Personal Narrative: The Events That Changed My Life

Until I walked onto the stage to take a bow, I didn’t realize that I just danced, acted and sang a solo. It took me a long time to get to that fifth grade Christmas play where I wasn’t shy anymore. Due to the fact that I wasn’t Darth Vader anymore, so I didn’t need a mask strapped onto my face to breathe at night. Asthma, respirators and surgeries were what my childhood consisted of and I would have time to, at most, socialize with my family. Years after my final surgery, my currently bubbly-self erupted from within and many of my friends never knew how I was before.

The obstacle that I had, stopped me from being happy, or living the life that I wanted to live. Being alone, antisocial, and other obstacles that I had, blocked me from being happy and instead lead me into a life where I did not know what to do. Sometimes an obstacle is nothing physical like a barrier or some force, for me it was mental warfare that I had with myself for years that I still deal with to this day. Conflicting with yourself is just as bad as someone else or an object because you have to deal with the fact that you did this all to yourself, you can’t give anyone else the blame. That however, could lead to even more mental warfare in your own head, especially if you are very defiant to take blame like I am.

When I was 13 years old, my parents started to think about moving to United States because my dad was already working here for a company. We started all the immigration related process which took a while to end. When I was 14, one day I came back from school and my parents told me we were moving to US in 2-3 months. When I heard it first, I was happy, but later I started thinking about how I will be leaving everything behind. My family, friends and neighbors whom I have been with since I was little, I will be leaving all of them in a few months. As the date approached closer, we started to pack more and more things. There was

I just pulled in the drive way from a long weekend vacation. I unlock the trunk and find that my bags are not in there. Did I leave them at my hotel or the airport I thought to myself. Well I guess I'm heading back to the airport and see if they're there. I jumped into my small blue car and drove off. What I didn't notice whenever I left was my side door to my house was slightly open. I guess I'll deal with that when I get back home. I drove for at least an hour when I felt something shake underneath my car. I couldn't stop, I was in the middle of the highway at this point. I decided to keep going, I was almost to the airport. About 15 minutes later I arrived at the airport terrified what was underneath my car.

Things aren't always what they seem. There's always something or a reason to why things happen. I believe this situation was one of them. The end of the school year was over for most of my friends, but I still had one month left. I had one more month left of work,projects, and assignments. Personally to me it wasn’t really a pain in the butt, simply because it would help me out a lot and I would also be ahead of my new classmates. The dedication and time I put into my last month of school was something that my teachers thought should be rewarded. We were warned that there was a camping trip coming, and ahead of time i had already planned to to not attend, simply because of my lack of confidence and insecurity. I was always that kid that would like to be alone and rather sleep. I would not even socialize unless I knew who that person was, most of the time it was my friends and family. That was simply how i was and that was my way of living.

I would say distraction was one of the challenges I had to overcome to get where I am today. My friends, relationships, staying up late, watching television or doing something else rather than doing my work, would always back track me even if I thought “I’ll be okay” and just catch back up; it’s not that easy. I use to focus so much on other people in my life, I’d forget about myself and what’s best for me. When I was in the middle school, I would get so distracted by my cell phone, my mom would have a restriction on it so that I couldn’t send or receive text within school hours. Nevertheless, I didn’t understand, but now I see where it could hurt my grades.

January 14, 1997: Immigrating to Canada from Jordan and settling down in the city of Halifax as a child dramatically changed my life. As I grew older, I started to question the purpose behind immigrating to Canada. After seeing my parents’ daily struggles to provide the best living conditions, I began to understand the motivation behind the move that forever changed my life. The immigration to Canada promised a brighter future. Wrapped around this reviving realization, I began to elevate myself out of loneliness, helplessness, and discomfort. This led me to my greatest accomplishment where I achieved my undergraduate degree of finance at the age of 19. Being young has always been an underestimation of my abilities and determination. I believe that age does not define or limit our capabilities, yet it is the mind that defines our age.

There were many behaviors that I could have chosen that I need to work on to better my life, such as procrastinating less, sleeping more, or stop chewing my nails, which were all rejected because I chose the more important topic to me, I chose to be more healthy and lose 15 pounds. I chose this because I was not participating in any aerobic activity, was only lifting weights 2 times a week, and need to be in shape for next years basketball season. I designed my project so that I can get the easy stuff under my belt and in the schedule then I add the things that are harder for me so that is all I have to worry about.

Even the smallest events can have the biggest impacts on a person’s life. These are some events that have impacted my life greatly. The first impact on my life was my parents telling me they were going to have my little sister. The next event that impacted me was my parents getting their second divorce. And the last event is my mom getting engaged to my soon to be step dad Dave.

My dad left my mom the responsibility of two very young girls. That has probably been the biggest impact on my life, because everyone tells me they are a daddy's girl and their dad bought them this and that. My dad was in and out of jail while he was gone. Then when I was eight everything sorta changed my dad called us and got in contact. We didn't live with them or go over at all but he would always come to visit me. Months passed and we were going there every other weekend. Things were going really good for us, my mom and dad were getting along and stopped arguing, my dad had remarried and so had my mom. We were all a big happy family, or so we thought… Things started to get bad again and my parents got into a big fight, things were said, things were done, and no one had gotten over it. Now again my dad is gone. No calls. No message. He just does not care i guess by this time he has two kids and does not need his three others. You could only imagine how heartbroken and torn “daddy’s little girl” could be at this

There have been a lot of experiences that have defined me and fundamentally changed who I am, whether it metastasized into negativity or cultivated itself into positivity, it drove my core until the very present. Even as I continue to grow, I find myself constantly being challenged in different aptitudes, fighting against forces consciously unknown to me as a child. One experience in particular that I remember, was when I was younger I had been bullied quite a bit. It was actually several racist remarks that had made me cry home to my father, whom was no help to me at all. At the time, I would like to think I knew what racism was. I knew the idea, the concept, and that that concept had rejected my being as something not equal to those who chastised

I was fifteen and in the fifth grade. I had been homeschooled until I was approximately thirteen years of age when we moved to a different house and stopped school altogether. When I was 10, my mother stopped teaching my brother and I through books and made us use computers to do all of our learning instead. I was not very happy with the change because it was much more difficult to learn without anyone to actually teach a lesson. We did our work on the computer and taught ourselves for a few months until we had some of our family move in with us. They were a bit of a distraction to my brother and I during the times that we were trying to do our work. My mother saw this and chose to put our education on hold until they had moved out that way, it wouldn't affect our grades anymore.

I drove my father to a Vietnamese auto-repair shop to ask for an estimate on his car repairs. The response was not one we expected and my dad didn’t have enough for the car replacements. “Dad, I’ve some savings from years back if you need it.” Despite my offer, my dad couldn't cover the rest of the cost and was forced to sell his car instead.

In the fall of 2015 I reunited with my on-again off-again relationship with running. At the same time I started doing boot camp classes which I had never tried before. I’m not sure if it was an improper box jump or a wrong step down the road, but I began to notice my knee clicking when I walked up the stairs. After waiting (probably a little too long) I decided to go to my doctor because the clicking wasn’t going away. The ultrasound showed fluid on the knee, also known as prepatellar bursitis. She said it shouldn’t take long to heal as long as I rest and ice my knee as well as avoid doing any strenuous weight bearing activities such as “jumping around” or kneeling. As a yoga teacher it was hard to avoid doing any type of kneeling but I stopped running and going to

My story begins with the return to my hometown and birthplace; Marietta Georgia. In the last couple of months of my eighth grade year my family returned to Georgia, before that, we lived in Jersey City, New Jersey and even before that we lived in Dubuque, Iowa. It was exciting time, however, there storm clouds on horizon. During this time my eldest sister was diagnosed with Lupus, an autoimmune disease where your white blood cells attack your own body. My sister suffered from many symptoms caused by her illness including a stroke that forced her take a year off of college. Being with her, supporting her, watching the physicians and the way they worked, and my natural love for biology lead me to look into the medical field. My high school career