Life is a funny thing. Sometimes it treats you like the king of the world, or the insignificant loser on the street corner. Either way life is unpredictable, uncontrollable and undeniably great. Still our lives differ from everyone else’s, if they did not we would all just be carbon copies of one person. Our life experiences affect the way we act, who we are, and the conflicts that affect us. For me life has thrown some interesting things my way.


Throughout our childhood my brother and me had a pet, we just never really paid any attention to it. We had a cat that really did not pay attention to us, so we paid it no mind. About two years ago, he got sick. Suddenly he was no longer just the cat who sat there and did nothing; he was our sick and dying best friend. Eventually, his illness got the best of him; he passed about a week after Christmas.


Before the death of my beloved cat, I started school. Being the first born the school experience was something I really did not know about. So the first day of kindergarten I eagerly await the greatness of school, so decrypted on television, my brother waiting for me to come back to tell him of the unknown. With in the first couple of days they had us take a hearing test, my parents thought nothing of it, an ordinary school procedure, nothing to worry about. A couple of days after I took the test my parents got a call; I was almost completely deaf in one ear. My Mom cried for weeks, but I really do not remember that. What I remember was the hearing test my Mom made me take. My Mom took me to the hospital; she kept telling me that everything was going to be okay that I would not have to worry about anything. After a long agonizing wait in the lobby, I was ready to move, when they called my name I was almost ecstatic that I finally did not have to keep sitting calmly in the stuffy oversized chair. A woman walked us down a hall into a room. Inside the room was another smaller room, which the woman took my hand and pulled me into the smaller room. The room had all white walls with a whole bunch of little holes in it. It had tons of wires crisscrossing across the floor connecting buttons or headphones to a box. The woman smiled at me leading me to a swivel computer chair. After I had sat down, the woman placed large headphones over my ears, the headphones put pressure on my head making my eyes water and blood pulse through the temples of my forehead. The woman smiled, and walked outside, my Mom gave one feeble wave as the woman closed the door. I could not hear anything from the outside world; the only thing audible was my own heavy breathing. All of the sudden, the headphones crackled to life the woman now sat across from me, I could see her through a window that separated me from her. She told me that I would hear a slight buzzing in my right ear, slight was an understatement. A sound of radio static filled my ear, it was if someone had put the radio up to my head and turned it on full blast. She then told me that I was to press the button when I heard the ping sound. The test continued, but finally the woman got up and the peaceful silence returned. I sat there for about a minute. Until, finally, the woman opened the door and took off the oversized headphones. I walked out with my Mom my head swimming with pain and the aftershock of the radio static. Turns out, that I am nearly deaf in one ear; this means that every year I have to wait in the lobby and take the head ache making hearing test. In addition, I have to sit up front in every one of my classes, cannot go to any loud concerts, listen to music to loud or join the army.


In first grade, after my hearing discovery, I had tons of friends. We goofed off and talked, a lot. In second grade, they had all moved away, a cruel act of destiny. I was left alone wandering the playground wanting for some one to reach out, they did not. Through the years, I gradually became more reclusive and stopped interacting with those my age. My parents did nothing at first, but slowly they saw it did affect me. Their first tactic to overthrow my shyness was girl scouts, but that did not help. I became isolated within the troop, I was the new girl they did not want anything to do with me. When I was in fourth grade my parents hit their mecca of embarrassing ideas, they were sending me to therapy. At first, it was interesting, just me and some woman who talked a lot, about how I was ruining my life, blah, blah and blah. I did not care what she thought I was happy with who I was. Sadly, she suggested to my parents group therapy, but the shyness group was full so she said I should join the group that was afraid to do something to a point where their lives were completely interrupted. My parents agreed, so once a week I was to attend a group therapy. The first meeting I thought that I would meet people who had fallen off a cliff or been kidnapped and were so messed up that they could not function properly. I was completely wrong, these kids were nuts. One girl pulled out all her eyelashes, another boy could not even look at a spider in a book with out freaking out. Sadly, I found my self isolated even in this bunch of weirdoes of the third kind; they did not talk to me because, unlike them, I did not start foaming at the mouth when I saw a spider on the wall. In fact, I am quit brave, exception of heights, I have ridden some fairly large roller coasters and I love to be scared. Eventually my parents gave into my pleas that I did not need therapy, and so I stopped going. I did take something out of therapy my self-esteem skyrocketed. I was no longer the weirdest person that I knew.


After my mishap with therapy, I entered junior high. Unexpectedly, I began to break my shyness shell. In eighth grade, I had a group of great friends, weird ones, but great ones. Junior high was awesome it made up for all my bad years of elementary school. However, with great friends comes a great price. Halfway through my graduating year, my cat died; about two months after the death of my cat, devastation hit my family. My grandfather passed away, I tried to act as if it had not really happen, but a few days passed and I began to feel the loneliness of losing someone close. I did not really tell my friends it was a heavy burden to bear and it was hard for me to talk about it. Slowly and steadily, I got over the worst of it; still I feel that distinguished ping of pain in my gut when I look at a picture of him.


As junior high wound out, my friends and I were ready for high school, and the majority of them went to the same high school as me and our friendship continues until this day.

The day that I began highschool is the day that my walls began to fall. I opened up in highschool and began to talk to people. I opened up and made life long friends, ones I still have today. I joined the academy of travel and tourism. There I met some of my best friends. High school was fun and went in a blink of an eye.

Then I went to college. I am currently a sophomore at University of California, Merced. I love college!!!!! I know it’s a cliché but I do. I love everything about it and wish it would never end. I joined a CO-ED fraternity that deals with pre-med students. Made a friend who is now my sister and fell in love. I love college, and I am one step further to becoming a doctor. And yeah I get scared every once in a while but at the same time I know it will be worth it.


I am not done living my life, but the portion that I have lived has been pretty weird, exciting and overall awesome and I plan to live the rest out to the fullest.