first surprised me that this fear was being brought up in literature, and second it surprised me that a grown man, a soldier, would share this fear that I had only had in childhood. This inspired me to research a fear of going to the dentist, and I found that it was, in fact, a very common fear. I also found that, instead of being referred to as a phobia, which is what I assumed it was, it was actually more similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This made sense, as having a tooth pulled out by the dentist at six years old unexpectedly was a pretty traumatic event. After finding this out, I felt relieved. At that point I knew that I was normal, and I could feel secure with the fact that I was scared of the dentist. Even further than that, I could feel proud of myself, knowing that I had overcome a fear that is crippling to some people.

I used to live in Chestnut Hill in a pretty big apartment with my parents and sister. I loved where I lived but when I got older, I started complaining about not having stairs like my other friends did and I did not want people to come over because I didn’t like how my house looked. I probably complained too soon because one day, when we came home, my dad went through the mail like usual. As he looked through, he stopped and stared at a envelope for a long time. My mom noticed and walked over to see what it was about. They read the paper inside the envelope very quietly. Arielle, my sister, and I kept asking them, “What’s wrong? What does the letter say?” I hadn’t really gone through anything bad in my life up to that point so I didn’t really know what to expect them to say. Then, my dad turned around and told us as simply as he could what the problem was. Unfortunately, we were being kicked out. It had nothing to do with money, but it had everything to do with the fact that our building was sold to a realtor company and our apartment building was turning into office spaces. The letter said we had 60 days to find a new place to live.

Now, to be honest, I was kind of happy to be kicked out because I didn’t know the whole process of buying a house. For one, I used to think that buying a house meant switching homes with someone else and buying their home, and I also thought that this was a way to force my parents to move because in my eyes they were taking too long. I was excited to move into a home with stairs and my own room. I imagined my house looking like Kimora Lee Simmons’ house (I used to love her show). But, I started to realize how stressed and scared my parents were and my fantasy went away. There was fear that if we didn’t find a house in time, we would have to live with someone else or buy another apartment until we found a home. I became worried that we wouldn’t find a home in time. In the book “The Yellow Birds”, Bartle was going through a hard transition into the war. When he was in the war he said, “I understood. Being from a place where a few facts are enough to define you, where a few habits can fill a life, causes a unique kind of shame. We'd had small lives, populated by a longing from something more substantial than dirt roads and small dreams. So we'd come here, where life needed no elaboration and others would tell us who to be.” He expresses his desire to travel and experience new places just like I was excited to be in a new home. Bartle also expresses his nervousness and uncertainty about the war. He says, “We were not destined to survive. The fact is, we were not destined at all. The war would take what it could get.” Bartle’s fear of what will happen in the future is similar to how I felt. He was unsure of what his fate would be during the war and I was unsure of what my fate would be after the 60 days.

The sky became incredibly dark but still kept enough light to let you know it was only the afternoon. The howling winds bent the trees as it whipped around my neighborhood. The rain sounded like a drum as it pounded on my house loudly, scaring my dog. In an instant, I thought the lights would stay on but in another instant, they were gone. I felt myself getting scared but as I looked around and saw my family was safe, the worry went away. My dad kept looking out the screen door to see the storm and my sister, mom, and I turned on our phone flashlights. Our living room was immediately lit up with tiny lights sitting on the table and everyone’s faces were revealed. We felt a bit safer. Before the power went out, we heard on the news that the storm wouldn’t last long. As we all tried to wait out the storm, my sister and I came up with an idea to play some games. We sang, made shadow puppets, and all other crazy things. We had a lot of fun and grew closer as we played during the storm. The storm ended quickly and we all looked out the door to see the sunny sky. We still did not have power so we went to our family’s house and hung out with them until it was night time. Overall, we surprisingly had a really fun time. Even though we did not have any power and it was a super hot day, we found some fun in all of it. This situation reminds me of Bartle when he went to jail. Many people would think that jail isn’t a place where you could be happy but in the story, Bartle showed that you could be. In the book he says, “My life had become as ordinary as I could have hoped for. I was happy”. I can compare Bartle’s experiences to mine because we both created fun or pleasant situations out of situations that aren’t usually considered fun.

A reason I believe that the situation was fun for me and Bartle is because it was a time to get away from what goes on on a daily basis and reflect. When the power went out, my family and I had time to put down our phones and were kind of forced to bond on a closer level than we usually do. In the end, this made us happy. For Bartle, being in jail gave him time to clear his head and get away from the problems he was having at home and reflect on what happened during the war. This helped him be happy while he was in jail and also become a happier person in the end. Even though Bartle’s war situation and my situation aren’t similar when you first look at it, there are still connections that can be found throughout the book.,.

The Train Ride

I gripped the handle bar that lay adjacent to the train’s entrance. It was filled, beyond capacity, to my genuine surprise. However, as I look back on that moment, I had forgotten that I was taking the morning train with hundreds of working class citizens, who probably thought of me as one of their own. My body turned as I glanced around for any vacant seats. Seconds passed before I surrendered to standing. The hand, which I placed on the bar upon my entrance, was my saving grace because the train quickly jolted into motion.

I peered out of a window to my right. The platform, where I had sat, and the parking lot, where I had been dropped off at, quickly went out of my line of sight. This was not my first time riding a train, but it was my first time riding a train to work.

As the train continued forward, a conductor appeared from the front cart. Immediately, she began checking and validating passengers tickets. She was was a couple of rows away from where I was standing, but I started the process of searching for my trans pass. A minute or two passed before I was up for inspection.

“Ticket or Pass?”

“Yeah” was my response as I brought my pass into view. She nodded in confirmation as she moved onto the next person. Instinctively, I looked at my phone to see if the train would arrive on time. This was a routine that I would soon get into the habit of doing.  

After my time check, I concluded that the train was on schedule. My thoughts escaped me, I found myself thinking about what my friends were doing at that very moment, as my train inched closer and closer Suburban station. I attempted to conceal my anxiety but my thoughts continually drifted to the “what if” questions and possible outcomes at my internship.

“We have arrived at Suburban Station. Please watch your step as you exit the cart” echoed out of the loudspeaker. In one fluid motion I secured my belongings and departed.

First Day

It took me all of ten minutes to find my way to 19th & market, not including a minor turn around as I was walking. Four days prior to the 6th of July, my sister and I were down center city and she showed me how to get to and back from my current destination, which ironically, was right down the street from my school. I chuckled to myself as I approached the my destination, while very thankful for my good memory.

In the ten steps that I had before I reached the revolving doors, I felt as Tim O'Brien must have felt as he gazed blankly out onto the river that separated two distinct paths, one of which, he would have to choose. Should I step into this building, to the unknown experiences that await me? Should I face challenges that might be too much for me to handle, or should I return home? My hand pressed against metal framing of the door as an opening to the main lobby grew wider.

I took a brief moment to take in my surroundings. The room was made almost entirely of a tan granite, which encompassed the back walls, ceiling and floor. There were large windows that neighbored each entrance, as well as a waiting area filled with couches and tables. As my eyes floated from object to object I soon located people that seemed to be around my age group. As I began my journey towards them, I made a detour to one of the internship leaders.

“Are you here for the internship?” he asked immediately.

“Yes. I’m Kevin Bowser” I said as we shook.

“I’m Stephen. The elevators are not working today as a result of a water pipe break in the building. So we are sending all of the intern's home today for the day and are going to send an email out about when to return for orientation.

“Okay, so I should look out for an email tomorrow?

“Yes tomorrow.”

“Alright, thank you” I stated as I traveled to a couch which was adjacent to the door I came though. I couldn’t help the slight feeling of relief that came with the postponed orientation. I would have another day or so before I would have to tackle this new challenge. Some force of nature had been on my side that July morning. And with my subsided anxiety, I ventured over to the revolving doors once again.

My Second First Day

The IBC building has two elevator passages. One passage ascends from the lobby and goes through all floors up to the 23rd. In order to reach floors above the 23rd, you must switch elevators. Unfortunately, I did not receive this information until my third day at work, so it took me a bit longer to find my way up to the orientation room.

Once I made it to the 44th floor, the facilitators introduced themselves as well as IBC to all of the interns. This formal introduction transitioned to various ice breaker activities, which assisted everyone in getting to know each other. Some of the games were based on solving problems or creating structures using basic household materials, and prizes were awarded to the teams that finished first.

The third and final portion of the afternoon consisted of each intern meeting with their supervisors. I did not get a chance to meet with my supervisor, who was in a meeting at the time. So I met with a woman named Grace Brennan, who I would come to work closely with over the next six weeks.

“Hi, I’m Kevin Bowser” I said as I shook her hand.

“Hello Kevin, my name is Grace. I don’t know if anyone told you but Dee has a meeting right now.”

Grace said this as she moved towards the hallway where the elevators were located. On our way down to the Shared Services Department, on the 15th floor, we talked about my academics as well as some the information she had read on my resume.

“So me and you are going to working on updating an Excel spreadsheet called the SARA log. The log is basically a record book that keeps track of everyone that has access the company’s enrollment system. We get requests every day, so right now they are just piling up.”

I listened intently, not letting a single piece of information slip past my ears. I wanted to make a good first impression on my new co-workers. I wanted to be take charge and not make any errors. Yet, once we reached the 15th floor, Grace introduced me to the rest of Dee’s team. They welcomed me to the department with open arms and made me feel like I was apart of the family. I was taught step by step about how to work on excel and how it’s overall significance to the company. Instantly, I felt a weight fall off of my shoulders. This daunting reality that I wanted to avoid at all costs, was not the frightening nightmare that I had imagined.

This experience gave me my first taste of the professional world. It served as a lens to some of the challenges and new territories that I would be introduced to as an adult. Apart, from outlook on the internship prior to actually starting, this was a spontaneous opportunity for me, and I look forward to another great internship at Independence Blue Cross this upcoming summer.

My little sister was born on May 26th, 2012 in Hong Kong. It was a moment in my life where everything changed because I was no longer an only child. This was very hard for me to grasp because I would no longer be the center of attention and I was very used to that. When I heard that my dad and my stepmom were expecting a baby, the thought of being forgotten was the only thing on my mind until she was born. As terrible as it sounds, I was not happy at all that my dad was having another child. On top of everything I was not on good terms with my stepmom, because it always felt like she was keeping me away from my dad. But when my sister was born everything changed, like a lot.

The doctors told my dad and stepmom that my little sister would be born in August, so when she came in May it was a huge surprise. This is extremely early for a pregnancy, and this meant that she was very small and underdeveloped. I was shown photos of her but I personally didn’t think it was all that serious from everything my dad told me. I presume he didn’t want me to worry or feel bad so he sugarcoated how serious the whole situation actually was.  But every summer I’d go stay with my dad in Hong Kong which meant I would be seeing my little sister very soon, and although she was in the hospital I still wasn’t happy at all to meet her.

It was both a happy yet a heartbreaking moment to see my little sister for the first time. She had such beautiful blue eyes, and I could see the resemblance of my dad in her despite her size. Although I was very happy that I was meeting my sister, I could see how troubled my dad and stepmom were. There wasn’t much of a smile on their face as they knew that at any moment things could go south and my little sister could pass away. This hit me hard too because it wasn’t the first time this has happened to my family. A couple years ago before my sister was born my stepmom had a miscarriage, so I could only imagine what her and my dad were experiencing physiologically. I relate their feelings as to how Tim O’Brien described how many of his friends blamed themselves for the death of their friends because in my eyes, throughout those long 6 months, my dad and my stepmom placed the blame on themselves for every little thing that happened to my little sister. But as things got more serious I felt more separated from sister and distant from my dad. I knew it wasn’t my fault but I couldn’t help taking the blame, as if I did something bad. Ever since I saw my sister for the very first time, I convinced that I would be the  best older brother and that having a sister was the best thing that had ever happened to me(very different to what I thought about a month ago).

Too many of you reading who are reading this story, you may think it’s pretty sad, so I’m not going to dive too deeply into everything that happened during my little sisters battle, as it is very personal to me, but also may be a little intense.)

3 weeks after I arrived in Hong Kong, doctors found a porencephalic cyst in my little sister brain. A rare disorder in the central nervous system of the brain, which can delay development and other such things, Doctors told my dad that she would never be normal, wouldn’t be able to run, or walk like other kids. Of course I didn’t find out about this until a few weeks later, but I can only imagine how hard that must’ve hit my dad and stepmom. But it sure did hit me hard, everything I envisioned in doing with my sister vanished into thin air. I wouldn’t be able to play with her, laugh with her, and see her grow without pain or complete healthiness. As time went by doctors recommended things to help my sister, but consulting doctors from the U.S disagreed with many of the things they said, and they decided to give minimal treatment to my sister. Although things seemed to be improving, my dad and stepmom remained in the hospital all day and all night holding on, waiting for miracle so that they could bring her home healthy. It hurt me to see my dad in the emotional state that the was in. During those 6 months I saw my dad cry for the very first time, and that was a big moment because my dad never ever showed his emotions like he did.

Days became weeks, weeks became months. As my sister got sicker and sicker, I grew further away from her, as doctors wouldn’t let me see due to her state. I felt more distant than usual from my dad as he wouldn’t speak to me like he used due to what was going on. Sometimes when my dad and my stepmom would stay in the hospital stay and not come home for days, I would think about if something had happened to my sister. I felt like I was being held back from knowing what was going on, and my mind was telling me it was because I was no longer important anymore.

At this point, you might be thinking that she passed away. In fact, this story has a completely normal, happy ending. After being told that my sister wouldn’t be normal, and wouldn’t be able to do everyday things, it ends up that the doctors were wrong. My sister is now 110% normal. She can walk, talk, run, and even do pull ups if you believe it or not, which I think is impressive for a kid who’s only 3 years old. But after being in the hospital for half a year, my stepmom was very overprotective over her, because she was worried that something else might happen. Although she was out the hospital, I wasn’t able to spend time with her like I do now, and I don’t blame my stepmom at all, because I think any parent would do what she did after what happened.

There was a big effect on my dad and stepmom lives, and mine even after my little sister was released from hospital care. My dad decided it would be a good idea to take my sister to CHOP in Philadelphia so doctors could give her a better diagnosis, because even though she wasn’t being held in the hospital the cyst she had was still present. Everything that we did with my sister was done with a lot of precaution. For the first two years of my sister life, any time she would get sick my stepmom would panic and take her to the hospital. It was hard to see my stepmom stressing out about something that happened almost two years ago.

I went from being pessimistic about having a sister to striving to be the best brother out there. I went from having a horrible relationship with my step mom to really bonding and getting closer to her. There was a good,bad, and ugly things that came from what happened to my sister, but I learned a lot about myself through this time period. That I can be quick to judge and come to final verdicts without much proof and evidence, but after all of this I learned to not to judge so quickly. Seeing the smiles on my dad and stepmom's face when my little sister took her first steps was a moment I would never forget. And now that I’ve watched my sister grow so much it’s made me realize how much I actually do love her and how grateful I am that she made it. She’s turning 4 years old in May and it’s going to be happy moment for all of us, and watching her become an adult will be an even happier moment for me. All I can say now is that I am proud to be her brother and I always will be.

We sat on the ground together, huddled in front of the large wooden doll house on a Sunday morning, as she carefully placed her Littlest Pet Shop animals together on the balcony. I realized Wylie’s curly hair was getting longer than mine, and how I had seen it grow since it was only a short, strawberry blonde mop sitting atop her head. Wylie’s parents, Becca and Bill, were out on their usual sunday morning run. It had been almost two years since I began babysitting for Becca and Bill, and Wylie was now a bright four year old, eager to go to kindergarten. Most weekends I’d babysit for them on Sunday mornings, and occasionally Friday or Saturday nights. On our Sunday playdates, Wylie and I would blow up the moon bounce in the backyard that Bill’s brother had mistakenly bought full size. My Sunday visits were normally relaxed, short, and sweet, but it hadn’t always been that way.

The job began after my sister, who had babysat for them only two times, was forced to bail out one Saturday night. After my mom recommended me for the job, I met Becca for the first time. Becca is a tall, athletic woman, whose darker, sandy blonde hair was unlike her daughter’s. That first night, their home was being renovated, something for which she apologized profusely. Both she and Bill seemed eager to leave the house and go out, as she rambled off a list of reminders including “if she doesn’t eat the vegetables it’s no big deal” and “don’t let her bring any of the hard toys to bed”. She finished off her list with a warning: “She has been fussy all day, and so she’ll probably whine about us leaving. If she cries, just let her cry it out.” As the couple moved swiftly out of the back door, the tears came rolling.

It was one of my first real babysitting experiences; I had never dealt with a 2 year old before, let alone a crying one. She began to panic, and her cries turned into screams as her parents drove out of the garage and down the long driveway. Her small, red hands were pressed against the glass of the back door, and she peered out, periodically stomping her feet in anger and confusion. I was frozen. I wanted so badly to say the right thing, stop her crying and have her look at me and smile. Becca had told me to let her be, to not give her the satisfaction, but I caved. I knelt down next to her and pulled her hair out of her face. I frantically shhh-ed her and told her that things would be okay. Like I had feared, she didn’t stop there. She yelled for her mother in a language I can only describe as somewhere between Smeagol and the Cookie Monster. I knew I had to do something, but it was my first time babysitting for this little girl and I didn’t want her to see me as the person that comes to replace her parents and yells at her. I grabbed her a paper towel to dry her tears and told her to look at me. She looked up and focused on me for the first time.

“Wylie, it’s gonna be ok. Your parents are going to be home soon,”

She stared up at me with red puffy cheeks and snot dripping from her nose. She asked me, timidly,

“Wiw dey be home befow I go to bed?”

I looked at her, half shocked she said something to me, half relieved that she wasn’t crying. Becca and Bill had shown me where her diapers were and how to put them on, extensively detailed their tuck in routine, and of course they had told me which setting was correct on her nightlight/ white noise maker. I knew that her parents would not be home before I put her to bed, and yet,

“Yes, they will be home very soon.”

With that, we went on with our night. Wylie calmed down and ate her dinner, got in her PJ’s, brushed her teeth, and I read her favorite books to her. By the end of the night, she went to bed peacefully. I thought about what I had said after I had finally put her to bed that night. Why did I lie to this little girl? What sort of person does that? It startled me how quickly I had said it. I was so ready to please her when I wasn’t even supposed to indulge her in the first place. But she didn’t remember my promise, or ask about her parents again that night. I got away with it, and it felt good.

My visits with Wylie carried on that way. I couldn’t count the many times Wylie has been in a bad mood and I’ve told her what she wants to hear, or the times I’ve said words she’d never heard, and most times I give halfhearted explanations that she misinterprets. These aren’t lies, I reassure myself, they are mistakes that will be fixed with experience. Because roasted and cooked are almost the same word, and she probably won't bring up the time she complained about her parents being gone on a cloudy Sunday morning. But my lies run deeper than she knows. Mine are lies born out of awkward encounters with middle school boys, Christmas gifts that I “didn’t mean to open”, and all of the pretzels I got for free on pretzel day. If you ask my old friends or family who knew me when I was in elementary school what I was like, most would say I lied. A lot. My family makes fun of me now for the things I would say to get myself out of obligations or to get what I wanted. In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”, he discusses what it means to tell a true story in war. He notes that often times, the real story of an event is not only less interesting than the one you tell, but sometimes, it is less true. At the peak of my dependance, I would tell elaborate lies purely for the attention I received from the story- something that I didn’t admit the reason to until it was too late.

In first grade, I was at a tiny (20 kid per grade) school in Germantown called Project Learn. The school publicized itself as a free thinking, art-centered elementary school. I was a student there since Kindergarten, and the class size was so small that the teachers could truly get to know and love their students. Similarly, the small grade meant that I had the same kids in my class in every year, and we all grew very close. Jane, my first grade teacher, was teaching us about fables one particular spring. We heard, and acted out the tales of Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed as a class. I loved hearing the stories, and my friends and I would always pick the roles that went together in each reenactment. On one special show and tell, Jane asked us to tell the tale of our weekend, like one of the fables we read. Conveniently, I had just gone to a Phillies game over the weekend, and I was eager to tell everyone my tale. Looking back, I have no doubt that many of the children in this circle made up weekend plans or exciting stories, but I was nearly last student to tell mine, and after hearing the others I knew just attending a baseball game was not good enough. I told my class about the miraculous hit that went straight over my head and into the mitt of the man reaching out right behind us. The man saw me, just a row in front of him, staring at the ball in his glove, and he gave it to me. I was quickly persecuted by my classmates, who chided, “That didn’t happen!”, “So where’s the ball?”, “I saw the game and I didn’t see you catch anything”. These complaints were followed by a call from Jane to my parents, wondering about my amazing experience. My dad told her the real story, and she talked to him about me on a long phone conversation. I was ashamed of what I had done, and angry at my classmates for insulting me. When my dad finally asked me why I did it, I couldn’t come up with an answer.

I wish that I could say that that was my last lie, but there were many more, and there probably will be more along the way. The lies I told when I was younger may be the ones that I regret the most, but I believe that stopping now is pointless. The lies and stories I’ve made up have helped shape who I am today, and I can’t help but be at least a little thankful for everything they have done for me. And so when I sit with Wylie at her doll house on a Sunday morning, and her toy dog falls from the balcony and its head falls off, and she is unable to get its head back on, and I see her eyes start to swell, and she looks in search of her mother and asks me,

“When will mommy be home?”

I know what I’ll say.

     I knew he wanted to join, but didn't actually think he would go through with the decision. In August of 2011, my brother left home for the Navy. I felt all these emotions, I didn't know how to react. I was happy, proud, sad, worried, but it didn't matter because I had my friends to count on.  When he broke the news about enlisting, I was at home hanging out with my family. I think we were watching the Big Bang Theory and my mom said that we need to have a family meeting. So I immediately

thought,  "who did it, who is in trouble and it must be that bad because we all have to hear about it." My brothers and I  kind of looked at each other with a confused expression on our faces. So my mom broke the silence and said " So Joshua, do you have something to tell your siblings?"

I was so confused. I wasn't expecting him to say yes.

" Yes I do, and After graduation I plan on joining the military."  he said.

   I was speechless, proud, but also scared.

I spoke up and asked, " What branch do you want to join?"

" The Navy," Josh said.

    I thought to myself " I was so close from having someone else in my family join the Military."

After Josh told us, I looked at him differently. Not in a judging way, but as if he was my hero. I can proudly say that I am a sister of a naval corpsman. A few weeks went by and I was given permission to tell my friends about him joining the navy. When I told them they had a dull expression. It was as almost as if they didn't care, but in all honesty, they did care, they were with me through all of it.

    The day of his departure was approaching quickly, we only had a month left with him so we made it count. Every year during summer vacation we would go on a family trip to the beach. We would rent a house with a pool because my brothers didn't really like the sand and salt water. I, on the other hand, could stay there for hours and not get tired of it. The house was big enough to fit 12 people. Staying in the house was my mom, stepdad, the 3 boys ( Matt, Nick, and Josh), me, my grandmother, uncle, and aunt, plus their two girls (Ronnie and Francie). We'd stay there for a week and have so many fun things planned. One day we went to see “Lucy the Giant Elephant”. Another day we stayed back at the house and played a whole bunch of games and we even watched a few movies.

    Those were some of the bittersweet moments. Sometimes when I really miss josh I will look on facebook and check out all the photos we have together or even just on my phone.  

I was sitting on Maggie's bed feeling a little bit down and upset. she noticed and asked me " what's wrong?"

" Just thinking on how it will be different not seeing Josh every day and how much I will miss him."

She said to me " Amanda, you shouldn't have to worry about that, everything will be okay. It's not like he is going to be gone forever he will come back. plus you'll be able to see him when you can."

I knew she was right so I just nodded my head and we continued hanging out. But of course, I couldn't drop it that quickly.

" But he is going to miss my 13th birthday, it's a big deal this year!!"

" You're right it is your 13th birthday but that doesn't mean he won't try to be there. If he can't make it he can't make it. But if he can then awesome!" she told me.

    July went by too fast. We now only had 24 days left til Josh left. It was down to making sure he had everything he needed from the right shirts to the right socks. We planned to have a farewell party the day before he left. The last 3 weeks had were spent getting the for the party. We went shopping at least 5 times during those 3 weeks.  It was the day before the party that I started to think about what was really happening. I told myself " Don't think too much you have 2 days left with him, push it to the back of my head." I did just that and had fun.

    Party time! We spent the whole morning cleaning and decorating the whole house. Even the backyard was set up too. We knew it was going to be a hot day so we had at least 10 tents up to provide shade. During the day we had family over and when it was around 5:30 some friends came over to party. We had a fun time hanging out with everyone. Everyone who was still at my house left around 2:00 am.

    Today is the day. The day I say goodbye to my brother for a little while.  I didn't want him to leave and I couldn't show that I was upset.  It was around 10:00 am when I was woken up to the smell of delicious food that my amazing mother cooked for us. Josh was being picked up by his recruiter at 1:00 pm. That gave us 4 hours to be together. My grandmother, Marie (Josh's Girlfriend) and her parents, my aunt, cousin, my mom, stepdad, matt, nick, and josh were all there. We Spent most of the time trying not to talk about the fact that he was leaving. Time went by fast and before we knew it we were taking photographs at 12:55 pm. My final 5minutes with my brother. I went inside because I had to go use the bathroom, and by the time, we finished taking photos it was 1:00 pm. As I was walking up the path to my house I could see someone standing there.

" Hi, Does Joshua Marshall live here?" The man said.

" Yes, we are in the back yard let me take you back," I answered.

" Hey guys, I think it's time to say goodbye," I told everyone.

   Everyone looked at me and slowly got up and we all walked back up to the front yard. My mom started to tear up and I watched as everyone else started to tear up too. I never thought I'd see my brothers start to cry when they hugged Josh goodbye. As I watched him get into the car, I began to cry my eyes out.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QxSb2k-6Qs&feature=youtu.be

Learning How to Grieve

I sat in the office of my grandmother’s house. Just seconds ago, I had been on the phone, but I now spun my chair around to survey all of the memorabilia that surrounded the room. A Mike Trout baseball poster hung against the closet door. A photo of the Atlantic City Surf, the city’s former independent baseball team, was pasted to the wall on the other side of the room. Miniature, plastic army men sat in the case parallel to me, defended by two single pieces of tape which held the door closed.

It brought a smile to my face. The first in a while. All of these goofy things belonged to my grandfather, who had died just a couple of hours ago.

***

I was walking down the street, back to my friend Jared’s house when I got the phone call. It wasn’t late, but it wasn’t early either. It was a dark night in mid October, 2014. The call was from my mom.

I assumed that it was a call to ask how I was doing. It was my first night I had ever spent at Jared’s house and she was probably worrying, so I answered. But instead of hearing my mom, I heard my dad. He was crying. As expected, I was shocked. I’d never heard or seen my father cry.

“Ben,” he said bluntly. “Grandpa died.”

The rest of that conversation and what happened directly after is a blur. I know I didn’t cry. Instead, I remember standing on some person’s lawn in Northeast Philly in the dark, completely shellshocked.

It turns out that my grandfather, grandmother, cousin, and uncle were headed to dinner around 7 or 8. They were going to celebrate my cousin Rebecca’s acceptance into medical school at Ventura’s Restaurant in Northfield, New Jersey, just four blocks away from my grandparent’s house.

When they entered the lobby of Ventura’s, my grandfather noticed he forgot something in the car. He told my grandmother that he was going to the car to get it. My grandmother asked to walk with him to the car, as it was across a busy street and my grandfather wasn’t the most steady walker. However, he insisted that my grandmother not come with him. He was fine going by himself.

But a couple minutes later a lady ran into the restaurant and nervously exclaimed that a man had just been hit outside. My grandmother knew right there that it was my grandfather who had been hit.

***

I arrived at my grandmother’s house that night after spending most of the hour ride to South Jersey listening to music, lost in J Cole’s words. Although I may have looked mad or sad, sitting silenced in the car, I was thinking.

We arrived at my grandmother’s house around 10 or 11. My uncle was there, as was my grandmother, and cousin. My family was smaller on my dad’s side. I had two cousins, and an uncle and an aunt, as opposed to almost 25 relatives on my mom’s side.

Walking into the house, there was obviously a certain sadness. On the other hand, there was also some awkwardness in the air. What were we supposed to do? There wasn’t really much to say, it was still so new and uncomfortable. I was just happy to be surrounded by my family and have the ability to help my grandmother.

It wasn’t much longer until my aunt came up to me.

“Hey Ben, could you do a favor for me?”

I nodded.

“You know how Max is in California? Well, I was hoping you could speak to him. You know hard it probably is on him to be thousands miles away with no one to really comfort him. Could you talk to him, just see how he’s feeling and stuff?”

Max was my other cousin and at the time he was in college in California. I didn’t really know what to say to my aunt because I wasn’t keen on the idea talking to Max. What would I say? I envisioned an incomplete conversation without much to say.

Yeah, I’m fine. How about you?…I know, it’s really sad what happened...I was at my friend’s house when I heard, how about you?...Yeah still feeling fine…Okay, see ya.

But I agreed and walked up the stairs to my grandfather's former office for privacy.

I tried to sound a little more cheerful than I was when I talked to Max. I didn’t want him to worry about me. I tried to keep a positive attitude, so I asked him how he was feeling and we talked about what happened to grandpa.

After we both said that we were doing fine, there wasn’t much else to say. Again, the awkwardness that I had experienced in the living room 20 minutes ago was happening over the phone. Grandpa had died. Yes it was sad, but it was still all so new. It hadn’t hit me yet and I didn't know what to ay about it.

“So, uh,” I said, looking for something to talk about, “who do you think is going to win the NBA championship?”

We continued with a couple more awkward exchanges about sports and ended the conversation.

I sat in the room a little bit longer, cherishing the peace. I rolled the chair around and surveyed all of the collectibles that my grandfather had. I smiled as I remembered his goofiness and his love for buying things for himself and friends. The room embraced all that my grandfather stood for as a person. His desk represented his love to work. His baseball cards floating around represented his love for baseball. His poster of the Atlantic City Surf, a small, independent, and struggled baseball team formerly from Atlantic City, showed his loyalty to the places, things, and people he loved, regardless of what others thought.

As I smiled, I even shed a tear. I rarely cried, but I noticed that this room was my grandfather. Looking back, this was probably where his death finally set into reality for me.

For the next few days I was surrounded by family and friends at all times. I never had the space to be upset because I was enclosed by people that were visibly sad. I didn’t want to show them that I was hurt. I didn’t want them to worry about me. Instead, I wanted to be there for them because I was confident I could figure it out myself.

After three days of missing school because of the funeral and mourning, I decided that it was time to go back to school and somewhat return back to life. My cousin, Rebecca, worked in the city, so she volunteered to drive me down to school from South Jersey, where I had stayed the last couple days. The feeling I experienced when returning back to my regular lifestyle was similar to Private Bartle’s in The Yellow Birds. When he comes back to Richmond, Virginia, he is oddly out of his comfort zone. After spending almost a year in Iraq, he felt that not a single person around him could understand what he went through in Richmond and it ate him alive.

Like Bartle, when I walked into school that morning, I suddenly felt alone. No longer did I have friends and family surrounding me. No longer were they there to comfort me and understood what I was going through. No longer were they there to distract me from my own sadness. I had to return back to regular life.

I walked into Mr. Todd’s class and people asked me where I was.

“Uh...Personal stuff,” I told them. It was around 8:05 and there was still about 10 minutes before class began.

I sat down in my seat and pulled out my computer. I felt out of place. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be with my family that knew what happened and could help me. Instead, I was sitting in school by myself. It wasn’t long before class began and Mr. Todd put on an educational movie. Great. Now, I was alone in the dark, only accompanied by a boring movie. 

Instead of being distracted, my thoughts kept returning to my grandfather. It was the first time since the funeral that I had visibly felt sad. At that moment, I could not control my emotions. As I sat there watching the movie, I honestly felt alone. No one could help me. It was one of the tougher classes I had ever sat through.

The rest of the day is still a blur to me. I vaguely remember taking a test the next period, but then I also remember working on a project. Everything about that day just clumps together in my mind.

However, I learned a lot from this experience. I learned that while your life may be in uprooted and disrupted, it still goes on around you. Most of the time, we want to conceal our feelings and hide them from others for many different reasons. Not that it’s a bad thing; it’s just people’s preference of how much information they want to tell others. You never know what one may be going through, so it’s always important to make sure you are putting your nicest persona forward. 

I also learned to understand that when you move out of your comfort zone after a traumatic experience, you just need to prepare yourself to be okay with being upset. Pain is inevitable when you lose someone you love. Is it bad? No. Is it good? Probably not. But it happens and the best you can do is prepare yourself for it.

My family is proof that it takes a village to raise a child- and eventually three at that. For me, having two parents, two step parents, and one DNA giver is just as complicated as it sounds.

I can’t remember a time that I didn’t know I was conceived by a donor. My parents always made it a point to have my older sister and I know about it.

My mom would tell us: “Your father is your father just as much as I am your mother. You’re just not related to him in the same way you are to me.” Sadie and I would nod. We didn’t totally understand it, but we didn’t care too much for it anyways because we didn’t realize that it was different. At a young age it was easiest to assume everyone else was just like us.

Sadie and I were conceived by the sperm of the same male donor and my mother’s eggs, while my younger sister (who came further down the road) is the child of my mom and my step dad. From the information gathered from my parents (I’ve only seen the actual report a few times), the donor report must have read something like this:

Donor #1738

Physical Description:

Brown Hair

Green Eyes

Height:

6’1

Weight:

176 lbs.

Ancestry:

German/Scottish

History of Disease:

No Cancer in bloodline

No Sickle Cell in bloodline

No Cystic Fibrosis in bloodline

Blood Type:

O+

Occupation:

Computer Engineer

Interests/Hobbies:

Wrestling

Sports

Computers

“There was no donor available with red hair like mine, so we chose the closest thing to it. But he’s German like me, and he has my eye color too,” my father told Sadie and me.

In elementary school, still thinking everyone was made by a donor, I wrote a short story about my family. In the story, I mentioned that I was not biologically related to my dad, that I had an “imaginary dad” somewhere. During parent teacher conferences, my teacher brought it up to my parents.

“One more thing. In her short story about her family, she mentioned that she was not related to her father. You should probably clear that up with her.”

When my mom tells the story of this day, she says that she could tell my teacher was being obnoxiously nosy and only wanted to bring it up to get the inside scoop. My parents never considered the donor a private matter. My dad was still my dad just as much as he would have been if we were related, so it really didn’t matter. Though, my parents responded with a simple “okay” as to not give her what she was looking for.

I remember distinctly that doing punnett squares for my family bloodline in science class was confusing. How could I go home and collect data from each side of my parents’ family to figure out the likelihood of me having certain traits, when I only had a half of the data? I had no idea whether my sperm donor had attached ear lobes or a hitchhiker's thumb! I would make up the data for my dad’s side because it was hard for me to explain to my teachers and they probably would have made me do that anyways.

Once I realized that I was different, I started to feel extremely foreign to the idea of how I was brought to this Earth. As many times as my parents told me the story, I could never find the words to tell someone else about it. It felt unexplainable to myself, let alone to other people. I didn’t feel any sadness or anger about it, I just felt confused and abnormal. I felt weird knowing that my sister and I were alone with this “thing” that we couldn’t describe to people. It was crazy that something could be such a big part of who I was, but also so foreign to me at the same time, like Norman Bowker in The Things they Carried who couldn’t explain the bloodshed he witnessed and couldn’t relate to his hometown anymore- a thing thing that was such a big part of who he was.

In middle school, I started being completely open about it. I figured that having to explain it again and again would help me explain it to myself.

The reactions varied, but the most common (and my favorite one) is:

“Oh my god. You could totally have long lost brothers and sisters somewhere!”

And it’s true. I could have half siblings that I am not aware of. And that was so crazy to me. Who knows how many couples picked his sperm?

And that donor had a life! Maybe he had a wife and even had kids with her. Maybe he’s famous or maybe he has the world record for holding his breath for 20 minutes.

And as I thought about all of this, I realized that I didn’t even care about any of it because I had the best dad and most amazing family without even knowing the donor’s name. This flipped a switch in my head and it took away all the confusion that I was feeling. I thought, What difference do any of these possibilities make? I was not confused anymore because I was content. And I had always been content. I just needed to explore what the donor meant for me in order to come to this conclusion.

My mom recently came up with the clever nickname “Bob the donor” for my mystery DNA sharer. Whenever my sister and I have a trait that does not come from my mother’s bloodline, we blame it on him.

“Bob the donor must have some pretty curly hair because that does not come from my side,” my mother says.

I recently have had a growing interest in finding my half brothers and sisters. I contacted the sperm bank to find out that my sister and I have at least 3 half siblings! Only once, just the other day, did I try and enter my donor number into a database. I have my contact information for my donor sharers to find me as well. Nothing has come up yet, but I will not stop trying.

I wouldn’t have my family any other way. We are different, and that’s just one thing that I love about us. If it weren’t for the donor, I would not be here, and for that I am thankful that I share his genetic make-up. Figuring out what the donor meant to me was a long, but inevitable journey. I now know that it really means very little for the way I live my life. But, whenever someone says I look like my dad, I can’t help but laugh a little bit.

https://www.wevideo.com/hub#view/559031134

(The Events that are about to take place have happened and they are all facts. The only thing is the dates may not be correct, but around the same time period.)

[ The inspiration for this story, is from reading a book called “The Things They Carried.” In this book there is a chapter that explains how the main character (Author: Tim O’brien) feels about death. And, he explains that Death makes him think more about the world, and when he tells his story in the chapter’s Good Form and In the field. After, having a near death experience back to back, that I can’t never forget, makes me cherish life more. Not, only did I almost drown but I live to tell this story another day. ]

May 26th 2008

I was eight years old at the time.  About 1 or 2 weeks my great grandmother had passed away and everyone was still mourning her passing. This was a hard time for everyone and no one was the same for awhile. My family was usually filled with laughter, there weren’t many arguments lately. And the little kids (my siblings and I) hardly got yelled at for breaking something, or drawing on the wall. Which was pretty occasional.

May 27th 2009

During a day at school, my siblings and I returned home to find a few relatives in our home. They were closely related to my great grandmother. They greeted us and we greeted them. They said the usual when we saw them, such as “You’ve gotten so big since the last time I saw you, or “How old are you now”, even “I remember when I was changing your diapers.” And I would sit there and listen like I cared, which I really didn’t. But, the thing that was weird is that my mother allowed strangers to me at the time change my diaper, like what if they touched me in inappropriate ways. . . But, that’s besides the point. My relatives (Cousins) decided to invite my siblings and I to a upcoming family reunion (I think they felt that we were in ‘pain’ at the time) in July. In the beginning of the month, they gave us a date, a time, and the place.

May 29th 2009

    It’s been two days since we got the news of the upcoming Family Reunion and my Mom and my Grand Ma were still speculating whether they should let us go or not because they have really never let all of the kids go away at once, and they were a little afraid because of that. They were okay with us going away to another relative’s house for the weekend, but we were going out of state and we were going to be surrounded by strangers basically. After, my Mom and my Grandma talked about it for awhile they decided on the decision to let us go to the Family Reunion. They said it would be a good experience for us. They said we need to meet our family and need to go out and have a good time, instead of being in the house during the summer.

June 13th 2009

This was the last day of school and I decided to tell all my friends about my upcoming events for the summer. I do not know if they were as excited for me going away for the summer as I was, but they all said they hope that I would have a good time. I was so excited for the reunion that I decided to go straight home after school, although I knew that the reunion was probably a month away.

June 20th 2009

It’s been a week since school ended and I could honestly say that I was anticipating all the things that I would be doing at the reunion more and more as the days went by. The days went by even slower because, for one I wasn’t in school and I was in the house because of the heat. I was just thinking about going swimming, meeting new people, and the big banquet at the end of the reunion. I was really looking forward towards the swimming although I didn’t know how to swim.

June 25th 2009

It was time for us to start going shopping for clothes, shoes, and accessories to take with us on the trip. One thing I remember is when we bought wash clothes and tooth paste my mother just grabbed a hand full, without looking at the colors. And, when we got back to the house, my mother started passing out the wash clothes. When it was my turn to get a wash cloth I had to get the last one which was a dark pink, which everyone made fun of me for. But, oh well we were  couple days closer to the big day.

July 11th 2009

It’s two days before we head down to North Carolina for the family reunion. We were packing bags, and are really excited for the next week. We were going to have a great time. But, I had butterflies in my stomach. I think I was starting to get nervous about leaving for awhile, and also going to an unfamiliar place.

July 12th 2009

Today is the day, My siblings and  go to our relatives house, to get ready to head down to North Carolina early in the morning. My cousin came and got us, and took us to the chinese store. He ordered us a couple of egg rolls each. I remember being angry because my sisters ate most of them and I only ate one. My cousin drove us to his Mom´s house because that’s where we would be staying for the night. We called his mom Flo. That’s what we grew up calling her every time we seen her. She showed us where we would be sleeping that night. After, she showed us we all took showers and went to sleep. Because, we had to get up early.

July 13th 2009

6:00 in the morning and I was really tired. Flo woke me and my siblings up, and I remember being rushed to the bathroom, then being rushed down the stairs. Flo made made my siblings and me carry out coolers, suitcases, and blankets to a Grey Hound bus that was outside waiting for us. When, we got outside I remember looking around seeing a bunch of cars and a lot of people. All family I guess. We were the last to board the bus, and now I guess our journey has finally begun.

July 13th - 15th 2009

After, we boarded the bus, I remember falling asleep right away. Now, that I think about, I really don't remember talking to my siblings as much on the bus, because I decided to sit next to a relative named Sunny Jr. The only reason why I sat next to him is because he bought me buffalo wings on a rest break. It was approaching night time and I can remember being so bored because the tv was broke and there was nothing to watch, so sleep was the only option. At, another stop I remember learning not to sit on the toilets in public places. Flo told me if I had to poop when I went to the bathroom, make sure that I put toilet paper on the toilet seats so I wouldn’t get crabs. At, the time I didn’t know what that meant, but now I do. At, this point we were almost at North Carolina, we had at least 3 more hours or so. I went to sleep for the remainder of the time and when I woke up, I remember it being really dark, but I could see a white picket fence, and a empty road. After, about 10 minutes, I seen a sign that said “Welcome to North Carolina” Everyone on the bus had gotten very excited that we all had finally reached our destination. It was like 30 min until we reached our hotel and I remember it was a big hotel. But, as soon as we got there we all went straight to bed. I remember having to share a bed with Flo.

July 17th 2009

The day has finally come. I was waiting for this day since I heard the news about the reunion. Flo let me and my sister go down to the pool with a lot of relatives. I seen a Cousin that I would see occasionally and he said he would watch me while I was in the pool, so I guess that was cool. I went to sit by the pool and a guy came over to me and introduced me to his sons. When they came over at first, I was a little timid because I didn’t know them but after awhile I began to talk more. After a lil bit, we all decided to get in the pool. I set on the steps in the pool because I couldn’t swim, and they teased me because of it. I then decided to do what they were doing because I wanted to be cool and I was tired of the teasing. All though I couldn’t swim I decided to jump in the pool at 5ft. Where none of us could swim at. All I remember is falling backwards and gasping for air, and flailing around like a fish out of water. This continued for a while (seemed like forever) until my cousin came and pulled me out of the water. I sat on the side of the pool for a little bit, until I decided it was boring. So, I decided to jump back in with everyone else, in the same spot that I almost drowned in before. The same thing happened as before, I got pulled out by my cousin, and that’s all I can really remember until the banquet, but that’s for another story.

One day, over a decade ago now, I walked into a room bigger than my house’s first floor. An ocean of blue mats covering the floor, heavy bags standing taller than adults, and arsenals of bo staves and escrima sticks in the corners of the room. This was the training room of the martial arts school known as Martial Posture Studio. My friend Tadeusz (Tuh-day-oosh) and I were in our first martial arts class. His mother, Monica, had us try it out after his built up peer pressure possessed me to follow suit. There were two other students in the room who were much older and seemed to have been for a fairly long time because of the purple belts around their waist. After a few minutes, a man dressed in a black gi,  training pants, and a black belt tied around his waist. He rounded us up and proceeded give us our first class in Kenpo Karate (Translates to Law of The Fist, Empty Hand). The thought of learning the arts of war somersault around our minds like the ninjas we thought we were. We were enthralled and decided to continue to learn this discipline which spring-boarded my path of learning Kenpo Karate .

The first few years of my training have escaped my memory. However, my teacher Ish says that I, like many other children at that age who take up martial arts, was extremely unfocused. There were some moments that made him put his hand on his brow like a porch awning to his eyes and let out a forceful sigh. I obviously was not the best at first but, that is very much normal. Even as young as I was, I knew Kenpo Karate was not at all about win or loss. There is an importance on growth. It did not matter at all about how fast or how large it was. If there was some positive change on you not only as a fighter, but as a person then, Ish and the other instructors were satisfied.

I continued training at the school but, Tadeusz had lost interest not long after we had gotten our yellow belts. The long term goal of black belt came with a seemingly endless road to get there. The road can stand amongst people like a basilisk as the amount of progress you must make to achieve it. Ish says that at full concentration, focus, and dedication, it could take someone at least five years to achieve black belt but, for most, it could take a decade. However, there was always one proverb that kept bringing confidence back to life in me and my classmates. “Whether you say you can or cannot do it, either way you are right.” Ish would often say. It was this proverb`that kept me training. It kept me hardening my knuckles and shins into a tree’s solidity, kept me in stances that emulate cats and cranes, kept performing kadas that began as a dance only to transform into a lethal choreography, kept me on the path to becoming a black belt before a freshman.

Middle school came around which was a phase in my life that had a detrimental emotional impact in my life. My friends from elementary school had moved on to other schools in the city for their middle-school lives. I came into 5th grade alone with barely a friend with me. The people in my class were mostly people that would be considered in my mind as an asshole. They always ridiculed me for my gullibility, threw slurs at me like verbal bullets and their hateful aura drove me away like a gun ringing out. I had felt lonely for most of my time at school and around this same time, I began to appreciate Martial Posture Studio more than ever before. I had discovered some of the most therapeutic techniques courtesy of my martial arts instructors. This included things like punching a striking bag with all your passion as it get absorbed like a scream into a bedroom pillow, light contact sparring with glistening gloves and padded gear as bodies whipping around like dragons around a mountain peak, and laughing as the sweat drips down from our brows like raindrops granting new growth to trees. At times it felt like a second home. A place where I could spend time without any worries of anxiety and stress pouring into my mind. Where I had many more friends to laugh, frolic, sweat, and spar with. And for a very long time, that was the best thing ever for me.

I found myself at the top of my class in middle school. I was a blue belt on the cusp of becoming a green belt and was readying myself to move onto the next class. This would also be when my biggest hurdle would appear in the form of my classmate, David. I remembered his face vaguely from kindergarten and because of that we became very good friends in our class. He however, changed progressively as time went on. He showed one quality that I had grown to hate not just in him but, in general, arrogance. He would always boast every time he beat me in a sparring match, every in-house tournament win he would have over me, every step higher he was than me his voice spread out like peacock feathers as he yelled “Superior Blood!” It annoyed me to the point where we almost had a scuffle with each other. He almost made me want to quit martial arts.

I started contemplating quitting martial arts. The social toxicity I wished to escape was invading the one safe haven I had. And even though at the time I was a brown belt, I was still being told my skills were sub-par. However, that one proverb began ringing in my head like a song you have longed to hear play on a radio. “Whether you say you can or cannot do it, either way, you are right.” I said to myself. And so I stayed. I dug my toes into the mat with each stance, used my new found focus as a whetstone to sharpen my skills, and soon enough, I was ready for the black belt test.

It was the first day of high school. A long day marking the next stages of my life. The day I became a freshman at Science Leadership Academy and a black belt in Kenpo Karate. I finished school and immediately went to Martial Posture Studio afterwards. What followed was some of the most grueling hours of my life. three hours of reciting every kada I knew, doing reps of workouts and drills, and easily the worst part, sparring my teachers each for a two minute round.  My breath was heavy, my face was bruised, and my legs were weak to stand on. After I was carried of to the side and the ceremonial kicks to the Solar Plexus, I became a black belt.

I owe a lot to martial arts. Being that I’ve trained for more than two thirds of my life, it has shaped me into the person I have become today. This transformation is similar to the soldiers in Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds. Like me, they were influenced by their environment that only people with similar experiences can empathize with. Obviously the influences have had different effects but, nevertheless it is still there. Sometimes I often wonder what kind of person that I would have been had I not accepted Tadeusz’s request. How would I have handle the solitude I feel during middle school? How would I have  reacted to many of the students I was with that angered me? How would I be different? I often think about these questions a lot and I don’t really like the conclusions I come to. Because of this, I am very grateful of the life I have lived.

I heard my name twice in a voice I recognized. I sat in the passenger seat of the green Nissan Xterra. I looked over, there is my dad looking right at me, just how I remember him now, short blonde hair and light blue eyes. He had that concerned look on his face, the one I pictured whenever I thought of him. “I want you to get into a good high school,” he said, as we passed by Council Rock high school, where he went, “It doesn’t have to be down there.”

“Down there” as in Philly, where I lived, with my mom and sisters. A court ruled that my mom had custody of my sisters and I, which meant that I see my dad every other weekend. Obviously, he had always wanted us to live with him permanently, and this high school talk was one of his strategies.

“Yeah, maybe,” was all I really ever replied, being in the seventh grade and not so much caring about high school at the time. I always knew that moving to Bucks County and living with him and attending high school there was one of my options, but I always sort of knew I wasn’t going to go with that option.

Little did I know, that about 6 months later, I would no longer even have that option.

It was a Friday morning, I was getting ready for school, excited that this was the last day of the school week and that the weekend was approaching. I felt that way until my mom burst through the door sobbing like she had just heard the worst news she could ever hear, right after getting off the phone with my stepmom. “Your dad died last night,” was the only sentence she could get out.

It felt like the words pierced right through me one by one. I realized that it happened before she even finished the sentence, and it didn't take a while for me to realize, which was weird because it was extremely unexpected. I felt numb, my stomach in knots and my mind overflowing with thoughts, the craziest it had ever been and the worst I had ever felt.

I don’t remember much after that; I just remember crying, everyone in my house crying. The day itself taught me a lot about myself. Among my sisters, I was always known as the “rock” because I was the one that had it all together and was always weirdly emotionless, which isn’t even how I really am, just how I let myself be on the outside. I hold most of my emotions in.

The rest of that day was a long one. My mom, siblings, and I went over to my dad’s house, which then became known as my stepmom’s house. As soon as I walked in, the house had felt different. Or, the house didn’t feel different, I did.

After a long time of just talking and crying, I went up to the room I stayed in when I was there, just walking around it and examining things. My stepmom came in at one point.

“Sweet pea,” this was a nickname she gave me when I was really young. “You okay?”

“I’m doing okay,” I said in reply. “I think it’s Kelsey you should be worrying about, she’s been crying a lot.”

I regretted saying that immediately after. I always feel the need to make sure everyone is happy, I put myself last, and seeing my entire family in that state just added to the emotional wreckage I was already experiencing.

This caused my mind to race the entire day, focused on one question: what can I do to make everything better? But there was nothing I could do. An entire person, my dad, who we all loved was gone and there was nothing we could do.

“No, I’m worried about you.” She said, in a soft worried tone she never usually had.

I usually liked being alone with my emotions. I didn’t want to put my burdens on anyone. But when someone notices or show they care, I appreciate it. So her individual attention made me happy. After losing my dad, all the support I got from people made me realize that I can’t really face problems like these alone.

The adjustments I had to make was to live without my dad. Losing a person leaves a giant space in your life that is impossible to fill. There was no person or thing that could fill that space. You just have to get used to that space, accept the fact that it’s there and that there’s nothing you can do about it.

Being thirteen, and not having any experience with losing anyone that close to me, those adjustments were hard. It was hard not going up to his house every other weekend; not getting any calls of him yelling at me about not calling him; not hearing his voice, seeing him, or anything.

Eventually, I did get used to that lifestyle, but never fully. I still think of my dad every single day, usually when I see something that reminds me of him, like hearing a song that he used to play or just a random thought or memory relating to him that pops up in my head.

Sometimes my mom or one of my sisters would bring up something about him, and after he is mentioned, there is always a short silence. “He’s really gone?” is the question that always comes up in my head during that silence, and I assume it’s in their mind too. Then there’s that realization, that yes he is really gone, and we go on with what we were saying.

I don’t feel all that different from before that situation, but then again I feel like a completely different person. I know that now I’m much more appreciative of the people around me, and much more aware that they could go any second. I was always aware of death and that it happened, but it just never occurred to me that  it could also happen to me or to someone close to me. With that situation, it made me realize it could happen to anyone.

Reading “The Yellow Birds”, a book about a man named Bartle that goes to war, I felt like I connected with him emotionally in a way that I couldn’t if I had read that book before the situation. Bartle was best friends with a guy named Murph, and being in the war, he knew that at any time he could die or that Murph could die. Before I lost my dad, I wasn’t prepared for all of that. But now I’m aware that I could die or that anyone close to me could die at any moment.

Dear Unidentified man,

I want to thank you for showing me the part of the world that you should not speak,hear, or see about. Your body showed the dark parts of you life from the bruise on you leg to the holes on your arm, your teeth was as rotten as the 4 week apple on the floor next to you. But you eyes told a different story, it was filled with love, joy, and happiness. So I thank for everything that I learned from you, but I am sorry that you had to die for me to realize the cold truth.

From when I was born till I was 7 it was always just me and my mom. My mom was very protective of me so I always was shielded from the world and was held in her protection. My mom had just started dating my step dad for a couple month now. We were visiting his mother's house at Maschern Indiana street in North Philly. I try to say this as kindly as I can but, the house was disgusting. The house only had only one light source which was on the end of the step railing and it projected a yellow light since no one had cleaned the light cover. They had an old fashioned tv were you change the channel on the TV but they had a Spanish show on so I didn’t pay attention to that. My skin felt like their was a swarm of bugs crawling on me. the air was thick and it smelled like food. There was so many bugs there that you can’t count, I needed to get of there so I asked my mom if I can sit on the step. She said yes but only if I go out there with my new cousins and that I can’t leave the step.

So me and my new cousin were sitting on the step looking at the sky. It was about 5:00pm and you can see the sun start to set. I heard my cousins talk but I didn’t understand their lingo so I kept quite. I realize that they didn’t have shoes on and I thought that was weird but I never questioned it. They walked to the corner and told me to follow them, I checked to see if my mom was in the door before I ran towards them. We were playing “spit spit spit you are not it” when suddenly you hear a car suddenly press the gas a couple blocks down. So we all turn our head to the noise and then we raise the car was coming up their block, they yelled duck as if this was a routine for them. So I did, as I was ducking the car back door slides open and a body wrapped in a rug or blanket gets thrown out in front of us while the car was moving. As the body started to roll, the blanket or rug that he was in started to unroll with him. It happened so quickly that I didn’t realize what just happened. I started to smell an odd stench in the air and my head followed the smell. That's when I saw him. He was laying on the sidewalk, his body was as stiff as ice as if he had been dead for hours. The first thing I saw was the band wrapped on his upper arm, then I saw the holes on his arm, then I saw how thin he was and his teeth. While I was examining him from a distance, my cousins were jumping over him as if he was not human. The sun shone on his eyes and that’s when I saw them. They were the lightest blue eyes that I have ever saw. They looked like the sky on a sunny day, his eyes showed a different story. But before I could continue to look my mom had swooped me into her arms and cover my eyes. She took me straight home and didn’t say goodbye to anyone. Like Rat Kiley in “The things they carried” I wasn’t my funny self anymore, I become more dull towards the world because of seeing death. After seeing a dead body for the first time, I never looked at life the same again. Growing up I never really thought of death or anything beyond life, I never realized or acknowledge that death was real.

That night I asked my mom what happened to that man. “Nothing, he was just sick.” my mom said.

“Why didn’t he go to the doctors to get better?” I asked. “I don’t know, but don’t worry about.” she said. Being the child that I was I let it go. But as I got older, I started to realize what really happened to him. According to the investigating, the guy got high with his friends a couple blocks down and he OD. His friends didn;t want their block to get “hot” so they dumped the body a couple blocks down. All of that over drugs. At a young age almost every adult you meet says “Don’t do drugs kids”.  “But why” asked every kid. Some might have gotten a response back but most didn't because they were too young to understand. Some kids rebel and go against what their parents say and I feel like because they don’t know the real world consequence. If it wasn’t for that day, I wouldn't be the person that I am today. By the time I was in 8th grade, majority in my class either had sex, use drugs, drink, and steal. So many people tried to influence me but what had stopped me was the man, because it showed the the real long term consequence and not the happy and fun short term enjoyment.

But the most important lesson of all that the man taught me was that everyone dies. No one is promised to live a full life, no one is promised to live to see their kids get married and have grand kids, and at the end of the day. Rich or poor, you still end up in the same place. You can not cheat death, so yes live life to your fullest but don’t take advantage of you life and not waste it on short term enjoyment. The problem with today is that we care more about money than our lives because we were never shown about death and the ending for the cycle of life because it's ‘safer” to not show that dark part about humanity. It’s better to be reminded that you will die than because you don't take anything for granted than to be reminded that you are alive making you think you are invincible.

So thank you once again, for teaching me about life and the price that comes with it.

Sincerely,

The innocent bystander