It is September 2024, I am 17 years old, a senior in high school and I am moving from my basically childhood home. I moved here from my actual childhood home which is in Baldwin Park, I was about 9-10 so it didn’t affect me that much at the time but now I am moving out of my home that I have grown up in and found myself in. Which I would later find would be an overwhelming change but ultimately brushed this emotion away. My parents told me we were to move to a nice house that would be perfect since I would have my own room, which has always been a dream of mine since every house that we have lived in, I have always had to share my space with my two sisters. Nevertheless, they said we were moving and I was actually excited for this new chapter in my life.
Then my world came crashing down. The house we assumed we would move into actually had someone else living in it and had scammed us of hundreds of dollars. I have never felt more hopeless. It is October 2024 and my little sister and I are staying with a close family friend while my parents stay at our grandmother's house all the way in our old home town of Baldwin Park which we could not stay at since we go to school here in Rancho Cucamonga. Because of this fact, I have had to take on the challenge of taking care of my little sister all by myself really, with my parents not being able to come over all the time with work and not being able to afford gas. My sister is not an easy person to take care of when she doesn’t listen or just wants to be lazy. We haven't always gotten along which is sometimes my fault. But I believe we have gotten closer because of this but I feel miserable because of the fact that I am growing up, going to be an adult in less than a year and going to be moving out, leaving her to herself in the house of our parents. We don’t always get along with our parents the way other kids do.
It is November 2024 and having to take care of my sister, making sure she eats, showers, cleans up after herself, having to take her to practice, school and taking her to hang out with friends, all while trying to take of myself in the process really made me struggle with myself mentally, putting me in an unstable amount of stress and I found myself sinking into a deep depression feeling like a burden wherever I went, feeling like no one wanted me and having a hard time coping with the situation at hand. Even if people tried to lift my spirits, I couldn’t listen. My mind was stuck in this mindset of forever darkness. I knew I could not continue like this if it was damaging my relationships with the people closest to me, so I turned to something I have not been fully a part of since I was a child, which was my religion.
My family and I are christians, we used to go to church every wednesday and sunday but stopped going once we moved here because of the distance making it hard to keep up with this routine. So once we moved here we never found a church to join and gradually stopped going to church all together. Though I occasionally attended church, either with my friend to their church or I went with my aunt to her church but ultimately never really made time to go as often as I should’ve. I still prayed here and there but eventually lost faith little by little and the situation I am in did not help and I even began to feel anger towards God, frustrated by the situation I found myself in, as if I was being tested beyond my limits. But I ultimately decided to reconnect with my religion because I needed something to believe in and hold on to and I knew that even if I was angry with God, that he would help guide me through this. I went and bought a bible that I knew I would like and keep with me. Though it was a slow start getting into, it helped me ground myself with the fact that I am living a life that no friend of mine could imagine living. I am living the impossible.
This situation that I had and am still going through is a very complicated one. It has ultimately taught me many things and even though I am not out of it, it has taught me that the real world is a very scary place, especially the adult world. Having most of the responsibilities of an adult without being an adult is a very confusing line, not knowing if what I am doing is crossing that line or not. I have also learned that I have to be more responsible, that my time as a kid is coming to an end. One of the most important lessons I have learned is that life can feel like a repetitive, dull cycle without something to believe in. If I didn’t find something to hold on to, like religion or friends, it would be hard to see the meaning in everyday struggles and changes. Through it all, I have realized that no matter how difficult life may seem, having something to believe in makes the life I am living just a little bit more bearable and occasionally hopeful for the future.
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