My Life Experience

For the majority of my life, I had been shy, even though it didn’t seem like it most of the time, I was scared to death when I met new people. I know that it sounds extremely trivial, but I feel that when you first meet someone, you’re ultimately giving them their first impression of yourself and that is a lot of pressure. It seemed almost certain that I would lead a life of being a social wallflower until March 2017, more specifically, March 28th, 2017. This day was and still is important to me because I learned how to be confident, and through my experience, it taught me something that I will hold onto forever. Prior to this day, I was an extremely introverted person and rarely went out of my way to make friends. As a volunteer at day

I went through a rough time period in my life. Sometimes I’m afraid to talk about it, as if I can’t accept the fact that I actually went through it. During these difficult years of my life, I suffered severely from Depression and Anxiety. I had multiple panic attacks in a day and I got to the point of having suicidal thoughts. I felt numb; everyday was a blur to me. I sincerely thought I wouldn’t make it to the age of fifteen.

On August 5th, 2012 my dad had been rushed to the hospital. The night before

To this date, it was the worst phone call of my life. I was informed my father and stepmother were in a motorcycle accident in Florida where they retired for the winter. My stepmother was expected to have a painful, long recovery, as she suffered from multiple fractures to her face, a dislocated jaw, and pelvis that was broken in 3 places, plus many small cuts and bruises. My father, however, had not awakened after the accident and we should get to the hospital in Florida as soon as possible. My brother, his wife, and I booked flights and we were on our way they next day. It was not how I expected to spend Easter. The next four days were a blur. We met with doctors and nurses and didn’t feel like we had any answers to the real condition of our father. We knew of his injuries but not what they meant to his future. He had bruising between the hemispheres of his brain, on the outside of the brain, bruising on his brainstem, and multiple open fractures on the left side of his body. I couldn’t get any of his doctors to tell me their opinion on his prognosis. They would only say, “we need another 48 hours”. The only thing I could think was, “if you knew my dad, he would hate this. You life flighted him, now he’s hook to machinery to breath, and all he would have wanted was to have the ambulance run him over and put him out of his misery”. We knew my father’s wishes and they didn’t look anything like

Throughout my entire life some of the closest people to me have either lost their lives to or are currently battling against cancer. Recently I came home from Philadelphia where I go to college and the next morning when I went downstairs to my dad immediately telling me to sit down because he had to tell me something and simultaneously my mom is sitting soundlessly next to him. An overwhelming feeling instantaneously came over me and I knew I wasn’t going to hear good news. My dad asked me, “What is multiple myeloma?” and unhesitatingly my heart sunk and broke into a million pieces. I screamed out of fear, “Who has cancer!” and my dad with a look of grief just stares at me without speaking and I turn to my mom who looks at me with a distraught face. I screamed, “Mom, do you have cancer?” and I got no answer so I screamed, “Dad, do you have cancer?” and still no answer and lastly I screamed, “Does grandma have cancer?” and still I get no answer. Terrified at this point I am begging for them to tell me and my dad says you will have never guess who was diagnosed with cancer. After guessing wrong my parents finally told me and I was left speechless. It was my uncle and he has always treated me as if I was his own daughter. I never expected to hear this news and I especially never expected something so tragic to happen to such an amazing man. After processing the news for about a week I called him and he talked to me as if nothing has changed and he was telling me, “Kajel I am

In my life I have had many significant moments that have changed the way I think. One of these moments was when my dad had almost gotten his arm cut off. When this took place, I was just five or six years old, and then I did not recognize what was going on, but I did have an idea of what was going on. This impacted my life the hardest and taught me to appreciate my dad more. What caused my dad to almost lose his arm was a forklift which my uncle was driving and my dad fell in front of the wheel and his arm got cut. He then got rushed to the emergency room where they reattached the part of his arm that had been cut. Of course it would have taken him time to recuperate from such a traumatic experience. After some time had passed, he went back

I remember being on a math class when I received a text saying I was soon going to receive an emergency call. The worst things cross my mind but nothing could ever prepare me to hear what I did. My mother called saying that my sister was under ICU because her former flu had become an odd illness in her lungs. My thoughts immediately went to my father. My younger sister had always been so close to him and I couldn’t even imagine how destroyed he might’ve felt. I was taken to a waiting room at the hospital my sister was in. The moment I arrived, I saw my father pacing back and forth from the bathroom to a chair. He was neither crying or sad but he did seem desperate as if his life was on the verge of being taken away and he was barely holding

It was a normal Saturday night. My siblings and I were watching TV. I was nine, my older brother was twelve, and my younger sister was seven. My mom was cleaning up the kitchen like she usually does. My dad was on a trip with some of his friends to Baja California to ride motorcycles. We were expecting his nightly call checking up with us, and around 8 PM the phone rang. My mom answered the phone. It wasn’t my dad, it was his boss, Dale. It wasn’t until twenty minutes later when the phone call ended, she explained to us what happened. My dad had flipped over the handlebars of his motorcycle and was paralyzed from the neck down, and this occurred 12 hours earlier. Luckily his friends were all trained in basic first aid, and one was an EMT. All

This all suddenly changed the day my dad got home early from work with a harsh pain in his lower spine. It was so bad he found it hard to sit up straight; he had to be lying down to lessen the pain. One night the pain got really bad that my mom had to rush my dad to the hospital. It was 4 in the morning! My mom rushed me and my 3 younger siblings to get ready, I didn’t know if to be scared or nervous at the fact of taking my dad to the hospital or mad because she woke us up that early. We spent countless hours at the hospital and throughout that time all kinds of thoughts came through my head. “Will my dad be okay?” My grandma came to pick us up early and took us to her house. My parents came home the next day and called everyone into the room. My dad has cancer. He had a tumor on his spine and it was cancerous, that was what was causing him all that pain. The

As I’m sitting here thinking about my life experiences and deciding what I should write about only want subject comes to mind it’s something that I haven’t talk or write about in a very long time. It's not something easy to write or talk because the emotions that come with talking or write about are so strong that I rather not mention. Here’s my life lesson. I was born in Guadalajara Mexico. I have nine siblings. my parents married at the age of fifteen and sixteen. My mom was a housewife, my dad was the bread maker. My dad was nice, funny, loving but he had a violent side. My mom was quite whatever my dad said she obeyed. When I was nine or ten years my dad decided he didn’t want us in his house, so he kicked us out. I remember coming home from my aunt’s house and it was chaos my sisters crying and packing clothes. My mom was in the kitchen cooking my sister was begging her to stop telling her that we needed to leave or else he was going to kill all of us. I walked into the living room and I see my dad sitting in the corner sharpening knife. My mom didn’t want to leave my sister was still begging suddenly my mom tells me to get my brother and my clothes. I remember running my room getting my clothes and my brother when I saw my favorite pink dress it was too big to take with me, so I hid it in the corner of the closet. My sister had managed to speak to our next-door neighbor and she allowed us to throw stuff to her house from the roof my sister knew once we left the house

“Remember that unlike you, I did not have an opportunity to finish school”, my mother always told me this to remind me of the importance of education. After her father’s death, she was forced to drop out of primary school because there was no one to pay for her education and to help take care of her mother and brother. With a less than 8th-grade education level, she worked odd jobs including, selling street foods, and currently selling second-hand shoes shipped from affluent countries in the Gikomba open-air market. She is my biggest inspiration because every day she wakes up at 4:00 am and arrives to work before 6:00 am hoping for a great day. Although working in Gikomba market does not guarantee any income, she remains determined and hardworking. Sometimes she comes home with no earned income but always carries with her a grateful heart. In Kariobangi South where I live, many people are like my mother.

Not many people can say their biggest life lesson was taught by a bus. On October 23, 2015 I was shown to never take my life for granted. Lakeside Rams football was ready to face Dequeen for the chance to win a conference championship. The intensity of game day was electrifying even though it was a humid, sultry, and rainy day we loaded the buses with our earphones in preparing ourselves for the night ahead.

As time went by, it seemed to fly faster and faster. Soon, it was the summer between my sophomore and junior years and I had an abundance of plans for how to spend my summer. One event stood out compared to all of the others. It would greatly influence my life and shape my my thoughts to the way they are today. Reminiscing on the events of my past, my journey to the glamorous mountains of Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico to hike for a week is indisputably the greatest memory of my life so far.

Since I worked and went to school, it took me six years to get through four years worth of college. I earned by BA in Literature and Writing from CSUSM in 2005. More than seven years had passed since the evening of my conversation with Rebecca. I had long since lost contact with her, and my life veered way off course from seven and a half years earlier.

And emotional breakthrough that I have experienced is, when my 93 year old grandmother had to be rushed to the hospital because, her stomach was bloated. So when my grandmother arrived at the hospital, and they took her to the back they had told us, that it was gas backed up in her stomach. Later, that day they told us that they was going to keep her overnight to see will the bloating in her stomach would go down and run test. Eventually, the next day approached and my grandmother was released. After my grandmother was released, two days later after her stomach went down, it bloated again so we took my grandmother back to the hospital. They recently told us, that my grandmother had pneumonia and it was getting really bad. Soon, that night my 93 year old grandmother had went into cardiac arrest for the first time. The doctors resuscitated my grandmother. Then, a few hours later my grandmother went into cardiac arrest for the second time, and they couldn’t bring my grandmother back. My grandmother was a fighter May 14, 2014 was the day my grandmother would never come back. My family and I were devasted, not knowing that it will be our last goodbye.