MOSAIC: voices from Polson High School

Welcome to Mosaic.
Be honest. Be kind. Be temperate.

Candace Durham: My American Dream

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The world is cold. Weve all heard of rape, abuse, Meth, alcoholism, and violence. Why do these terrible things even exist? Simple, people are stupid.

Have you ever seen a new born infant? Their little fingers twitching, eyes struggling to open and view the world they were so forcefully brought into. Their skin as soft as can be. Their hair is so thin and frail. The smile they flash at you, toothless and adorable. Everything about them is so innocent.

Day after day, night after night, this infant grows. Everything they sense with any of their five senses is stored away in their undeveloped brain. These are all learning experiences. Growing up is a scary and difficult thing for every child. On the other hand they learn the most during this period of their life.

When I was a child, I began learning from the day I was born, as does every child. I was taught who my parents were, who my sister was, that fire is hot, what is and isnҒt food, and most important, what noӔ means. At the age of two I learned what immense physical pain is.

My sister and I were wrestling around in the post office while our mother stood patiently in line. She briefly scolded us to stop before someone gets hurt. Within a matter of seconds I was screaming bloody murder. My sister had gotten the last shove and I fell over and landed on the old sharp metal lining around full sized glass windows. It split the back of my head open to the skull. It was only about two inches long but very deep. My mom, who had already been frustrated with us, grabbed us both without even looking, briskly walked us out of the post office to the car. As she stepped off the sidewalk she scooped me up, seeing as how I was only two years old and may be only thirty pounds. As she got close to the car she felt something wet trickling down her forearm to her elbow. She looked down to see her toddler gushing blood out of her head. She got us all in the car and asked my four year old sister to hold a diaper wipe onto my head. Naomi, who was terrified, refused and my mom was forced to hold pressure on my head while driving. We drove to the dentist office where my dad was just sat down in a room to be seen. My mom hurried him out the door, me still in hand. When we made it to the ER it was busier than ever. There must have been lots of traumatic accidents happening that day for me to had to have sit in the waiting room for a half hour and another half hour in the room waiting for a doctor.

Finally my parents were informed that I was going to have to get staples. The only doctor that was available was a very new doctor. She had never operated on a patient this young before, or with an injury as serious. I still to this day do not know why the hospital would put a brand new doctor on a child, who is only two years old, and this seriously injured. This doctor buckled under pressure. She asked the nurses if she should five me numbing before she stapled. Of course, the nurses werent sure, it wasnҒt their job to know, it was the doctors. So she just decided to go ahead and staple my head without any numbing. So lying on a table, face in a pillow, I felt six head pounding staples go straight into the back of my head. Somehow I managed to keep consciousness long enough to scream louder, for a moment or two. It was the most horrific physical pain I have ever experienced.

After that painful rendezvous with an idiot, I continued on with my life with much milder physical ailments; however, I did manage to make my way into a very awkward adolescent phase.

Around my third or fourth grade year, I began to develop a sense of style; a style that slightly disturbed my parents. I began wearing pants that were black, and lots of gray shirts. This did not affect them, but the fact that those became my only articles of clothing in my wardrobe began to worry them. AT this time I also began to isolate myself from my family and friends. I would participate in activities with my family only if it was something I chose; I became miserable on a regular basis. I spent a lot of time in my room by myself, thinking. I dont remember these years very much, but I remember coming out of that phase really well.

I overcame my awkward stage after being enrolled in Polson Middle School. When I went school shopping I tried to avoid black pants and gray shirts. When I started school I had no friends. I was separated from my sister for the first time. We had been in the same grade since before I could remember and essentially we grew up as twins. The school held my back a year because of my age. They could have held me back two years, but they were afraid that that would make me loose academic potential. So they decided on a happy medium and enrolled me in Mrs. PetersonҒs sixth grade class.

I finally was accepted by some girls and made some friends. I was even asked to be in their friends groupӔ. This group was just some friends in a group and we would take our lunch to the counselors office and eat there and play games. I felt accepted for the first time even though I was labeled as a ғnerd. About half way through the third quarter of my sixth grade year, I made new friends. I then got to sit at their table, a ԓcool table. Dakota and I always sat on the end of the table across from Erin and Ashlee. Dakota and Ashlee were friends, so naturally Erin and I hated each other. In seventh grade, however, I stopped sitting there and began sitting with girls like Megan, Anna, and lacey. At the same time I ԓconverted so did Erin. Soon after we started hanging out with them, Erin and I became best friends. We even started a ԓnew table by the middle of eighth grade. We also shared a locker in our glorious last year of middle school. Our normal locker, as opposed to our band locker, was the epitome of disgusting. At one point I think there was a total of nine latte and hot chocolate cups in the top of our locker. All of these cups were not completely finished. Erin and I eventually drifted away to where we were still friends, but not best friends about our sophomore year in high school. This was just doe to lack of much in common.

As my life goes on there seems to be a pattern every time I come out of a phase I go straight into a different one. I am currently in a phase that began around the middle of my sophomore year. IԒm not quite sure of the cause, maybe it was high school, maybe it was family, or even boyfriends. Whatever the case may be, it began a vicious cycle. In this phase I have acquired a disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). For example, the volume in my car has to be on a multiple of five. I have to color coordinate my skittles, I can just stop doing whatever Im doing, and I have to have my cell phone on my person, always. I also have deathly fears of weird things such as feet, electrical tape, stink bugs, and rolling up body parts in a car window. When my compulsions are out of order I get very upset to make them right and I have to get away from my fears. This has put an impact on my relationships with family and friends. When I get upset I get violent. It is very stressful on me. I wish I could just let things go without blowing out of control. Again, I do not know what the cause of this, but I hate it. I donҒt like having to just deal with it all the time. I hope that this will not affect me for the rest of my life. It would definitely put an impact on my work life.

I want to go college and major in business management and minor in architecture, or vice versa. Then eventually start a family. This is my American dream and how it came to be.

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