Personal Narrative: Life Alive

Well this year was a hell of a year. I mean, i didn't pass any of the semesters but i did observe a ton of stuff that went on in the class. The class in general was pretty lit. Every day went by and i honestly did some work. The class was ready to learn as mrs g was ready to teach. I mean yea we had some days were we didn't want to learn anything and there were also days when mrs g didn't want to teach. But ima be honest, doing the work we did wasn't in my best interest. Most of the projects we did in class i worked on, but at the end i didn't end up liking how i did it so i wouldn't even bother turning anything in. like the obituary we had to write about ourselves. I liked the meaning behind this but honestly i didn't want to work on that because it just brought back memories of my friends that were killed.

Walking away from everything you once knew and starting over is never a picnic. Leaving Iraq, and moving to America has impacted my life more than anything. I was only 4 years old at that time, and the only English I spoke was “excuse me, water please.” My family and I did not know it then, but our lives were going to change; we would become “Americanized”. Learning English was one of the massive changes that occurred, the way I dressed (culture), and even the way I had power to go to school and educate myself.

I’d had many mini-lifelines thrown my way, none turned out to be the life-altering, ground shaking beneath me, and gates to opening up “heaven”, though. To me, I’d blame it on the different ways I came off to strangers, depends on the day, I could be a multitude of characters, but never latch onto the following of others. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted my lifeline to latch onto, the problem was, I was like a fishing net with a gaping hole--incapable of doing such things. Then, the last person I expected to, stepped up and accepted the challenge.

One essential aspect of my life is my lifestyle choice of being vegan, in which I learned more about myself and where I stand without entering a classroom. By educating myself on the effects of the meat and dairy industry to the animals, my health, and the environment, I expanded my horizons beyond the what I see on my plate. Raised in a filipino culture, meat, dairy, and fish are an significant ingredient in the cuisine. When I was younger, I’ve never been exposed to a vegan lifestyle nor have I heard of the word itself! Rather than exaggerating what I ate, I ate without a thought.

Today I'm talking a plane to south America to drop these packages off. Its calling for bad weather but the dumb pilot says, "it's okay I've done this a million times." He's cocky, he's young and looks about my age, I get on the plane and there's already problems, I don’t need to die today. I tell him "We can fly another day" "No were fine", man what's up with this guy he's in such a hurry. We take off and everything's fine so I nap and then BAM I wake up to the sounds of an alarm, the plane is crashing and there's the pilot swinging his head with his eyes closed I run up to him and tell him to control the plane and then he shoots forward hits his head on the controls, great just great I'm in a plane with a pilot that’s passed out and now he just hit the controls so now were really screwed. I run to the back of the plane and grab the life jackets and put one around him and myself. I can see the land coming into view and I'm freaking out, as I brace for impact I see the pilot and he's struggling, his ocean blue eyes bulging out of his head, and he's crying he's young around my age and I know he doesn’t want to die. I run to him and pull him off his seat and have him crouch down by me he's holding on to me and he's saying and yelling "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry" We grab five

Isaac, a student from Elk County Catholic in Saint Mary's, currently working hard to be a good practicing Catholic. I beg that you do not fall into the deep, dark sin of suicide, the price of your life is not worth all of the problems you are struggling through, suicide is the act or instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally, the Lord gave us our life as a gift, do not waste it. Remember, Christ died on the cross so that we may live. If you are considering this horrible action, imagine all of the pain and stress your family will endure, you will not just be hurting yourself, but others around you. I feel confused and angered by anyone who is even thinking about ending their life. If you are one of the struggling people

The next day passed without meat, and then a week, and as time went on my father realized I was serious. My mother had given up after her first encounter with the horrors of ‘tofurky’, deciding that maybe ‘bad energy’ added character, but I persisted to my father’s dismay. I kept this up for eighteen months, through a school year and a summer vacation, dodging my father’s attempts to sneak meat into my diet, and making it through asados with my grandparents, where the family meal consisted of three types of meat doused in a mouthwatering chimichurri, a baguette, and a tomato salad. It was on the first day of the nineteenth month that I quietly placed a slice of meat on my plate, and it was over. I was absolutely sure that my dad could not doubt my sincerity when I said I would be a vegetarian, and would hopefully know better than to doubt me

I touch up the cherry red lipstick put on earlier and dab rose blush on my cheeks. “Smashing enough,” I murmur, and open the door. The unmistakable odor of veggie burgers and red onions bombards my nostrils. The last time I ate a vegan meal was at a restaurant in West Hollywood. I was there for a birthday dinner of a friend. After my meal of vegan meat loaf, my stomach felt bloated for days. Today that can’t happen.

My childhood home was a gorgeous two story Victorian in the small rural town of LeRoy, Illinois. The 100 year old house had an empty basement cellar and an attic that over time had become home to a family of squirrels each winter. In its early days, the building was split up into two separate apartments. When the back half of the house caught fire in the 1970’s, the building was renovated and made into one home. The yard was vast and cavernous, surrounded by trees that swayed in the wind like a dancer gliding across a stage. A number of these trees were excellent for climbing as a kid. Two sets of french doors led to the family room from the deck where light seeped into the house and through the windows. In the dining room stood

It was a beautiful day that I decide to come inside and get something to munch. As I enter the room it feels like a magical kingdom inside the four walls protecting this world. It just feels like there is no other place to be around campus than here where lives seem to be alive and enjoying the company of other classmates. While walking in you just feel the positive energy everyone has around this cafeteria. In your mind you’re just thinking of what you’re going to eat and to make your stomach happy. Then the smell of the food just makes you crave more just like the snickers commercial where you are someone else because of hungry. Then I ask the chef that I wanted a cheesesteak with lettuces, tomatoes, onions and some jalapeno with an order of fries. After, few minutes I got my food and head to the cashier to pay, then I was looking for a seat to admired the lives in the cafeteria. After I found a seat in the best spot of the cafeteria I was just catching my eye on what was going on in this magical

Life is full of experiences that challenges us to use our skills differently in order to make the best of it. Some would say that collaborating and interacting with others that have different beliefs or opinions as yours is great experience. Although how is one to react when there is no other way out other than collaborating in order to make themselves comfortable. The use of one’s soft skills is the test that some would fail but it is how you perceive the situation and what someone choses to do with the opportunity at hand. Also it depicts how you will later handle other things in life.

Many years ago, I heard someone say “be true to yourself” so I quit eating meat. I had wanted to for a while, but it’s hard to go against the grain; to do other than what our culture tells us is “normal”. When I was growing up the hippies from the 60’s were still “weirdo’s” so that’s what I learned was the definition of weird. Since those weird hippies were vegetarians I didn’t want to be that. But sometimes it only takes finally listening to something we’ve heard a million times.

I was born in the North Eastern United States during the latter half of the 1970’s. The product of loving, if unadventurous, parents. The surroundings of my home were a place of great enjoyment as a child, and by my fourth or fifth year of life, no place along the street of my home was off limits. The early eighties were quite different from today, and it was very common for the children that lived all along my subdivision to roam the outdoors at all hours. During this time, exploring and at play, I felt truly alive. Every experience was new: the smell of freshly cut grass, the sound a basketball made during a game of “hoops”, car rides in my

I long to be free. To be free from the metal chains that hold me down. To be free from the whispering as I descend into my empty slumber. My heart couldn’t handle the pain of the immortal whispers and figures that popped up here and there trying to help or drag me with them.

I was a free man until I became a vegetarian. A full breadth of nature’s most caloric offerings had been open to me, sucking me in like a black hole. Now I found myself wishing my veggie burger didn’t have to come with so many... veggies on it. Of course, eating vegetables was still a kinder fate than what my uncle had gone through. [XC] My friends had joked that I had no dedication to cross country, and at that point I’d almost felt disgusted with myself. I had to make a change.