Part One: A Heavy Heart
When I walk to the bathroom each morning to brush my teeth, I stare in the mirror for a few seconds, looking at my wildly uncombed hair, my half-shut eyes, and think, “Why am I here? How am I still alive?” I wash my hair and walk out into the hallway, with water trailing behind me, wondering what I will have for breakfast. I grab a Chobani drink because I don’t feel like drinking milk, and sneak back into my room, hoping that my Dad does not hear me (though he is usually awake since 3 or so unless he is tired). I sit down at my desk and tell myself that I need to get the day in order and get things straight. Yet, in the back of my mind, I know that no matter how hard I try, it doesn’t seem to matter to my Dad. There seemed to be no use in trying to do my best. I always ended up in a depressed state, with people who don’t seem to care, and yet I am always hoping, praying, that something good comes out of my life. I know it is bad for me to think of life in this way, but it hurts to see that almost nobody cares. I look out of the window at all of the other buildings and think about my friends, and their friends, and their friends’ friends, who all seem so carefree with life. “Sounds like a good life,” I think to myself. But if I give this one up, what would I do? My conscience would probably be floating up in space, thinking about how stupid I was to die, and how if I stayed, life would’ve gotten better. Would my friends even remember me after a few years? Would they use me as a pity bag so others feel bad for them? Would people say bad things about me even after I died? I shake away the thought. I worry, I worry a lot. I worry probably more than I should. It is almost like I am going crazy in my own home. I miss my friends. I miss my family too. Leaving them may have been the worst decision of my life, even if it wasn’t my choice. Maybe it was all for the better. “All for the better,” I repeat in my head. I go to YouTube and search up skating clips to watch before class, even though I am not supposed to be on YouTube nor am I supposed to skate. But it is the morning and I am tired, yet my mind is restless, thinking about all the things that are going on in the world, the dead and the living.I need a break. April Skateboards uploaded a new video. I am happy again. The lonely world that seemed to have put me here for no reason suddenly lights up, and I know that even in the times that I am at my worst, there must be something that is out there for me. Maybe if I just keep a brighter outlook on life, it will help. I look out the window and the sun is shining bright. “Mr. Sun will be there forever, but I will not,” I tell myself “I just have to keep moving.” It is almost time for my first class. I pull out my notebooks from the shelf and start the zoom meeting. Part Two: Hope After I moved away from Florida, I felt that there was nothing that I could do to fix my broken heart. Every night I would study on the floor with boxes piled around me. I shared an air-mattress with my Mom and my Dad and worried that I would have to stay in a cramped apartment forever — we moved six times in two years. It was not an ideal life; in fact, I felt that I wasn’t even living a real life, I was in an unknown place, I had no friends and no family to talk to, and soon, only my Dad would be here with me. My past was behind me, but this was not the fresh start I was hoping for. I worry more than I should. I worried that we wouldn’t ever be able to survive in New York City. The “Big Apple.” The “City that never sleeps.” I was so used to having a simple life, being able to do anything I felt like doing, and most of all, feeling like I had a future. It seemed that in the city where dreams come true, I had lost all my hope. Two and a half slow years passed by, and I was finally out of middle school and off to high school, where things started to shift. I had severe Tourette’s syndrome since I was little, had trouble making friends and was bullied a lot. I decided that I wanted a fresh new start, a new perspective on my life. I didn’t want to feel sorry for myself and feel like I wouldn’t be able to survive another day (though sometimes, these thoughts come back). Instead, I saw this as an opportunity for me, and I guess my Dad did too. Now that I am in junior year, I see that without the opportunity to go to Stuyvesant High School, my life may have still been a mess. I would not have been able to make friends, look out for the future, and help my Dad out if I had not been accepted. Having people to be with and trust is one of the best resources I received from school. Without them, I would probably still be in pain, and not be in as good of a mental state as I am in today. I probably would not even be on this earth if I had not changed my outlook on life. One thing I learned from this “adventure,” as my grandma used to put it, is that there is always, always something good that comes out of it. If I had stayed in Florida, I probably would not have graduated from high school, and though I would still have my old friends, I would not have the opportunities that I was given here to learn and make new friends throughout my life. I would have followed the path much of my southern family followed, of being too late, and eventually, that would hurt the course of my life. A lesson that I always hold true to my heart is to have hope. At one point, everybody struggles, but there is always a way out of it, and though it may seem like a miracle away, we always have the capability to achieve that miracle ourselves. So whenever something bad happens to me I just say “it’s an adventure” and go along with it to see where I end up next. Part Three: Forgiveness There must be a point in your life where you ask yourself: “Is there anyone that I need to forgive, or is there anyone I should be asking the forgiveness of?” I still have not come to the conclusion that there is someone who actually cares for my forgiveness. Yet, I am always wondering who I have wronged in my life and if the people who have done wrong to me will remember that they hurt me. We spend our whole lives waiting for others to die, and gathering people to our own funeral. But how is it that after they die, we realize that there is so much that we didn’t do with them, so much that we wanted to say, so much that we...missed? When I was little, I used to cry because I knew that everybody I loved would one day die, and if I didn’t die before them, I knew I would be alone. Alone forever. And to me, that was one of the scariest thoughts. Death. Many people who get sick, or are almost at their death point always regret the things that they didn’t do, that they couldn’t do. If I had died right now, there would be so many things, good and bad that I would have missed, and yet for so long I had wished to disappear, to be away from society, and the trauma that comes with life. When I tell myself that life is an adventure, I am really saying that I don’t want to die, because there is always a small chance that my life later could be better than it is now. It is hard to tell yourself to live, especially with depression, but I know that if I go away now, there will be so many opportunities that I would have missed and that I would be living an unfulfilled life. Now, with that being said, there are so many people constantly struggling in this world with depression, anxiety, and so many other issues that make them feel that life is a waste. However, the one thing everybody should know is that there is always somebody out there that will hurt when you die, somebody who will not forgive you for leaving this world. By leaving, you are not forgiving others, you are only increasing the burden on them. A true act of forgiveness comes from your actions here on earth and doesn’t involve you leaving it. Life may not be simple, and life may not be kind to all, but there is so much to do, and so much to see, that I hope you understand how important each and every person, including yourself, is to this world. You must forgive the fact that life is hard, and try to see the light that this world carries within.
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