The Past: My childhood feels as if it happened three lifetimes ago. Most of it I can’t remember. I was born to my mom and father, and was the sister to my mother’s daughter who was 12 at the time of my birth. Soon after I was born they divorced because of my father’s drinking problem. Over the years I would see him every other weekend, then only once or twice a month, until he stopped seeing me, returning my phone calls, and paying child support at the start of 2009. I was also abandoned by another father figure too. For 14 years of my life I had a stepfather. Even when I was little I could tell he never liked me. He had a bad temper and I learned over the years how to adapt to not make him angry. It turned out that he did not like my mom either, because he kicked us out of my fifth house after the second time he cheated on her. My sister, Lacey, has always been too much older for us to really ever be close or relate to each other. My mom is different though. She has always been putting herself last for me. Sometimes I wish my early life was like the opening sequence to the old television show “The Wonder Years;” family footage full of summer barbecues, playing in the yard with siblings, or standing outside the house that I spent my entire childhood in. Then I realize that without early years I would not be who I am.
The Present: After a string of bad luck and crazy landlords, I ended up in Levittown in the summer before high school began, after leaving Merrick which served as a home for 8 years. It is ironic that I ended up at MacArthur. When I was little whenever I passed by the school I was thankful that I would not be going there, because it was extremely intimidating looking. The outside gives you a sort of gray feeling, and it doesn’t help that it looks like a prison. The Levittown School District is wonderful though, and the people are great. It is my third year here, and junior year is the most important, stressful year of high school, for everyone except for me. I have the same SAT to take as the other students, two AP classes, running Model Congress, a driver’s education course, etcetera. Unlike the popular belief among students, school is actually not the most important event in a person’s life. It makes up a fraction of a person’s life. My boss in 10 years will not care what my grade was on the Human Geography AP test. School is important in a person’s life, but I try to not let it kill me. Besides school, my life is sitting under trees reading books, expressing my thousands of emotions through painting and other arts, and just being a teenager with my friends. After my teenage years have fled me, who knows what will happen.
The Future: What college will I go to? What will I study? What will I do? Will I get married? The questions actually do go on forever. I have no answers. I have no idea what to do in my life. But I recently was given great advice by a fortune cookie, “Do what you love and the necessary resources will follow.” That could mean art school, museum studies, political science, or many other things. I don’t want to rush an important decision that could make me unhappy for the rest of my life, like marriage could. Obviously seeing my mother’s and grandmother’s failed attempts at lifelong happiness has affected my views of marriage. I think people go into it with the wrong mindset, and that is why more than half end in divorce. Most people see marriage as something they need to do in their lives in order to have lived “completely.” Instead of settling for a husband or a wife, they should be looking for a soul mate. That is exactly what I am hoping for from the future.
My life is an insignificant blur in a crowd of faces. But when examined closely you can see that it is an exquisite occurrence in the universe that cannot be summarized in an essay, broken down into paragraphs, or imprisoned in language. It can only be felt.
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