Moving Ahead in Life

Life is hard, and it only gets harder.

This is what I have heard for a good portion of my life. Recently, I had heard this same line repeated while I was in the grocery store, and it made me think about my own life. For the rest of the day, while on my way home, while taking a shower, while mowing the lawn(though maybe not in that order), I continued to think about that statement. It was a conversation between a mother and her daughter about how hard it was for them since her daughter would be going off to college soon, and how big of a change it would be in the family. The daughter stated that the previous couple of years, the family had struggled, and she told her mother she didn’t want there to be any more struggling. That is when her mother stated that quote mentioned above. It probably wouldn’t have struck me as hard if it hadn’t actually been relevant to my current situation; after all, I go off to college in just a week from now, and I couldn’t be more nervous. And yet, I’m also quite calm about the situation. A bit of an oxymoron if you ask me: How can you be nervous AND calm? Preposterous! And yet, I guess I found a way.

For those that haven’t kept up with my articles, the previous few years for my family hasn’t been a walk in the park; while most of the stress came from my grandmother, quite a bit was built up from my oldest sister, as well. Two years ago, my grandmother had been forced into retirement when the padding in her back had completely failed her, and she had trouble getting around for a few months. Less than a year later, she developed cancer, and had a long, and successful thankfully, struggle going through chemo. In the process, her teeth began to fall out, and she was losing hair. The cancer recently disappeared, and she was given dentures, which are still entirely uncomfortable for her, since it sometimes takes up to a year to be able to eat normally again once you get them.

Aside from troubles with my grandmother, stresses have come from my sister, whom we could swear is a kleptomaniac. Over the years, she has stolen more money from the family than the bank from its citizens, and yet she’ll swear that we’ve just “misplaced” it all. Because it is entirely possible that over the course of five years or so, our family has “misplaced” nearly $8,000, a majority of our movies and games, and some old, very rare comics, and that all of this is just laying around the house somewhere. Sorry tuts, that little excuse doesn’t work on us moderately intelligent individuals. She also suffered from a prescription drug addiction for a while, so we’re all pretty certain to where that money is going, though she swears that she is no longer a drug user.