The last days of the shadows
Have you ever been in a situation where you don’t feel your world is not complete? Like you are missing something to call home? Well welcome to my world where I live two separate lives, where I am far away from home. I was born and raised in the city Oakland where people call it “the city of murder” or “baby Iraq,” but I just simply call it, “Home.” I come from a big family where I feel I am small, where I just want to curl up and feel safe in my parents’ arms. Apparently I can’t which makes me sad! I have to be strong and ready to face the world where I am alone. My parents are divorced and being raised by my mother alone is not easy, but who said it was going to be easy? I never knew in a million years that I was going to be in this situation, where my parents hated each other with each glare. It was and will be the hardest thing to go through, because with every step that I want to get as far away from this, it will always be on my mind.
When I was eight years old my parents always fought in a separate room where they thought we wouldn’t hear their bickering. Yet walls could talk, where everything was loud and clear. I would hide in my closet and close my eyes where tears would run down my face and remember the good times where everyone was happy. I would fall asleep crying, dreaming of my perfect world, far away from here. My parents then called it quits and got divorced. I was the youngest of three sisters; it was not easy for me to not have parents here with me. At school my friends would talk about their awesome weekend with their parents. I would just stay there and not say anything because I kept everything that I was feeling inside me where no one can see or hear the pain that I was going through except for myself. I was living in my own shadows where I thought that I was safe and not be harmed by anything. Everything was not the same anymore but no one understood me, so I couldn’t talk about it to any one. I felt alone for a very long time that I became a quiet kid in school and at home. If someone would ask me what was wrong I would say nothing would be wrong with me, but if you really knew I was lying and was not ok. People would say that in this type of situation kids would get into drugs or gangs since its Oakland. But I am glad to have proved them wrong because I am in this situation and I am drug and gang free because I have found a way to deal with this and I am proud of myself. My world has shaped my hopes and dreams to become a doctor or a mentor for kids who are having problems in a situation similar to mines that I have gone through and can help them out, to stay out of bad influences that surround them in their community that will harm them in the future.
One word that describes my family is strong. I believe that my family is strong because I have three older sisters that always look out for me. When my parents had gotten divorced, my mother had worked at night since that’s the only time they accepted her to work. It urged her to work as soon as possible because she had no more help from my father. So my mother took the night shift, where she worked when my sisters and I would be asleep and then she would come in the morning when we would go to school. So I hardly even saw my mom, the only time I would see her is on the weekends when she would wake up late to catch up on her sleep. I knew that this was harming my mom and her health because that’s when she got depression. Even through this we were united together to make the best of it, we were just lucky to have a mother that wanted to keep moving forward. I also had felt lucky that I had three older sisters that could understand me and what we were going through; they took care of me and had kept me on the right track. My sisters took care of me like I was their child. I was losing everything in my little perfect world. My mother gave everything she had just to have food in our fridge, a roof over our heads, and made sure that the bills were paid. My mom always told us, “The way to ever repay me is to stay out of trouble and to stay in school to pursue your dreams!” with
Everything that was going on in our lives’ we helped my around the house to feel my mom supported when she came home. This whole situation made us face a tough view of life where nothing can be as easy as it looks, and made us united and strong. I believe this because my older sister is now an assistant nurse and has a child who makes me a proud auntie which she has pursued her dreams. My other sister is now in college. She attends UC Berkeley; she has proved to be a successful scholar and warrior. My third sister attends Life Academy where she wants to be a social worker who can relate to other situation similar to ours, and she is about to go to her desired college. I am proud that all my sisters are following the right path to success, and I believe that it is my time to pursue my hopes and dreams because of my inspirations all around me, which will always be my family that inspires me to keep going and never give up.
The opportunities that have been available to me at school, is that I had the opportunity to go to Washington D.C. This was an opportunity that I just couldn’t pass. I finally thought things were turning great for me; I wasn’t this girl who was in her little world isolated away from the real world anymore. This was a huge opportunity that gave me the chance to experience responsibility and independence; it also gave me the chance to explore beyond my comfort zone. This trip to Washington D.C has made me want to explore the world even more, I believe it’s made me a stronger person and it made me realize that you don’t have to be miserable your whole life, you get to choose if you want to be have a happy person or not. I thank and always thank this opportunity that was given to me because it had taught me to grow and learn new things. This has also made me get away from all the violence from my community and experienced a new community outside of Oakland that took me out of my comfort zone. I learned that there are more things to be discovered out there, but we just have to go out there and find these things.
The major issue in my life is not having the support of my father when my sisters and I needed him in our lives’. It hurts to have a father walk out on out of your life without ever saying a simple goodbye. It hurt my heart to hear through the walls where my mother and sisters were discussing that how I don’t need to know about this at this moment. But I couldn’t just pretend that my father was not there supporting me in school and having a gaping hole in my heart. I had to tell my mom and my sisters that I knew that my father was walking on out of our lives’. Even though my dad no longer lives with us, that day my dad left he has taken a part of me that will never make me feel complete even though how hard I try to recover that missing piece, it will never be found through the coffin it’s been buried in. Now that my sisters are all grown up they don’t seem to be affected by this home situation because they have all grown to be strong about having divorced parents. I believe that it is now my time to prove myself and to everyone that I am able to also be strong from our home situation and that it has also made my family more united than ever because we are the only ones that know exactly what happened and there’s no one who can change it, also we have become more united because we will be the only ones that will understand our emptiness and also we can help each other overcome this together as a family. I am so glad that I can count on my sisters over this type of situation and that I am not alone facing the world by myself.
The result of having divorced parents is not easy, but I have learned and experienced that having divorced parents doesn’t bring you down because it actually has inspired me to do good in school and get good grades in order to get a good job and let my family know that I am stronger than ever. This has also made me become the girl I am today, it has inspired me to help others in the way my sisters helped me out one day that I needed help when I felt and didn’t know where to put my empty heart that was broken into a million pieces. I felt like a snowflake in an ocean, deep inside no one saw the real me other than myself.
I chose to address this issue because I saw the way my issue has had a huge impact on my life. But I realized that I wasn’t just the only one with a broken heart, I was being selfish because my sisters were also going through the same pain as me. And now look at them; they are pursuing their dreams like they always said they will. That’s when I realized that they are more kids out there dealing with the same issue as I did when I was eight years old. The best solution was to learn from having divorced parents and also finding who you truly are deep inside. This situation has really made me go through different phases in my life that I would never realize that I would have ever gone through, now later in the future I can say that I was once there and I have made it out alive. The best solution for me is to go to college because I want to make my family proud and most certainly my mom I want to repay my mom for all the work she has done for me and my sisters. Going to college I’ll have more knowledge to succeed better in the future with my career. With all the new things I will learn in college I’ll have a great career that I will be able to pay my mom with the best vacation for all the hard work she has done for us even though my mom says it’s nothing. My mom says this because she just wants what’s best for us because we are her world. I appreciate how my mother never lost hope on my sisters and me and it’s time for me to start believing that. I now take the cemetery drive to the right path to college and starting a bright new future for me to complete my heart.
