Hardships

A hard journey is made hard by whoever lives it; a pleasant one is made by whoever lives it and the loving people around that person. I have had some challenges in life, but it is better to learn from them than to cry about it and embrace the life given to me. Often I heard “if it happens, there is a reason behind it” but I never really knew what that was about. I never really knew what life was about; I am still trying to figure it out.

Since I was born I was the scare of the family. In my first two years I explored everything from a diagnosed tumor in my kidney that “magically disappeared” to interminable allergies that my “knight in shiny armor” (who likes to take the shape of the most wonderful woman in this earth, my mom) fought endlessly. As I grew older, happiness cured all the old illnesses and the new ones to come. I was always taught to look at the bright side of everything and take the hidden messages in the occurrences in life; that “it is ok to cry about it” but never to fall down and, most of all, never let others fall down. I continue to grow with those teachings that once did not make any sense to me.

When I was thirteen, a big challenge came to my family. See, I was born and living comfortably in Uruguay, who would have guessed? My parents were separated a long time ago, and were still friends, but my mom had met another great man who presented us the opportunity to come to America and look for that dream everybody talks about. I had friends with whom I had shared my life, and still keep in touch with them up to this date, gone to kindergarten together and started the fun days of a teenage life in a safe country with no gangs or such danger. The hardest part of the decision, however, was not to leave my friends because I knew friendships like that never end, but it was to leave my dad and my sister (who are, by the way, the best sister and dad ever) and fly away to a “better life.”

The quality of life improved, and of course there were some times when I just felt I did not belong in this new world, that life had been going on for too long already before I came. Luckily I always had my mom, “my partner in crime” and my dear friend Alex, who had come from Mexico some years before. The language presented another obstacle; I guess I learned it fast so that people could stop making fun of me or because I never let their words of hatred get to me. Soon I was doing very well in a big middle school where kids actually hit each other when they had a problem and there were drugs around each corner. The situation did not change when I moved on to high school, but I matured out of the surprise that kept me immobile and into leading by example and even trying to get involved with young kids and protests against gangs and prostitution. High school at Lennox Academy is a lot harder than the ride I got in middle school, but my grade point average did not drop. After this big adaptation, there was nothing I could not get used to… or so I thought.