Looking at myself in the mirror, thoughts and memories race through my mind, “I think wow, I’m so grown up.” The feeling of growing up is unexplainable because I know that in a short period of time I will have a lot of responsibilities. I can clearly remember the day I started my school career just like it was yesterday.
Here I was standing right next to my best buddy Zack. It was the first day of 1st grade. Our mom’s smiling at us with their flashy cameras, but excited as I was I had no clue what I was up for. This is were the journey begins. The journey happened so fast about half way through the year the friend I called Zack had moved. Zack was more like a brother than a friend we shared everything together I was more apart of his family than mine. I was extremely upset by his permanent absents, but things moved pretty fast and in no time I was in a one story house in the city of Avon, IN. Not only with another new beginning I lost my only friend and now starting a new school. It was probably one of the hardest things I had to do at the time. It was about time for summer. My mom was pregnant with the fourth child and I don’t really remember much after that but school started up again and then again.
The worst year had happened. It was the middle of my fourth grade year and my dad worked for a church called The Salvation Army. My dad is very strong when it comes to helping people. Why I say this is because he would continuously let strangers come in our house to stay until they could move on but this is when it happened. A lady from Zimbabwe, Africa came to the Salvation Army asking for help. She needed a place to live until she could raise enough money for her to get her family here. My dad had heard about this and offered her to stay with my family. Her name was Edith and she was about 44 when she came to us for help, but what she did for our family was amazing. Edith was like our nanny, she was helpful around the house help with my troubles in homework. We loved her like she was completely apart of our family because she really was. Something was going on one Saturday she told my mom she was not feeling well and that she couldn’t get up. My mom told her she needed to call the paramedics, but Edith said no. I wasn’t in the middle of this because my dad knew what was going on and he kept me, my brothers and sister in his room with him. What had happened was her body had failed and her heart collapsed. The women that we brought into our family and truly cared about had just died in our house. The great catastrophe caused depression towards me and my brother Mick. It took Mick and I a little while to get over this disaster but we did.

When I think of Mick I just laugh because he’s a character. The memories with him are priceless. Without my brother I wouldn’t be who I am now. Mick is my favorite not just because he’s the oldest, but because of his cockiness and arrogance I wouldn’t work for what I believe in. It’s because of him I want to complete my dreams and my goals. Now that I’m a sophomore in high school I understand my goals and dreams but I’m letting myself down because I have given up on my competition. Not on my dream but on my goals. The problem with my dreams is I can’t live them if I don’t have the right attitude. If right now I give up on the school work because I don’t want to do it. I should forget about my dream because I can’t live it unless I complete what’s most important.
My only dream was to complete an ironman which is the same thing is a triathlon. Then my grandma gave me the idea to work my way to the Olympics’. When I see the size and the strength of the Olympians I look at myself poorly but I know with the right training and skills I could live what I call my dream. That’s the problem with people these days they look at their self with doubt. Anyone has the ability to do anything they want if they sent there mind to it. People should have confidence with what they believe in. Then they will have the strength to complete the goals of ones self. Many of my family and friends support that I want to complete two serious things (ironman and the Olympics). This is extremely hard but I have the ability to discipline myself to work as hard as I need to complete my dreams. The thing I’m missing is that I don’t work as hard as I need to in school. So these dreams mean nothing if I can’t complete the most important thing in life. To get a good job I need good grades and right now I’m not doing so well. If the work was easier I wouldn’t learn anything so it would be pointless. I do think that school needs to be hard because hard makes a challenge and challenge makes you stronger.
There are a lot of things that make people stronger, but what I believe make people stronger is a challenge and that’s what life is, a challenge that test you as a person. It reveilles what’s under the skin. What I mean by that is it shows people exactly who you are and how you feel about others and yourself. I love my family and I love who I am but without my family I wouldn’t be the man I am now. They complete me and I complete them. Without me they wouldn’t be the way they are.