MOSAIC: voices from Polson High School

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

Just living for a dream

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My dream started when I was just a kid. I was five years old when my great grandfather passed away. That year-was a life changing one. I started to realize more than before, others’ emotions, and behaviors, as well as my own reasoning. My mom never hid reality from me. It was always there. Standing in that room with him on the hospital bed sorrow laid cold and desolate. As a kid I might not have always understood everything, but the emotions in that room lay unhidden, and barren for all of us to see and feel.

It was coming to the fall of 1996, I was swinging on my swing-set, given to me before his passing. Somehow, something felt Arri. I saw people coming down the drive way. I recognized them to be the father and the brother of my best friend, Jordan. My father greeted them. After they had left, I learned that they were moving to be closer to their oldest son. I never saw them again. Sure, I kept in contact as best as I could, but I would never see them face to face. The year after, which was fourth grade for me, well that’s when I thought I might as well give up, because of reasons I’ve partially forgotten by now, but at that point dreams felt to have no use, no purpose. I had given up on hopes of becoming a better student. Everything I did I felt I did wrong, thus everything that had gone wrong in my life was my fault. It was all my doing. I had lost all self worth, I felt like I couldn’t help anyone, not even my family, and that’s what hurt the most.

As I got older, I took in traits that I knew would not only help my family, but also give others the self worth that I had lost, and give them the feeling that they were just as important as anybody else. That’s when I realized more so than ever what my calling, what my dream really was, what made me happy. It was to give and give till you couldn’t give anymore. Which made the statements “It’s better to give than receive,” and “you catch more bees with honey than with vinegar” all the more true.

Even though my family has never owned a home, has had several illnesses, and has been in debt, I have come to see that happiness can make the biggest difference. Laughter seemed to heal the biggest wounds, especially when it came to my uncle passing away, a year ago, of cancer, which he had been battling for more than 30 years. I had never known this until his passing. It started making me thinking about all the other things I had never known about him, as well as all my other family members who had passed before him. Who else was I leaving out of my life? How much longer would I allow this to continue?

I believe we are all influenced by the ones we love and care for the most. The traits I have learned and acquired from those ones I have loved and cared for most, are ones I hope will stay with me for the rest of my life. My dream is not only to keep those I care about close to me, near or far, but in hopes that when I die, I will have died knowing that I made a difference in someone else’s life, that I made some one else’s life better, as well as my own. Dying with a legacy of happiness is my dream.

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