Examples Of Childhood Disappointment

When I was 11, my parents were battling in an ugly divorce. I wasn't seen as a kid because for a brief moment I became an adult that could make tough life changing decisions. As a child , I was confused on what was happening. I didn’t understand why my mom was gone one day, returned the next and then  just gone. I couldn't comprehend why police officers would regularly come to my broken home. The gruesome divorce and after period was an emotional roller coaster that never ended until today. It was difficult to adapt to the new lifestyle with a new single mom. I vividly remember having to sleep on the floor for months , having an empty naked white fridge and having to support my single mother every night as she dealt with depression. Although, life was hard I stayed strong, supported my sisters and accepted the new life I  was given.

Unlike most people, I did not get to be a carefree child for long. Even though I always said that I could not wait to grow up, now I wish that it all did not happen so fast and early in my life. From eleven to twelve years old—that would be the period I describe as the time I had to put my big-girl pants on and face the real, cruel and unwelcoming adult world. In that time period, I can specifically pinpoint two major events that ended my childhood: my move from Russia to the United States and the birth of my baby sister Toma. To some those might not seem significant enough to change someone’s life to the extent that they changed mine; however those events molded me into the person I am today.

My mother worked day and night so I had to care for my sister and cousins. On some occasions I had to help my mom clean houses to earn money. At the age of thirteen up until I was sixteen I was cleaning houses for the people we longed to be. I got a glimpse of a life I have never known. For the most part my mom’s boss was nice, but her family was ignorant at times. They would ask me where I have traveled and if I’ve been to all these kinds of expensive places. When I answered no they asked why not. I guess they didn’t comprehend the fact that my mom and I were cleaning their dishes and making their beds for less than the minimum wage to be able to barely afford the rent of the small room we all

I have always been close to my family of five. My family is what made me strive for greatness and what made life joyful. I felt like everything was perfect and that I was on top of the world. However, this all changed when I entered an unfamiliar apartment that had all my belongings. I was only eleven when my parents split up, and the age where I had to grow up fast. My parent’s separation is something that holds me back till this day. For two years, I felt like I was on my own because my parents were never home. It seemed like my sisters and I were the ones being punished. There were countless nights where my sisters and I cried because of this sense of emptiness. My parents did not think we had to depend on them anymore, but they did not

I was born very early and had teenage parents who did not really have their life together at that time. My parents were both high school dropouts. My dad dropped out because school was not for him and he just wanted to work and get money and my mom dropped out because school was not for her also and she was pregnant with me and did not want to deal with school. My dad worked everyday to keep our family moving and my mom just stayed at my grandmas house with me because obviously she had to take care of me. So we were living by paycheck to paycheck. One year later my sister was born and two years later after that my other sister was born. Since my parents really did not have that much money to get our own place we would live at my grandmas house to my papa’s house but at times we would have to camp out at the beach because we had no other choice. When we would live at the beach I would think that we were just camping for fun but I did not realize that we did not have any place to stay. My parents clothed me and my sisters, provided food for us, but we did not have a house over our head. So

I was able to be myself and I felt free. With a few bucks in my pockets, I felt I could buy the clothes I wanted and those skinny jeans I saw at urban outfitters. I came home one day galvanized only to find ambulances outside my aunt's house and my mom on the stretcher bed. My mom has been ill and had an infection that ate her leg. Days I would come home and it smelled like rotting flesh it was her. I spent months with her after her amputation. One of the kids who 've met, she and her mother allowed me to stay at their home, but I was no longer a teen and her daughter who liked me was underage, but they were in need as I was, they had little money and 4 mouths to feed and had just found an advantageous paying job so I figured I help them for helping me. 4 mouths turned into five and I quickly realized I was being played not by the daughter, but by the mother and quickly left them alone and used wisdom, for I cannot help others until I help myself and they were too broken. I saved my money and got an apartment on my own. I take care of my mother who is now disabled and I am taking on the challenges of adulthood. I ride a 2-hour bus to work and back every day. I get up 4 o'clock in the morning and don't make it home until 8pm at night. I feel accomplished an 18-year-old with his own apartment, taking care of his mother, and I might not have a car...yet but it's so close I can taste

As a child, I was quiet and withdrawn. I taught myself to read when I was three, and spent most of my time reading instead of playing with other children. I understood very early that I was different from others at school. I didn’t have to pay for lunch, something I found (and to be honest, still find) completely mortifying. My father was almost never home, always trucking all over the country in an effort to keep our family afloat. When other kids talked about their dads in school, I often found myself feeling jealous. I, too, wanted a dad who could teach me how to ride a bike or throw a ball. I also understood that it was impossible for me to have that, because my father worked around the clock to keep my family from going hungry. I realized that in order to achieve the things that I wanted to, i would have to take the initiative and do it myself. I borrowed my sister’s bike (although it was much too tall for me to use comfortably), and I practiced riding it until i knew i was better at it than any other 7 year

Defying the Nuclear Family: Shortly after my seventh birthday, my parents began having fights much more often than they previously had in the past. Less than half a year later on January 15, 2005 their divorce became finalized and my father moved out of the house. For the first few months while he searched for a home to buy, my nine year old sister and I lived solely with our mother. Soon after, we began going back and forth between our parents’ houses, living at one house for a week and then switching over to the other the next. The two houses could not have been any more polar in how they were run, at my mother’s house there were strict rules and expectations to be followed.

Unexpectedly, my father called and with an unsteady voice explained, “I had to take your mother to the emergency room, and she is now being admitted to the hospital.” At age 13, this phone call began the most dreadful time of my life. Prior to this event, I was exceedingly dependent on my parents and even struggled with separating from them. In the beginning of my mother’s hospital stay, my familymy parents and two, younger sisters were constantly divided. My father stayed in the hospital with my mother, while my sisters and I would switch between caring family members and friends. Eventually I grew tired of different environments and decided that staying home alone was the far better option. As a result, I appreciate independence and know how to solely maintain a home.

My dad was unable to take care of me, so my aunt offered to. The language barrier between my aunt’s family and I was evident; she spoke Mandarin while I spoke Cantonese. As I was transitioning from one dialect to the next, I also needed to learn English. My six year old brain was still able to develop and grow fluent to this change. Soon enough, I began to memorize all the different foods I saw on the labels on the shelves when my aunt took me grocery shopping. Through my constant flipping of flash cardings of animals and everyday objects, I finally mustered up confidence to conduct a proper conversation with my peers during recess. I also engrossed myself into the cartoon TV shows everyday as I tried to comprehend what they were talking about. Little did I know that I began to question my family situation the more exposed I was to their portrayal perfect families. I always asked myself, “ If Arthur, Peppa, and Dora all lived with their parents, why wasn’t I?” As I grew older, I dreaded birthdays and holidays because it created a longing inside me for a family reunion that had no chance of happening. Seeing parents supporting their kids warped my mind into fearing judgement from others. I fought off that mindset because I started to see that I only had myself to

2006 was arguably the worst year of my life. At the tender age of eight I moved to live in Indianapolis with my aunt, my uncle, and their six kids. It was all very shocking and sudden. One day I’m playing happily at my home and the very next day my belonging are being packed and I ‘m being shipped to live in Indianapolis. The move left me feeling abandoned, unwanted, and unloved. I put on a brave face and locked the emotions inside myself. I struggled to make friends and comprehend the material being taught. I felt alone in a house filled with loving, open, and accepting family. That loneliness became a constant in my life. I began lashing out towards the ones who were trying to help me until finally I talked with my Aunt. Who I had more in

“Are you ready to go?” my grandmother asked. Before I could answer, my brother and sister ran up to greet her. Afterwards around two or three hours, me and two of my younger siblings left to Columbia with my grandmother. But, my parents and my youngest sister left a few hours after we had left. After an exhausting and strenuous three hour car ride, we finally reached my grandmother’s house. A few days later, my whole family and my grandmother went out looking for houses to buy. My family saw numerous houses, some I enjoyed better than others. One house in particular caught my eye. Not the house itself, but the fact that we would have to be homeschooled instead of going to a whole new school. Being six and all, I was dreading the fact that I would have to go to school. Think about it, I was a six year-old that left my school and all of my friends in Georgia that had to go to a whole other school in South Carolina with no friends or even people that I knew. Sadly, my parents didn’t end up buying that particular house. Although, I think that my parents wanted me to go to school. The house my parents chose needed some work and style. The room that I sleep in now used to be an appalling shade of brown. The playroom used to

When I was younger, my opinions on matters I understood were rejected. They treated my comments like the spoiled milk in the back of a fridge, wondering why it never got drank; why it never got used. As I became a tween, my phases didn’t matter, the pressure of my parents looming divorce didn’t matter, the hands violating my soft, warm skin didn’t matter. I was only 9 when the first one happened. The second, 14. You never think these things are going happen, then they do. As a kid, my only concern was if my twin brother was having as much fun as I was. Now, I worry about walking to my car in the dark, by myself, after I get out of my after school activities. Times up on being treated as something beneath

Growing up as an only child, I was very fearful to try new things. My parents have always been very protective because they only had one child to worry about. Since my parents we very protective, I was raised in a very closed environment. I wasn’t allowed to go out past eight in the afternoon on the weekends and I was not allowed to go to sleepovers until I was 14. My departure to Memphis was like a bird leaving the nest for the first time. I lacked the strength to be on my own, but I would soon learn how to take care of myself away from home.

When I was a freshman in high school, I had so many life changing experiences. One to be exact was my beautiful new cousin being welcomed into our family; it isn’t how it seems though. Like me, she was adopted and because of that I felt so incredibly close to her.. She is much younger than me though. I’m 18, and she is 8; but this just made me admire her. She was from a completely different country. Since she was from a