Our first assignment of the year for English class was to write letter to our teacher (who I'm pretty sure goes to the same hairdresser as Albert Einstein) about a "life-changing moment".
Surprisingly, I got an A! (Surprising because my teacher last year decided that I was a C student.)
So here is my letter. Feel free to laugh at my attempts to use big words.
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During my eighth grade year, things in my life began to “drop,” so to speak. My grades dropped, my energy dropped, and relationships began to crash and burn around me. Most of my experiences that year were all touched and traumatized by one life-altering enigma: my health. It was something I had always taken for granted; I never really thought about my body’s well-being other than when I had a sore throat or I was worried about catching whatever my classmate was sniffling with next to me. I had never really understood what it was like to be unhealthy and possibly never be better again. The thought was incomprehensible. People always got better, right?
But that was just my limited, fourteen year old experience. Because by the end of my junior high career, I had seen more doctors than I even knew existed, tried more medications than I could count, gotten my first-ever C grade for a quarter, had undergone surgery, and lost almost every person I had ever called a friend. Talk about a wake-up call. It was those weeks after my surgery that really got me thinking: what if things hadn’t gone as planned? A runny-nose for life wasn’t the only side-effect of a faulty incision. Things really clicked when my friends didn’t visit and soon after stopped calling me. The message was fully received when they informed me that my dull demeanor wasn’t “fun” anymore.
I was devastated. To an eighth grade girl about to enter high school, my friends were my everything. After those teary confrontations, I was terrified of entering my grade of 520 students, half of which I didn’t know, and being forced to sit alone at lunch. Call me shallow, but shock does tend to distort reality. Then there came the moment where that click! of sorts echoed through my head, and everything came into place. I was still alive for a reason. I still had a purpose. Moving forward and pressing on was my only option. Learning to cope with what had been thrown at me was the only way that I would be able to find what true purposes are intended for me to fulfill. I am a part of the world’s puzzle, and every piece counts.
For too long I wallowed in that self-pity, that loneliness. I felt like Romeo from William Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet, as his friend Benvolio asked him, “Why Romeo, art thou mad?” Romeo’s response was, “Not mad, but bound more than a madman is.” Oppressed by the ambiguous grief I had for my friends, I was a prisoner to my own damaged emotions. It was not until I had my realization that I could have been gone long ago, but I wasn’t. Here, in this materialistic, super societal, deranged money-pit of a town, I was alive, I was breathing, and I was going to be okay. There was a quote I came across while browsing one day, that has helped me remember that revelation. Said by Marty Robbins, it read, “Every day is a good day to be alive, whether the sun’s shining or not.” Though every day might not feel like a gift, I should take it. And I will.
YOU ARE READING
Long Way Home
SpiritualPart 2 of the "Contemplative Compositions" series. After "Things to Think About" but you can read them in any order! Happy reading! FanTABULOUS cover by: @silentlaughter
