Cookie Crumble

Entering high school, I was like any other freshmen, excited and curious to embark on my high school journey. As a freshman, I was the ideal student for any teacher. From the outside looking in, I appeared to be socially interactive, humorous, and rarely a troublemaker. However, if you were suddenly on the inside looking out, my world would probably shock you. I would rather not say that my father was abusive because he loved our family very much, but he was definitely aggressive.  By eighth grade, my parents were divorced because, after 20 years of marriage, my mother could not endure my father’s irrational personality any longer. The odd factor was that my father continued to reside with us even after their divorce. Eventually though, towards the beginning of my freshmen year, my father was forced to move out into his own apartment due to a restraining order. All the events mentioned above gradually led to the greatest set back in my life, with which even today I often struggle.  After my dad moved out, he ostracized himself from our family for about three months, until he tried to take my moms life and ended up being killed in the process on Christmas Eve. For the remainder of my freshmen year, I focused on my schoolwork in order to escape the reality of his death. Although inside I blamed myself for his death, I knew I had to act strong because that was what my family needed at the time. Unfortunately, though reality caught up with me, and I could not escape my past any longer.  This event was becoming a major setback for me because it started to consume my life. By my mid-sophomore year, I had begun to lose the will and motivation to go through life’s daily routines. Finally, I recognized that I needed to cope with my feelings in some way, so confided in a teacher. This was perhaps the greatest decision I could have ever made in order to resolve this obstacle.  After conversing with this teacher multiple times, I felt as though the world had been taken off my shoulders.  I was able to realize that I could not bare the fault for my father’s death since people make their own choices on how to live life. Personally, I have learned that life is too short to stain with negativity. Therefore, I choose to have a positive outlook for life and an open-mind. If another death should occur in my life, God forbid, I would handle it differently because I would not keep my feelings bottled-up inside. I would immediately talk to someone that I trust, so the healing process could begin. As a senior looking back on my life, I have realized that disappointments are unavoidable, but the way we choose to deal with the setback is what makes all the difference.