Personal Statement Rough draft

Every two to three years I watch multiple people come into my house and pack away all my things into boxes. Poorly labeling them, so that when I unpack a month or two later, I have no idea what surprises I have in store for me in those three cubic feet of cardboard. This has been a constant in all of my seventeen years on this glorious planet because of one member of my family. My dad. He has been serving in the navy for the past twenty six years of his life and ever since I was born on that fateful night in Landstuhl, Germany, I have been along for the ride.

Moving and I have a very love-hate relationship. I love the fact that I have been able to live in so many different areas, the U.S, Europe, the Middle East. Experiencing different cultures, even just in the U.S, has been absolutely amazing. Every place I move I always seem to learn something new about the way people operate and conduct themselves on this planet. The fact that I have been able to experience these things has made me a very accepting person of everything around me. I used to be a very stubborn person who would hate anything if it wasn't done “my” way, yet now I am able to just go with the flow

Yet, I hate the fact that after two years or so of school I have to leave all the people I have grown to like, tolerate, and in some cases love. It is tough to drive away from the city you once called home at 5 AM because you needed to start the road trip early, without even having a chance to say good bye to your friends. It is tough to know that on the last day of school for that year it may be the last time you ever see those friendly faces in your life, or at least for the rest of your career in school.

I consider myself very fortunate though, since this upcoming June I get to end my high school career where my educational career started. In the beautiful small town of Coronado, California. I came back to this wonderful town two years ago at the start of my sophomore year so my dad could have the biggest job of his career. When I came back, I began to recognize familiar names I had once known as a small child. Names of people who I had once called friends. They didn't remember me but it was cool to be able to say that we used to know each other and now everything has come full circle so to speak. Graduating with the class that I started with, it seems pretty cool to me especially since this is the only time I have ever moved back to a place that I once lived in. I am excited about what the next four years of my life hold for me. The prospect of living in one place for four years is an exciting but scary thought, I haven't been trained to live in those conditions. I guess I am just going to have to go with the flow.

I wouldn't trade this life though for what many would consider a “normal life”. I have grown accustomed to these little quirks that I have to overcome, and I would go as far to say that I love moving.

Why

My entire world comes crashing down with three simple words you tell me. You can't hide it from me. You never have been able to. I wish you could though. Hearing you tell me the truth is always the hardest thing for me. Yet, you do it all the time. Most of it though, never serious. In fact it has only ever been serious one or two times in my life, and with each word you said you broke my heart. You never showed any emotion to your problems. You've faced death so many times in your life that now you just smile and laugh. Never afraid to leave us just so we can be here.

Today though has been the hardest one for me. You're leaving me in twelve days and you drop this bomb on ,e. You just found out though. I never thought I would be in this state again while you were here. I don't think about these things while you are here, I just enjoy my time with you and try not to come off as a normal angsty teenager. I just be myself, because that is exactly what you want to see. And who am I to deny you that?

Yet, I am up here in my room writing this, an emotional mess. Thinking I am a strong person when I can't even walk down the stairs and say three simple words to you. Words that you always tell me every time I leave the house. And when you utter these words to me I feel the emotion in your voice. I feel you telling me the truth, and it is serious. Why I am not able to do the same, I have no idea. It's just three simple words, eight letters, that combine to make the most serious phrase you could ever utter, and I can't combine them. Not to you at least. I am forever destined to put them on paper and hope that one day I will allow you to read this, to let you know that I think about your safety every day. To let you know that I share those same feelings.

Change that eight letter phrase to an eleven letter phrase and you bring my world crashing down. When you uttered this phrase for the second time in my life to me, my world came crashing down. Nothing else mattered. With eleven simple letters you made me realize once again that I truly love you. And with those letters you brought feelings of heartbreak. And with these letters I unleash my feelings upon this paper to tell you I love you. No matter how much it seems like I don't, I do.

So please let this be the last time you have to tell me you have cancer. I don't think I can take you saying this anymore.

Semester 2 Cultural Plunge

This is what I wrote about for the semester 2 end cultural plunge piece. It wasn't a plunge into a new culture or anything like that but instead it was a plunge into the darkest parts of my mind that I had been neglecting for years.

This is the rough draft and I am currently looking for my final draft, I probably deleted it after reading it once since I never thought I would put this out there for everybody.

Note: Sorry for the grammatical errors, I never really planned on this being my final piece.

Well, let me just start off by saying this is a subject that I have neglected for six and a half years. I had pushed it into the deepest parts of my brain for all this time, yet now I feel that I need to talk about this subject otherwise I really do not know how I would react if something did happen. To start off though I think you should have a little introduction into my life and my family. I was nine years old when we moved into what the United States Military classified as a dangerous place. The place just happened to be my favorite place to live. The place is called Bahrain and is situated within the Persian Gulf, and is about a twelve mile drive to Saudi Arabia, that is if you go over the Causeway. It was used as the staging area for the American military during the first Gulf War when Saddam Hussein entered Kuwait. We moved there for my dad's work. He just so happens to be in one of the most dangerous lines of the military, Explosive Ordnance Disposal or E.O.D for short. They are the people who go in and clear mines, and disarm any other explosive weapons that could be there, including nuclear weapons. These guys have some of the fewest soldiers spread throughout all four branches of the service, and they have one of the highest casualty rates because of this.

So to continue this story my family was sent to Bahrain because of the military and because of this my life has changed drastically. We lived over there during the heating up period of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2003 to 2004. During this time I really did not understand the whole thing being a kid and all, all I really knew was that some people did not enjoy the way that the United States wanted the world to be run, through peace and democracy of course. Living in this area opened up my eyes to many different cultures and way of life, and I consider it a truly life changing experience. I was just like any normal kid over there. I went to school, granted with armed guards patrolling the campus and multiple cameras watching over every class room. I rode the bus to and from school, granted with an armed guard on it, and we were only allowed on after dogs and EOD personnel searched the buses each and every day, before and after school. I lived in a house, maybe it had its quirks but I truly called the place home. I loved each and every minute that I lived there and I would go back without any hesitation.

Fast forward one year later and the wars are starting to heat up. People questioned whether it was a safe place for families, however they never questioned this for the service members. They felt that they could handle themselves, of course they were right. After a few days of deliberation though nothing really happened with it and we continued to go about our daily lives. Fast forward to the beginning of the summer of 2004 and everyone's beliefs changed. Why you may ask. A bomb went off on one of the twenty six square miles of the island of Bahrain. It went off, and I use that term loosely, because all it managed to do was dent someone's gray garage door, right next to the military base and next to an apartment complex that I used to live in about four months prior. People were up in arms over the entire thing and again it is questioned whether this is a safe place to raise a family. This caused another vote to happen, the vote was to see if we should send Military dependents back to the States because many people now considered Bahrain an unsafe place to live.

The vote passed unanimously.

Families were forced to leave their loved ones behind for the remainder of their tour. My dad had one year left on his tour. We were given three weeks to prepare to evacuate the country and the military said they would fly us to any destination that they deemed safe. My mom, brother, and I decided to go to Texas. Why Texas? Because my entire mom's side of the family lived there except for one of her brothers who was deployed in Iraq at the time, but he would return weeks after we arrived. Mom and dad told my brother and I what we were allowed to bring, one suitcase and one carry on. Three weeks later we were on the plane flying to the States. But before my mom and brother boarded the plane my dad pulled them aside and said something along the lines of “If anything happens take care of each other”. What I did not know then, but what I now know five and a half years later is that this was the major point of change in my life. He stayed there without anyone from his family, alone fighting a war that most people did not agree with.

So we all went to Texas and lived there for a year, the seemingly happy family, if you looked in from the outside. However, if you were actually there in the room you would have found a family divided. We all split up. My mom stayed in the living room/dining room, my brother confined himself to his room, and I confined myself to my room. They tried to desperately get away from the situation that was at hand, and I stayed out of their hair because I really was sort of oblivious to the war at that time. During this year away, my dad came to visit once. It actually happened right at the beginning of us living in Texas, he stayed for a week, and during this week we were just like any regular family. The week quickly passed and right as we dropped him off at the airport he said these words “Take care of each other if anything happens”. And it was at that moment feelings, too many to name came over me. I wasn't an oblivious little kid any more, I now understood why we were forced to get out, and why he was forced to stay. It was at that moment that I recognized the danger of his situation.

I felt fear. Fear of the unknown really. I was afraid of what my mind could conjure up and to be truthful these fears were justified. Every night I laid in bed and became deep in thoughts. Thoughts that quickly turned into terrible, terrible dreams, and these dreams happened to become almost all too real to me. News headlines flashed across the bottom of my vision, never seeming to go away. I was on CNN however it only covered one thing, the war. Breaking news flooded the screen each day “Another soldier killed” , “Base attacked”, “Roadside Bomb claims the lives of seventeen” , “The war has no end in sight”. These headlines propelled my fears, and forced my mind to wander. I wondered whether my dad was still alive, or if he had been killed. Seeing the state of my family though I suppressed these fears. I locked them in the deepest parts of my brain and never let them out of my head.

Not having him there with us really changed the family. To this day we still have not become as unified as we once were. Now instead of everyone being in separate rooms, it is me and my brother in one room, while my mom and dad are in another. The only time we all ever interact is if we go to see a movie, or eat dinner. It's a sad sad thing, that this war affected our lives so much. And to be frank I really do not believe that we will ever truly become a happy family once again. He leaves again in August to go work in a different area, leaving my mom and I here. He does not want to be alone, but he knows how much it would mean for me to be able to finish high school off in the same place. I can truly say I love him for this. He puts us on pedestals above himself and really gives us everything. When he leaves though I know he is going to repeat the same words he has always said “Take care of each other if anything happens”. I know that thoughts will begin to form in my mind. Thoughts of the unknowns, of the what if's, of the hypothetical situations. I still have the fear of losing him in a combat situation and not knowing it. But I can also still say I love him.

Why this whole thing got started

About a month ago, I received some devastating news, and I was in a confused state of emotions. I didn't want to talk about it with anyone, especially the parental units, so I decided to write how I felt at the time. I did and later gave this to someone to break the news to them, I said I would rather tell them in person.

I was told by them that my writing is sooooo, a lot of stress on the so, emotional. I really don't believe it is but I guess now I will be able to see if it is or not.