Somewhat of a background

Growing up as a child I’ve always told myself “I’m so lucky to have the friends and family that I do.” Never in a million years did I think that things would turn out the way they did. I come from a small, tight-knit family. I’m an only child with a mother who has always been present and who’s my rock in life and I also have an absent father who’s never been around. My mom has 3 siblings. 2 sisters and a brother. I have many cousins that make up for my lack of siblings and we are all pretty close in age (I’m the oldest out of all of them). My mom also had 2 childhood friends and I’ve grown up with their kids who were the same age as me throughout my life that I consider my “sisters”. When I think back to my childhood, I think about happiness and how much of a happy child I was. I had the best of friends and an amazing family. My childhood was filled with family trips, Sunday dinners, constant family get togethers and good times with friends. What more could I have asked for as a child? Once 2011 hit (I turned 18 that year), it’s like everything went downhill from there. In May, there was a sudden and unexpected death in my family from a hiking tragedy. My great-uncle was white water rafting and fell out of the raft due to extremely rough waters and drowned. I could only imagine the fear and suffering that was going through his mind at the time that I still think about from time to time to this day. He was a US Korean War Air Force Veteran and also worked in the Veterans home after his time in the army. Around that time and after all of that happened is when I started to become severely depressed and almost every year after that it seemed like there was tragedy after tragedy that involved my friends and family. To this day I still struggle with my depression. I have more bad days than good some weeks. It all doesn’t stem from just that one incident, but many other things that have happened in my life afterwards which i’ll eventually write about. My family is still close to eachother as they were while I was growing up, but there are people who are now missing pieces due to deaths that I feel should’ve never happened and could have been prevented which makes me feel angry inside. When I thought about my future as I was growing up, I didn’t think that certain people would’ve left this world so soon. I never thought that I would develop depression and feel so angry that I couldn’t seem to figure out why, I never thought that the friends I grew up with would turn out the way they did (some of them), I never thought that I would ever think about ending my life or even harming myself and I certainly would have never thought that things would turn out the way they did if I was to compare then to now. Life happens and tragedy happens and it’s not always fair and it’s not always something you’d expect. You learn to pick yourself up and go on because you can’t turn back time and change things as much as you’d want to. Have too high of expectations and you’ll just end up disappointed in the end. We all hit rough patches in life and may even hit rock bottom and some may last longer for people compared to others. We’re human and we have emotions and feelings we’re allowed to feel, memories we can’t seem to forget that’s not so happy and that’s perfectly okay. Focus on your future and not so much your past, but always keep the good/happy memories close to you. There’s so much to look forward to and enjoy in this world. Life is precious and we all only get one chance to live. It’s okay to struggle and just remember you’re never alone.