I am 16 years old just finishing my sophomore year of highschool. Coming into highschool, I truly thought it was going to be best years of my life. I had great friends, an awesome relationship with my family, everything was perfect. About a week ago I got the news that my father will be flying overseas for who knows how long. He will be leaving tomorrow and although he isn’t here a lot in general, knowing my best friend is going to be gone for a while leaves me empty. With him not here, I am left with my mom and my little 3 year old brother, Alex. It’s a huge job being a big sister with my mother basically a single parent for now, she’s relying on me to be her backbone. My mom and I had made a promise that no matter what happened in life, or what hardships life threw at us, we would always have eachothers backs and tell eachother everything. Days went on without my dad, they feel longer and more lonely. My daily routine started to become the same thing everyday. Wake up, go to school, get home, help my mom with things around the house, do homework, go to sleep. They were busy days but nothing in my life was really exciting. I am working so hard that as the weeks have went by, I’ve been distancing myself from my friends without even realizing. It doesn’t help that I’m the only one in the group that has no classes with them either. Throughout my whole life I had a solid group of best friends. Taylor, Sarah, and Brinley,  we were inseparable. Doing everything together in the insane summer heat, lasting through the cold winters and the damp chilly springtime. We had each others backs through everything really. We’d cry together, laugh together, sing together, really everything. I always felt as if I was the odd one in the group though. They had perfect lives, perfect families, perfect homes, everything was so good! Their biggest problems always seemed to involve breakups and mean boys while I felt as if I was always the one with the most amount of baggage on my shoulders. Maybe they weren’t the most amazing people I could have in my life, but they were all I had. I saw the group of them all standing together by the tall dark blue dirty lockers in the crowded hallway. I quickly approached them as there was only 2 minutes until the bell was going to ring for our next class. I haven’t seen them in about a week so i super excitingly said, “Hey guys!” and right after those words came out of my mouth I received the dirtiest look and they all had walked away from me. I looked around the less crowded hallway more embarrassed than I have ever been looking to see if anyone else had saw that. My heart sank into my chest and with a little less excitement and happiness in me, I walked to my last class of the day with a million thoughts flooded through my head of what I could’ve done for them to do that to me. I tried texting them and talking to them after class but they keep ignoring me. Although it hurts, I’m deciding to let them go and just focus on my family for now. I got home from school today and did the same old routine. I helped my mom out with Alex, worked on my homework, ate dinner,  then went to bed. I woke up to the bright friday morning sun shining through my windows almost blinding my me once I opened my eyes. “Today is going to be a better day”, I said to myself. I put on my dark wash jeans, white shirt, black high top converse, ate some breakfast, kissed my mother goodbye, went out the door and headed to school. As this day felt longer than usual, I had a weird feeling that something might be wrong. I wasn’t sure what it was but I tried to ignore the uneasy feeling because I was sure that everything was okay. I was in my boring 3rd hour chemistry class as I heard my phone ring. It was odd, “who would be calling me right now?” I asked myself. I picked up my phone to check who it was and it was my grandmother. I thought it was odd that she had called me. My phone had stopped ringing and I found there was 5 other missed calls from her as well. Something must be wrong. I walked out of class to call my grandmother and there was no answer. The speaker in the classroom rang and the office lady with a very unwelcoming, raspy voice said, “Excuse the interruption, can you send Violet down to the office for pick up.” Very confused, I picked up all of my heavy books, shoved them into my ripped up backpack and walked as fast as I could down to the office. When I opened the door, I saw my grandma waiting for me at the desk. “Hi grandma! What are you doing here? What’s going on, why did you call me so many times?, I asked.” She told me we would talk about it in the car but in those 2 minutes of us walking to her silver Honda Pilot SUV, the anxiety of not knowing what she was going to tell me flooded my whole body and mind. “Did something happen with dad? Wheres mom? Alex?” I asked frantically. We sat down in her car and she told me the worst news I could possibly hear. “Your mother got a call from law enforcement today, giving her heartbreaking news that your father has passed away yesterday.” I could feel my stomach sink so far to the ground and everything around me started to spin. I felt dizzy and my whole body went numb. I could not believe what I was hearing. Tears flooded both of our eyes and my grandma held me as we were both crying. We headed home to see my mother holding Alex, barely able to catch a breath. Her face beat red and wet from all of the tears flowing out of her beautiful blue eyes. We all went to bed together on the living room floor, trying to piece ourselves together from this unimaginable heartbreak.
Months went by, you can tell that my mother is different. She is scarred from this distress and loneliness, as am I. I missed months of school, I couldn’t get myself out of bed to go to a place that I felt even more lonely in, despite the fact I was in a giant building filled with people in it. All I had was my family, and although that wasn’t much, it was enough. My father will forever rest in peace, he passed serving our country and I am proud of what an amazing man he was.