My Experience In My Life

Everybody has a mountain to overcome and it's your choice whether you stay stuck in the valley or rise to the peak. An in my life I've had a mountain that not only I have overcome but, learned valuable lessons along the way. The crux of my struggle was the splitting of my parents which put me through some emotional instability. This, in hindsight, was the best for me as well as my parents but being young and selfish I seen it as my world splitting in half.

Growing up in a traditional Hispanic household, family means everything to us and we’re constantly surrounded by family members.

As I grow older and live new experiences, I realize how my childhood and God led me to the circumstance I am now, which is my last semester of nursing school. I come to appreciate my mother’s hard work to get me through school as well as through life. Growing up in a low-income family in Los Angeles, California with a dad who was a full-time alcoholic and drug addict, was not a good circumstance to grow up. My mother did not speak English or had a job and believed that a married woman is to fully depend on her husband. There were times when my 2 siblings and I had nothing to eat since my dad barely came home with money after spending it all on alcohol and drugs. Due to this living situation and the fact that I was the oldest child, I felt the strong responsibility to drop out of school once I was old enough to work. Education was not an option in my future. Since we didn’t have much money, my mom signed my siblings and me to free afterschool programs at my local Catholic church, so we could learn more about our religion and the importance of God in our lives. I remember my excitement to wake up early Sunday mornings to get ready for mass, even though it took 2 bus routes to get to church. I learned from nuns and priests the importance of caring for others as if they were my own family because everyone deserves the same type of care. Caring was something I learned through religion, and not something I was born knowing. As a way to start fresh, my dad decided to move us to

“Tough times don’t last, tough people do” - Julian Edelman. Throughout life I have overcome obstacles that seemed almost impossible to conquer. Crying, fighting, searching for a way out of my life that has haunted me for eighteen years. I thought I would never live to see this age, but here I am today, standing tall and proud amongst others everyday. The lessons I have learned and experiences I have gone through have built my character, gave meaning to my visits back home, and have helped me find ways to keep myself busy with free time.

It’s hard to imagine what your life will be like, where it’ll take you, or what the future holds for you. If you told 13-year-old me that I was going to be on the path of 8 more years of schooling after high school, working towards a medical degree, I probably would have laughed and repeated the line that I have said so many times: “I’ll never become a doctor...that’s so gross”. At that age, my dream was to become a pastry-chef in a patisserie somewhere in the south of France, living life peacefully. I thought that I could never follow in my parents’ footsteps, sacrificing the best years of my life for the all-consuming difficulty and intensity of the pre-med track. And it is very intense. If you ever come across a pre-med student, they’re likely stumbling over the clutter of their biology textbooks and boundless research papers, frantically searching for the cure for some disease that no one can actually pronounce, all the while cramming for the MCAT that’s in 912 days because they have not yet memorized every bone in the human body. I’d like to dissociate myself from that stereotype. While most aspiring pre-med students were worrying about medical school acceptance rates, I was dreading my dad’s weekly case-study reading that he absolutely had to have my opinion on. Not to mention the countless visits I made to my mother’s work Christmas parties, where the nurses were constantly dressed in their scrubs, and I mean constantly, and the food unmistakably came straight from

“Still there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I’ve slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”

I once stumbled across an anonymous quote that said, “Never forget where you come from, but strive for a place you have never been.” As I contemplated the statement’s significance, I was struck by the realization that I cannot point to one place or time in my life to find where I’m from. In the last twenty years of my life, I have lived on both the east and west coast of the United States, and shifted between all sorts of communities across the socio-economic and cultural spectrum. It is through my experiences in these places that I have learned to find strength in my loved ones, have confidence in myself, and look towards the future with anticipation.

I had only left the United States once before in my life. It was a small trip to London with my mother to visit a distant relative. It was a quick trip, maybe 3 or 4 days and I could hardly remember it because it was 12 years ago. I didn’t have much motivation to leave home again except for university. Until I got a call. On Wednesday, April 24th at exactly 3:37 pm I got a call from my aunt Kaasni. This was no ordinary phone call, as we normally had pre-organized phone calls every other Sunday evening and she hardly talked to me when I had school work. That was the deal with my parents after my father left – I could speak to my aunt who he lived with every other Sunday and on certain holidays. I picked up the phone and my father, drunk and hazy spoke. “Sasha my dear ba-ba-baby how are you,” he slurred “you know what, I think you should come spend some time with me, here in Calcutta, get a different taste of what life is like for your old man.” It took a moment for me to process what he had said – he wanted me to see him, after 15 years, he wanted me in his life again. Then I heard my auntie on the phone “Sasha? I am so sorry, your father drank a little too much. We are on holiday here and I hope he hasn’t disturbed you,” she said. “Oh no Auntie Kay, its fine,” I replied, still deep in thought. The line went silent for a moment as I heard her shush my intoxicated father while she held her palm to the phone. She picked up once again and continued apologizing until I

Life is full of discomfort. Each individual adapts to these challenges differently, growing and evolving into beautifully unique and complex human beings all across the world. How we deal with this discomfort, with the fears and challenged presented in life, shapes who we will be. When I was born, I suffered from both a heart murmur and talipes equinovarus, or clubfoot, a birth defect that turned my feet in on themselves. The early years of my life were spent in and out of surgeries, a time I know was taxing for both my parents, but for me my memories are full of idyllic rainy days in coffee shops as I grew up on Haight street in San Francisco. By the time my sister was born, three years after me, I could do (in my opinion) just about anything a normal kid could, and when we moved to Marin a year later I was proud of everything that made me who I was - I loved to draw, to collect stones and feathers, to garden and save worms and play with our dog. It wasn’t that life had been difficult and was getting better - for me, it had always been good. For me, I was better and stronger and more unique for what I had been through.

Skrt Skrt! Dust blew through the air as Kiley and I sat in complete silence. Looking around in awe, I realized we finally settled somewhere other than the gravel road we started on.. Smashed and unrecognizable, the tahoe rested in the ditch next to my dad’s cornfield. What just happened? I vaguely remember my mom’s voice telling me in the past that parents set rules for a reason and although kids usually ignore not like them, they provide boundaries to ensure everyone's best interest. Cold and scared, I sat there shivering. I concluded that in this situation if I had listened to my mom, I believe I could have prevented this trouble. I saw my life at fourteen years old flash before me on November 19, 2016. This experience will live in my memory forever.

My life, or perhaps in the manner that I perceive it, has been overwhelmingly filled with enlightening and repressive circumstances that could have been averted, but all in all, makes up one's destiny. These events intricately tailored me into a young man that grew conscientious of the detrimental behavior of “acting before thinking” and into the realm of “thinking before acting". What I would soon come to understand was that through sheer patience, and trial-and-error it instilled within me new insights to learn from and that the most triumphant moments in my life began at the crossroads of unknowingness, a decision to stay in mediocrity, or the pursuit towards personal greatness- thus the decision had to be met.

My life is full of adventures here in El Paso, where I was born and raised. A city like this is unique and different from many other cities because our city is right next to the border to Juarez Mexico, meaning the culture here can differ greatly. The city is unique and special, mainly because of the very Hispanic culture here that has taught me to love my family. The environment here that I have been raised in is based on a great deal of religion, family, and challenging work. I believe the environment I was raised in has matured me to be a hard-working brother and a student.

When I look at how different our lives were five months ago so many things run through my mind, “What could we have done differently?” “What could I have done differently?” The week of finals before the end of my junior year I wondered if bad things really do happen to good people, or if good people do bad things that put them into bad places.

The summer after freshman year, I went on a journey that completely changed my life forever and opened a whole new door to my life. My four weeks in Grenada, Nicaragua, put me in situations that not many freshmen get to experience at home. During this experience, I was able to do lots of community service, visit students at their school, play games with kids, and of course, study Spanish.

One hour later, and my life became changed forever. My loving and caring family I bonded with would no longer be the same. The long walks with my mom in the evening would soon become a distant memory. Decorating for the holidays was just around the corner and I would have to hang up the stocking on the chimney without her. The sweet, rich, chocolate brownies she made every Friday night would leave my taste buds empty. Her hugs that made me feel loved when I was sad would now be a thought in my head, and our long talks about growing up and finding my way would be cut short.