Personal Narrative: My Shift

Starting over. Those two simple words pretty much sum up where I am at in my life at the moment. I am a 34 year old mother of three. I have never been to college. My husband just recently left me. It has been a whirlwind summer to say the least, but before I get into what brought me back to school, I'll start at the beginning. I was born in FL., and quite literally spent all my time either at the beach or running bare foot on my grandparents farm. I loved every second. Shortly after I turned 8 my mom met my step-dad, and we were quickly headed on our first big adventure, moving to Texas! While I missed my family in FL., I can not tell you enough how happy I was that my mom married my dad. He has been a rock and solid foundation for me my whole

”Yes, I think that it would be in our best interest after what with your father.”

Pure desperation is vomiting behind public dumpsters, or stealing laxatives from Target; it is shoving food into your pockets and your hair, hoping no one witnessed you scraping the butter from you slice of toast, storing the excess behind your fingernails. It is wearing ankle weights to yearly physicals, donating blood to “shed a few quick pounds”, and bringing plastic sandwich bags to Thanksgiving dinner to avoid eating the beautifully prepared meal. I was ten years old when I read that I could eat whatever I wanted without gaining weight, permitted that I was willing to carry a toothbrush around in my bag. Little did I know at the time that my playing with such dangerous behavior would then lead to my brain waging war against my body, a series of battles that I would consistently lose over the course of the next nine years.

In my eighteen years of life of this planet—soon to be nineteen—I had only Shifted once on purpose. The first time was when I was ten—three years after I had settled into the body I had now—and my oldest brother, Adrian, had just been shipped off to fight in Arden. It was the same war my father had died in only months before hand, so our family had been a tad bit uneasy about his departure.

Addie and I stood in the entrance of the cafe as the rain dripped down the overhang and down the brown and red sign that read Addie’s Cafe. It seemed like it was one of those normal rainy days in Wyoming but it wasn’t. Addie’s my aunt, she took me in when my mother couldn’t and she’s amazingly generous, so you’d think over the few years everything got better, and so did I but it seemed things were only getting worse.

Summer: the season of ice cream, beaches, air-conditioned cinemas, and 30 lb cardboard boxes full of clothes and books. By the fourth quarter of my sophomore year, I could envision the rest of my high school life unfold as if flipping through a scrapbook brimming with photographs and jotted captions. A rising upperclassmen, I had full conviction that by 2018, I would play varsity doubles tennis, attend Naugy Prom, and graduate alongside the 250 people I had known since middle school, some even from kindergarten. Naugatuck, CT had been my home for all 16 years of my life—and despite hopping from apartment to house when I was 5, I couldn’t fathom changing towns, much less before I departed for college.

It was a bright and sunny day on June 3, 1995. Such a good day that I was in the mood to become something different, something that no one would expect to become, but what I had in mind wasn’t what I was hoping for. It was nice out and Brandon and I had some unfinished business we needed to take care of. We got mad at each other earlier that day, got into a big fight and ended up messing up moms’ big day. On top of that, he blamed the whole thing on me which I can never forgive him for, but I can also never forget what happened to Brandon.

People take many things for granted that they will never even realize. Like kids take for granted how their life is while they are young and assume it will always be that way, or how people thing they will always live in the same house and then are not prepared to move. Never take what you have for granted is something you always tell yourself, but most of the time other things are on your mind over thinking about what you have while you have it. I was one of those people that didn’t realize what they had till it was gone.

My Mom and I are on our way home on a late Sunday afternoon from shopping and soon getting ready for a great family dinner. We call my grandparents, “Hello! How are you doing honey?” They say to my mother as they don’t know I’m in the car and listening.

Moving on, again westward, I was looking for a panel that I'd wanted to find for several years. I had written down clues I found in blog posts and forum trip reports, looked at maps for likely places and spent far too much time on Google Earth. I was pretty confident this time. The dogs and I started off up the steep slope to where I thought it was, this asthmatic flatlander and her flatlander dogs sucking wind as we went. After a bit of searching, I decided I was thwarted again, which was fine - the view was pretty fantastic and it gave me another reason to visit the area and explore more next

It was a Wednesday afternoon, I was a Hostess at John Cutter’s Steakhouse in Las Vegas, Nevada. This had been my job for the past couple months since I had quit working at my first job. It was slow and quiet that day, the door was right next to the Hostess stand like most restaurants and all I heard was a family eating and discussing something uninteresting on the patio outside. My boyfriend got me that job; it made pretty good money for a 17-year-old. It was summer of 2015, July to be exact. Everything seemed content and I was happy at that moment, little did I know that was all going to change very soon.

Waking up at five in the morning is not enjoyable for most fourteen-year-olds, but for seven months, I gladly rose to the squabble of chickens who wanted their morning meal. I grew up as the youngest, with two older sisters whom I idolized. Because of my siblings, I was automatically deemed childish and had little responsibility given to me. Arriving as a surprise christmas gift, thirteen two-day-old chicks left me speechless when they appeared at my house. I was thrown head first into guardianship and had real responsibility for the first time in my life as I became the sole caretaker of thirteen chicks.

Imagine always having to move every other year. For some people that are outgoing, it would be fun people they get to meet a lot of new people. For people like me, the quiet ones, it's a different story. I’m more of a quiet person and I feel that it's because I've never really talked to people because I’ve moved so much.

so, right now i am sitting on my 900-1000 dollar comupter typing this to you. I hope we grauated, and i know we will. Right now, I'm listening to "Daft Labeouf - Harder, Better, Faster, Do it" kinda modivational. Anyhow, i im getting alright grades, and im fairly happy right now, grant left a while ago, around 12:30 i think. i've been palying cs:go and ive been getting better at it. so, now for my dreams. I hope in the near future i have a allright house and i am happy. It doesn't haft to be a fancyass house with lots of 1000-10000 dollar things in it, it just hast to be a place that it comfy and i have privacy in. i hope that we have money to go and spend and be happy with. i hope we also still play games. sometimes i worry

As I approach graduation I have been able to reflect upon the people in my life that have supported and influenced me over the past four years. The people who have been most influential in these past four years are my dad, my boss, and my eighth grade math teacher. My dad taught me to be hard working, my boss taught me to be adaptable, and my eighth grade math teacher taught me how to be organized. Although my dad has taught me to be hardworking these past four years I have learned a lot for myself.