32Q: Nobody truly knows what life is until you lose it. I am celebrating 3 things that happened this year here they are. The first thing I'm celebrating is how I passed all of my classes this year. Since about 3rd grade I have struggled with school really badly. I haven’t had the determination to do well in school for a while now and that's mostly because I don’t enjoy it at all. I haven’t really enjoyed doing much since my parents got divorced. When my parents were together I had chances to do things but now I don’t really care about much. It's really hard for me to deal with school because I don’t really have any support at home. Last year I failed humanities and math both semesters and had to do summer school. This year for me has been my favorite year of school ever. I don’t think I would have passed if I didn’t have the teachers I have. Shane has helped me so much and inspired me to try in class. My grades still aren't the best but I am really glad I passed all of my classes. For most of this semester I had an A in humanities which wasn’t normal for me. Even though I passed all my classes I still feel like I failed my mom. I've had some moments this year where I was failing and I accepted I wouldn’t pass. For example in intro to engineering I had an F for most of the year but recently I got the determination and I passed that class. I absolutely loved every single one of my teachers this year and that is definitely why I passed because I felt like I could with the support from them.
The second thing I am celebrating is getting a car. I have had to get myself places since 6th grade neither of my parents have time to pick me up or drop me off unless it's after 6:00. My mom works from 8:00 until 5:30 so I don’t really have any way to be taken anywhere. My dad works for weeks straight when I go to his house he is there but he leaves the night before I go back to my moms he can give me rides but it's just easier for me to ride the bus. The only thing is that I have no way of doing anything over the weekend or after school. At my mom's house, I have to find a ride from someone else everyday or i'm going to have to walk home -which sucks for me because I live 5 miles away from school. When I have my license my goal is to make my friends lives and whoever else who needs a ride easier. I'm not planning on spending much time at home when I get my license because I don’t really feel like I belong. My brother is the smartest kid I know. He will do great things, he is very different from me, he is more like my mom. It's easier for her to take him places because all of his stuff is just closer. I have accepted the fact that I don’t really belong at my mom’s house and that is why I won’t be home much. My step brother Ty has epilepsy and he can't read or write so it's hard for him to get a job. He spends most of his time at home because our parents work a ton. When I get my license I am going to help him get a job and let him experience the world instead of just sitting at home.
The third thing I am celebrating is how much I have grown socially. In every year of school I've had other than last year I have been very, very, shy. I never hung out with people I barely even talked to people. I have pretty bad stage fright now but it was way worse 2 years ago. I had to present a clay model I made to my class in 6th grade, when I started presenting I froze and didn’t say anything. I felt really bad about that because I felt like I couldn’t do anything. That's when I started struggling with depression and anxiety. I went downhill pretty fast socially and mentally I hung out with the kids who did drugs and made bad choices that's when I started to realize I wasn’t very intelligent and that I was going to make some bad choices. It was really hard for me to get out of that because I wasn’t able to talk to anyone else. That let me down a path that ended up in me getting suspended multiple times for making bad choices. After 6th grade I switched schools from miller to mountain. Mountain was horrible for me. I did awful in all of my classes and I had no friends. I was in a really bad place and I didn’t think I was gonna make it. I was not only an outcast at school but I was at home too. In 7th grade I started getting along really well with my dad and stepmom and that really helped me because I had some positive in my life. But my dad had a different job at the time, where he was gone even more than he is now. I didn’t really know what to do with my life because I wasn’t good at anything. Then I met my friend Owen Isenberg, he is in 9th grade this year. I had nothing but I started developing a good relationship with him but he was still my only friend and we didn’t hang out much. In 8th grade, I started becoming friends with Nick Brieger and that's when I realized how easy it is to talk to people. I started becoming more social even though I was horrible at it. In 9th grade, I met the friend group I’m still in now, even though I wasn’t really in the group I still started to become friends with them. I started becoming easier to talk to and I realized I scared people. This year I'm not really scared of anything other than I do still have stage fright but it's not as bad. It's really hard for me to create things I will present because I'm not one bit creative, it's really hard for me to be an interesting person, but my friends have seriously helped me with that because they are all the most creative people I know.
Areas of Growth: My first area of growth would be for me to be more happy. I have struggled with depression since 6th grade and nothing helps it. I feel like I will be more happy when I get my licence because I won’t be dragging people down. I understand why my mom doesn’t like me very much and that's because I'm always down or failing a class. It's really hard to have divorced parents that despise of each other cause i'm right in the middle of all of it. All the fights they have and all the times they go to court it's because of my actions. I have caused a lot of pain to my parents because I don’t know how to make them happy. I don’t like having my mom come to things like exhibitions or POLs because after every presentation she is always really disappointed… but that's because I never live up to her expectations. I thought getting all my grades up would make my mom happy but she didn’t really care. That's why I think that it will be better when I'm not home very much because then I can’t cause problems. I have almost caused my mom and her boyfriend to break up multiple times, we don’t like eachother very much. I almost got kicked out of my house about a month ago because I caused them to have another fight that almost caused her boyfriend to leave. I can’t control my anger when things like this happen, I think that's the main reason I shouldn’t spend much time at home. The first time I tried to commit suicide I tried to think of things to make me stop and give me the small ounce of happiness I needed to make it another day but all I could think of is how often I make my mom cry or how many fights i've caused, it reminded me of the constant yelling and the feeling of hopelessness. The only reason I made it is because my dad opened the door. When he got upstairs I just acted like I was cleaning my room nobody knows about this moment in my life, it's too hard for me to talk about the moments in my life like this one. I am not like other people I don’t know how to change or be happy. I have some moments that are great but the sadness and disappointment never go away even if i'm in a good place, I'm truly not. I am very different then my mom and when I get blamed for things I didn’t do or when my brother gets spoiled which is a lot I can’t control myself I just lose it. I don’t ask for much anymore because it just causes problems. I need to get a job with long hours so I have a reason not to be home and so I can give my family some space from me. My parents like to blame each other for why they can't get along or they blame my step parents but I have realized that that’s not why -it's because I have anger problems and I say stupid things. I don’t want my little brother to look up to me because he is way smarter than me and he has potential to get into a good college and be very successful. I feel like when I move out my life will get a whole lot better because I won’t have to deal with the guilt of causing pain to people I love.
My second area of growth would be controlling my anger. I can lose my shit pretty easily. It's hard for me because most of the times I get mad. It's because I think I didn’t do something or I'm doing something right but someone tells me I'm doing something wrong. When i'm driving with my mom it's especially hard because sometimes I make a mistake and she will freak out on me even if it's not bad at all. I usually get mad because my mom blames me for something I didn’t do. Usually when something goes missing or something gets broken or lost my mom goes straight to blaming me. I wouldn’t say I have anger issues, I just yell sometimes and it's not a good thing. I say really stupid things when I'm angry for example my step mom put a oak brush I cut down on my bed and I called her a fucking bitch behind her back but she heard and I got in a lot of trouble I felt like I deserved to die. I like to be alone a lot because then I won’t cause any anger or yelling that's why I don’t really hang out with friends on the weekends or spend a lot of time asking to do things. It's hard for me not to act out if I get in trouble for something I didn’t do but that's what it is. I don’t mean to but sometimes I break stuff when I'm mad. I accidentally punched a hole through my door because my mom called me a failure but that's because I was failing all my classes and not doing my summer school. I make a lot of stupid mistakes that can easily be avoided because I don’t think. Sometimes I will say that I want to go to my dad’s full time but the reality is I have even less support over there and I don’t even have anything to get my school work done. I don’t want to become a person who is barely making it day to day but sometimes it seems like the only way out and sometimes it feels like there is no way out. I want to make it but I still can't see that light at the end of the tunnel. People think they know me but the reality is nobody knows me.