Growing up, I noticed a lot of discussion about financial problems between my parents. It’s not that we were becoming poor, it was because of our growing family needing more supplies. My mother just gave birth to my little brother when I started noticing the financial issues my family were facing. As a little girl, I do not know how our finances worked all I knew was many bills were due and I knew it because when I was a little girl I liked to practice reading and those bill statements were the papers that attracted my interest due to its colorful paper.…
It was the end of summer with only a week left of summer vacation. I was with my cousin Karlee when she brought up cross country…
During my high school years, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was horrible news to hear, especially since my mother has been such an influential figure in my life. In addition to this, my father was depressed during this time because of his unemployment and my mother’s cancer diagnosis. My mother was the only source of income for our family, so she went to work throughout her the pain from her chemotherapy. I was distraught from my mother’s illness, but I was expected to take on more household responsibilities so that my mother could rest when she got home from work. I was expected to help shop, clean, and take care of my younger sister by helping her with her homework. These responsibilities in addition to keeping up with my school work made this situation an extremely stressful time for me.…
Everyone is dead. It happened in a moment, one small minute has altered my life. I always told myself life isn't fair, it never has been, but this once I ask for a warning or a sign that I would be spending my last day with my family. Everything was fine for a week after the move here, just like the calm before the storm. Now thanks to one drunk driver I'm left on a hospital bed while the nurses play cards. Talk about sympathy. That monster killed Simon. He was just an innocent kid that dreamed of being a scientist, but that dream will die along with many others. My parents, dead, the two people in the world who have loved me with all their heart for 15 long years are dead in seconds. The drunk could have hit any other car destroyed any…
“We all stray from time to time….and when you do, OWN IT! If you deny it….you are giving up control again.” This can teach a lesson to people struggling with drugs and alcohol. If you deny that you have a problem, you will continue to let these things control your life, but if you own up to it, you can help yourself or get help from others. The quote, from the “I don’t know the Bible…” paragraph, “‘Well done, my good and faithful servant,”’ reflects what I believe in and what I have learned. Growing up I heard many people tell me, “God first, others second, and yourself last.” First of all, these two quotes are telling me to live a faithful life by putting God first. Also, to put others before me and serve them just like Jesus did.…
Today is one of those rare days in which it is raining and I’m sitting on the windowsill waiting for a sign. Something that says ‘move on’. There is still a part of me that hopes every day that you're alive and I haven't found you yet. I will have searched the far corners of the earth before I let myself believe you dead. I dream of you every night, then wake with the bitter taste of regret fresh in my mouth. You abandoned me. You have marooned me on this earth, and it is dark without your light by my side. All that fills my mind is when you were still beside me. I distinctly recall one summer when we were not quite children anymore and still too young to be adults. It was raining so hard that the streets were flooded for the first time in eighty years, and you had insisted on escaping to the desert.…
Some nights I dream about Michael. He’s coming home from college for christmas break and he’s brought a girl with him. Our family is sitting at the dinner table and he’s giving my sister’s new boyfriend a hard time. He’s sitting in the audience, whooping and hollering as I walk across the stage and receive my diploma. Other times, he’s standing in a waiting room, introducing my sisters and me to his little girl. I dream about all of the moments my family and I never got to have with him and my heart breaks every single time. Michael has been gone for almost 16 years and yet he is still with me every day. I dream about him and what could have been; what should have been. Michael’s death teaches me something new almost every day. I have learned what loss is, how to deal with it, and how to grow from it.…
I felt as though I was paralyzed from the waist down. I would try to move my leg or even shift an ankle but I never got a response. This was the first time thoughts of death ever cross my mind.…
I always believed that there is life after death and that you need to live your life to the fullest because once is something taken from you then you will regret not having it. The commencement in 2005 by steve jobs moved many people. He says “ Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make big choices in life.” He had a really hard choice to make, either give up or keep pushing forward, but just like his says “ You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” Steve jobs had big visions and big ideas for this world. He speech spoke to many people and gave many people inspiration because he didn't give up and looked at the cup half full and not half empty.…
“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” –Oliver Wendell Holmes. One day, I was walking around campus with my friend Faith when both of us stumbled upon a sign in the elevator that mentioned a trip to Europe to study our favorite parts of history. From that minute and on both of us knew we had to look into this one of a kind trip. A few days later we attended the course meeting for the trip both of us looked at each other, nodding our heads in excitement. This was when we finally and completely decided this trip would be for us and we would do everything in our power to go. I was hoping this adventure would show me the people, places, and things that I had heard about in books but also more. I…
As I reminisce a couple years back when someone used empathy to resolve a major issue I was having with my life, many techniques in the issue were used that I now could easily differentiate. When I was 17 I had many suicidal attempts to end my horrible life that was not moving along very smoothly. I was driving my car with my parents in it and accidental made a wrong turn and my car had spun out and killed my father, I was in great depression and did not know what to do as I was the one to blame for this tragic accident which cost my father’s life. The pressure and anxiety were building so much form the event that I had only thought of one thing which was suicidal attempt to kill myself and ends this miserable. Until one day I had a visit from…
There I was, walking along the road that lead to whatever next town it let to. It was a cold, windy sunny day with no cars around and I was also alone, which to me was a perfect day and I was also terrified.…
People always say that in a near death experience, your life always flashes before your eyes. I waited for that moment to happen, but all I saw was the series of decisions that led me to the situation I was in.…
90% of all students between 4th and 8th grade are bullied physically or verbally during their schooling. I was one of those students – told daily that I was fat and never going anywhere in life. Bullying continues to tremble the ground with its every advancing step and scare its’ victims and bystanders with its extensive roar. Bullying was something that walked into my life in elementary school and tortured me throughout middle school. Nonetheless, I did not lose hope and I fought back.…
, I set up my tent in my mom and dad's tent ( The tent was a 10 person tent, my tent was a two person).…