The Great Adventures - Original Writing

I saw my father, young and determined, working at the crack of dawn in the brickyard, while my mother stayed home to childproof their small apartment. Using the potent mixture of caffeine and chemicals contained in Mountain Dew, he was able to resist the urge to doze off during his daily classes. I saw myself running around the large oak tree that dwarfed our first house, and couldn’t help but smile as I thought about my mom, pregnant with my sister, walking me to the library to play with the puppets and pick up books about my favorite dinosaurs. I saw the terrifying night that the oak tree was stuck by lightning, and heard my mothers voice over the phone at school, eagerly telling me about my new baby brother. My stream of consciousness was broken as we entered the scorching area where they bake the bricks, but I quickly zoned out again as my grandpa began to explain the technical aspects of brickmaking. This time, the memories took place in a new house, as our cozy home had turned claustrophobic with the addition of a fifth member. Quiet walks to the library were replaced with chaotic days at the pool. The cards began to pick up speed, as I got deeper into my life. The dark years of middle school, when my hair covered my eyes and I

“Times of transition are strenuous, but I love them. They are an opportunity to purge, rethink priorities, and be intentional about new habits. We can make our new normal any way we want”. -Kristin Armstrong. When I heard this quote it reminds me of a specific time in my life when I moved to another country. There are a couple of events that helped me become who I am now.

As I looked up, the sky was dark the sidewalk illuminated by the streetlights. The sound of crickets and cars echoing through my ears. I walked home that night, tears in my eyes. I was leaving, I couldn’t handle it anymore. The meds, doctors, psychiatrists nothing was working, our lives were in constant danger. By the time I got home the car was gone. By the time, I finished packing it was dawn. The sun creeping in through the shutters. For the next couple of days, I crashed at Jason’s before I headed South. I heard my cell ringing, it was mom… I let it go to voicemail.

There are many significant parts of my life that have had a huge impact on my personality, but there is one that has not only affected me, but has changed me for the better. My personal life changing experience was coming to America. For me, this bridge between my old life and new life is a shaky bridge that I attempted to cross and entered a whole new realm of life which changed everything. The decision about coming to America has taught me how to respect other people, be more responsible, and be more loving towards various friends and families. It has also helped me adapt to the new life that I’m about to begin. It was so unexpected. Out of nowhere my parents broke the news: “We’re going to America!” Living in a big town of Bhopal,

After a long ride, we saw our new home for the first time. It wasn’t luxurious, but to a couple of young children like us it was cool to live on the beach. The changes that lied ahead of us were great. There are many ways in which this new start changed my life. First, no longer did we live in fear. This enabled me to move on. I enrolled in eight grade that year. I felt like had a fresh start. No one knew my business. I could make myself whatever I wanted. My whole personality changed. That year I started at quarterback for junior high and from there everything started to look up. If I was to go into details of all the success I had it would be bragging, so I am just going to say I went from a casualty of a broken home to a respected and important part of High Island High School. In the five years I was there, I had more fun and a more productive life than all the other years put together.

I remember falling asleep, but I don’t remember being in a bed. I had fallen asleep in the hall due to my emotional state. My body didn’t need the sleep. My mind did. I’m actually happy I did. It got my mind off all my problems and sorrows for a good while. I sit up, pushing the unfamiliar blankets off my body. I’m in a strange hard bed in a foreign room. Everything around me feels new and alien. This isn’t my dull little prison. This room is slightly decorated with light brown walls and a dresser covered with random things.

Night, with mum and dad huddled on either side of the kitchen table, scribbling on pads of paper, and dad punching in sums on the calculator with his clumsy, blunt fingers. Night, with long discussions in low voices that stopped if we into the room. Night, dad with a fresh beer at his elbow and an empty on the floor beside him, holding onto a flake of chocolate like a cigar, twirling the thing between his thumb and forefinger, crunching onto it and shards flying everywhere. Night, when Mum and Dad had sank what was left of the insurance money and all their savings into a little old town house and a car franchise, signing all the leases, contracts, papers. Night, when Dad was his own boss, answering to no one. And overnight, when the journey abruptly turned its direction. Down in town, a high speed railway station had emerged. But dad couldn’t go anywhere, he was trapped by the crossroads. Juggled a few part time jobs, handy work around town limping in pain. No more notions of independence. All he could do was try his best to make it work. And he did. We even did some paper runs with

Before my eyelids blazed eighteen candles as family and friends chimed Las Mananitas around my twin sister and I. Cheers and chants from all sides, as my cousin yells out, “Make a wish!” My eyes shut and I repeated the wish I had for the last three years. Taking a deep breath in, I wish to change whispered from the recesses of my mind. My teen years were difficult on myself confidence. I cannot pinpoint the moment I stopped liking the person I was, and became obsessed with becoming someone other than myself. I searched for communities throughout high school hoping they would be my catalyst with no avail. As I entered college, I hoped Los Angeles would be my place of transformation, but adjusting to my new college environment proved challenging and as the semester wore on my wish became a faint memory.

A morbid melancholy stole over me. Anxiety gnawed at my heart. I was a living corpse. There was a feeling of chill in the air every day as I felt. I faked illness so as not to go to school. Despair hangs heavy in the stifling air. It was a dreary day for me , cold and without sunshine. I dread people and always avoid people. The door was locked from the inside. A cold grey light crept under the curtains. The windows were secured with locks and bars. The room felt cold and sterile.The flowers faded for want of water. A single lamp was suspended from the ceiling. The clock ticked louder and louder in a quiet room. I regarded the room as a refuge from the outside

Crumpled newspapers scattered the table like the bones of dead bodies after war. Windows wiped down of memories huddled between oak frames, facing a street with cosy cottages. Single embroidered carpets hugged the floor, covering the marble tiles in delicate silk. A whisper of wind floated in through cracks of the panes of glass, whispering it's songs of misery throughout the house. I breathed in gulps of air, allowing the icy coolness to fill my lungs, and the morning frost creep out. My glistening blue eyes presented purple bags, and my sleek hair was a tangled cobweb. My feet dragged along the stone floor like the walking of the undead. I’d been up all night, searching and seeking for answers.

I sat in the common area as the other patients colored and played cards. What they were doing didn’t really matter to me, I just wanted to be alone. I’d always feel like I was drowning, so it came to me as a surprise to me when the nurses told me that if I were breathing, I was winning. At night I’d lay on the blue plastic mattress and miss my room and everything it stood for. The blue lights that are strung along my bed, illuminate my nights. The pictures of the one I love line my walls, they are the barrier that protects me from the rest of the world. The blue plastic mattress draped in thin white sheets stood for the cold empty feeling I couldn’t get rid of. My nights were full of my thoughts bombarding my

As I listened for the constant scuffling of rats scampering around in the rusty pipes, I tried counting to ten. In the darkness, I went in and out of consciousness, images of my mother and father replaying behind my lids. After a while, I drifted off to a half-conscious sleep riddled with jolts of fear and pangs of hunger. I could no longer close my eyes without seeing the nightmares that have plagued me since I was young.

A life-changing event is not something to be taken lightly. Throughout our lives, we encounter many obstacles and changes, some of which bring us joy and excitement, others of which may be hard for us to handle. When I look back on my relatively short life, it may, at first, be hard for me to think of an event that has truly molded and shaped the person that I am today. I have encountered several changes, but at the time, they felt like mere speed bumps along my path. Looking back now, it is easy for me to see that these changes were not by chance, but were placed in my path to form the person that I am today.

Looming in front of me was something new, a fresh start. Despite being this, it seemed cold and trying, something that sent shivers down my spine. Mixed emotions of uncertainty and optimism had filled my first day of middle school; and as my final year is drawing to a close, I realize that this place-this transitional time in my life- is something that I never want to leave. I created a home away from home, and a family, over the short three years spent learning here. Each school year, from first to concluding, brought new experiences in which have altered my life. These are the things that I am hoping to carry over into high school-my next chapter. Every experience in which middle school has brought leaves me changed indefinitely, shaped for the future ahead.

It was 2016, and I was finally a senior in high school. Being a senior in high school was something that I had dreamed of since my early middle school days, and at last, I was there. It was the last year in one of my least favorite environments, and I couldn’t wait to graduate and move away from the only place I had ever known. I had lived in the same town for seventeen years, and I had gone to the same school with the same people for thirteen years. I was looking forward to something new in my life. I was most excited for my senior year because it was the year that I was going to choose where I wanted to move away to and what school I wanted to spend the next four years of my life at. As the year moved along, I slowly realized that I wasn’t moving away and that I’d be staying home to attend college, which was one of the most difficult decisions that I ever had to make.