“Now I’ve gone for too long, living like I’m not alive, so I’m going to start over tonight…” —Hayley Williams. In the fourteen years of my life, I have found out what it means to love, to lose, to be abandoned, to hate, to love again, and to lose again. I have found out what it means to be lost and to be found, only to be lost again. In the fourteen years of my life I can honestly say that I have experienced true heartache, but with the help of my family—my true family—I have found out what it means to be happy. In the fourteen years of my life, I have learned to not let go; I learned to hold on to happiness tightly and to not let it go because it may never come back. I have learned that love is immortal, and it will exist for years to come. I have… Continue reading »

“To be, or not to be: that is the question: /Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer /The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, /Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, /And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; /No more; and, by a sleep to say we end /The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks /That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation /Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; /To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub.” —William Shakespeare . When being relocated, I lost so much in my life. I lost my bed that had provided me with comfort even in my most uncomfortable moods. I lost my bedroom, which was where I took refuge in my darkest hours. I lost the familiarity of my bathroom. I lost the people who would honestly make me feel more at home outside of my own house: my friends…. Continue reading »

“I’ve never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. The pain is like an axe that chops my heart. ” —Yann Martel. I woke on October eighth atop of a brown couch in my aunt’s house. Text messages blew up my phone from previous friends: “ Hey when r u comin bck 2 school?”, “I miss u mucho, you better be comin bck soon!”, “Promise that u r comin bck 2 school tomorrow!” Hoping I would, I promised I would be back at school soon. Of course I wanted to go back to school; I had it all: amazing friends, good grades, and sports…. Continue reading »

“Behind every beautiful thing, there’s some kind of pain.” —Bob Dylan. Every story has a climax–the part in which the protagonist has to overcome an obstacle they face. To simply put things into perspective, my obstacle was my father. Reaching the middle of my twelfth year, life was great. It was summer outside, and every day my brother and I would enjoy the refreshing summer breeze. With no recent confrontation between parents, life could be described, honestly, as perfect. But as quickly as all beautiful things in my life begin, this simple paradise came crashing down just as fast. *** It is a beautiful August morning, and I am sitting on a tan couch in the back room of my house. Vince is sitting on a couch in the living room watching television. I have no idea where my father is, and just like her mother, Nevaeh is sleeping. I am ambitiously deciding to create… Continue reading »

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”—Mitch Albom. Being born second eldest, with my father’s child (my half sister) being born a few years before I, has left me with a sense of guardianship over my younger brother. Lydia, the eldest of us three, was born when my father was in the teen years of his life. Many years ago, I might have even called her my sister, but now I have no idea who or where she is. Vince, my younger brother, is my motivation; he is constantly there pushing me through barriers I thought I would never conquer. I was born when my father was breaking the dawn of his twenties, after he “fell in love” with a woman named Victoria. But when being realistic,… Continue reading »