Personal Narrative-Normal Has Become The Norm

At the age of nine, I watched my uncles lowering my father into the ground and what took his life was addiction. All my life I have watched addiction take over the lives of people, I love. My father's side of the family, besides my grandparents, has always faced addiction. Although, addiction runs through my blood, I will not take the same path I have watched people take all my life. I will be the one to end the cycle. Watching the majority of my family waste their life has motivated me to change the direction and better myself from living a life of addiction and misery.

Conformity I was attending McLane High School and I was about 15 years old when I was in a situation that I wish I could of stayed out of. I had two best friends named Lesset and Laura. We were always together and new everything about one another. Well, one day my friend Lesset looked like something was wrong and she pulled me to the side during our lunch and told me that she needed to talk to me. So after school we walked together to her house and on the way there we talked when she told me a secret that was only meant for my ears only. It was something that she had done over the weekend and it involved our friend Laura’s boyfriend. She told me that she was at a party and she was drinking and that Laura’s boyfriend Rigo was there and some how they ended up sleeping together. My jaw dropped, eye wide open, and I was speech less.

In the article “The New Normal” by David Brooks, he states that there are many issues involving the national budget that need to be addressed. Brooks first exclaims that in order to begin to solve the issues, the citizens of the nation need to make it so that everyone is affected by the different cuts. Not just one group of people. The author also states that we need to trim from the elderly to invest in the young considering many schools and their programs are experiencing sizable budget cuts due to lack of funding. The final law that Brooks discussed was that government officials should, under no condition, cut without an evaluation process.

I have been living here in Crescent Valley Mobile Home Park for nearly 15 years, and I have never had problems with any neighbor. That is, until a woman moved into space #30 about two years ago. That was when the lives of my children were completely turned upside down. The aforementioned woman makes our lives seemingly impossible, and I really can’t take the stress.

The very first conversation I had with the one closest to me was an argument. I will never forget it. We were talking about our goals and ambitions in life. When I told him what I wanted to do, I just got the average “Good for you! That’s so great!” response. When he told me that after graduation he was shipping out to Army basic training to become an Airborne Combat Engineer, I didn't give the same response back.

It was a small thing, the bright green of youth. I planted it on the 3rd, in my freshman year, with the Green Thumb Club at my high school.

As my norm violation I chose to alter the way we are supposed to be dressed and look in public as society says. I walked around the marketplace in a backwards low cut shirt, backwards ripped jeans, one blue shoe, one red shoe, and a bright pink wig. First, I went into the yogurt store and everyone was staring at me with blank expressions and kids were laughing. As I walked over to get my favorite mango yogurt an old man jokingly asked if I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. I told him no, I just liked to wear my cloths this way and that this was my natural hair. After I left the store and started walking around the water fountain, girls my age were pointing, giving me dirty looks, and some were laughing as they whispered in each other’s ears. Guys my age looked confused when they

That day I walked back home from primary school is one I would never consign to oblivion (“Consign to Oblivion” is an exceptional song I would recommend). We were laughing and frolicking in painstakingly tailored school-clothes as we carried our backpacks and lunch-boxes on the dirt road. It was unbeknown to me that I would no longer see my dear friends again. As I took off my shoes and entered the dwelling, I saw my mom`s troubled face and immediately realized the severity of the situation. It took mere minutes for my parents to elucidate this predicament and devastate my six-year-old world. America? Why?

Of course the norm for me is that of any citizen living in zone three.

They called me an apple. Since I was supposedly red on the outside, but white on the inside, I was automatically a walking bullseye. Being one of the many oppressed Aboriginals, I understand their need to hurt someone else in an effort to release some of their internal pain. I understand why so many give up or turn into raging alcoholics in an effort to numb their pain. Coming from a reservation, my greatest challenge was proving to everyone that all the stereotypes about my people were fallacious. However, the need for a government and an education system that won’t keep on failing us repeatedly is imperative. The only way that I can make my voice heard is to break these stereotypes and to reach a higher education; hence my application for

Walking into the coffee shop where everyone else , including me now, confronts people in their lives and continues to discuss important topics. The decorations around me are plain and simplistic, nothing special about this place whatsoever. I wait patiently for my invite to show, mentally preparing myself for the conversation that I want to have so desperately. I think of the topics I want to bring up and the ones I want to focus on more than others. Nervously, I continue to wait and talk myself out of thinking that they wouldn’t show at all. A few minutes filled with deep breaths later, finally they’re here. I walk over to the table we agreed to meet at, and sat politely before greeting them and waiting for a response. I cleared my throat and looked at my lap, trying to refrain from saying anything I’d regret. Taking a deep breath, I tried to remain professional while addressing the topic. Finally, my attention was brought to the person seated in front of me, to the world in front of me. With all the courage I could muster I stared dead into its

I personally found trying to find a single “Social Norm” to break challenging so I chose to do two instead. The first was to end my phone calls with I love you, and to talk to a stranger in the bathroom stall next to my own. Which is how I confessed my undying love to a coworker. Working at a casino, employees have to call surveillance for anytime they move around with money or have to be escorted to the vault. I’m a pretty lively person but going into work, I started to get this bashful nature about myself especially the closer it came to performing both of the social norms I gave myself to break.

When I had first arrived at the program, I wrote to Carlos thinking that it would be worth trying to get my parents to hand off my letters to him. They did a few times. One day during group therapy, Norm paced around the outskirts of the circle we were in. He stopped, studied his feet, and crossed his arms around his back.

What’s a God and its purpose? Is he all-knowing and powerful as they say? When people describe God, why do they use masculine pronoun? Growing up, I never understood the purpose of religion, nor did I ever wanted to be involve in religious activities. I was fortune enough to be raise by an open-minded Catholic mother, who never force me to go to church nor force me to perform any religious acts. She would encourage me to attend her church’s mass, but I would always refuse because I didn’t see the point of it. I decided with this assignment of seeing other people’s perceptive on life, that I would attend mass in order to be informed about religion, specifically the Catholic religion.

It’s really hard to try and be a normal, functioning person when you’re constantly reminded of something that happened years ago. It’s hard to even try to make sense of it when your brain blocks out things it doesn’t understand. Did I consent? I don’t think so. Did I say no? I don’t remember. I felt like I said no. I don’t remember. I felt like he pressured me. It didn’t feel good. It hurt. Sometimes I can still feel it happening, which is hard to try and hide when you’re in public and you can feel the pressure of someone who was once there.