WHO AM I?

Who am I? I don’t know if a question like that could be answered in a single paragraph.  I have gone through a lot throughout my life which helped shape who I am today. I was born in Israel and raised there until I was 9. I would say I had a pretty good and happy childhood, but when I was 9 years old my parents gave me the [what I thought back then was] devastating news; we were moving to Boston. Not only did I not know what or where the heck this “Boston” place was, but it made me immediately angry and frustrated. When my parents told me we were moving to the United States at the end of my 3^rd grade year I screamed at them saying how much I hated them and ran to my room and cried for hours. I didn’t want to leave all my family and friends behind and start a completely new and different life in an unknown place. Now thinking back, the way that I reacted was very dramatic and immature, but how was I supposed to react? I was a kid who didn’t want my life to change. I liked it just the way it was. After living in Boston for 3 years we made the move to Chicago, but this time, seeing how the first move was not as awful as I thought it would be, I was more excited than upset. Throughout middle school I went through my fair share of drama and non important things which back then I thought was the end of the world. I used to think every little mistake I made, or anything bad that happened in my life was going to ruin me. In 7^th grade my grandpa had a very severe stroke and had to be in a rehabilitation center for 3 months and relearn how to function on his own. He’s fine now, but I remember towards the end of his stay there, I went to visit him with my cousin, and he was telling us a story about his childhood and how he would get into fights with kids at school, and one day, he got beat up really badly and had to go to the hospital with a broken nose. The doctor told him that he could have gotten brain damage from that punch, and that he physically could not get into any more fights. My grandpa said that if that fight hadn’t happened, and that other boy didn’t hit him and caused him the hospital visit, he would have kept getting into trouble and fights and he doesn’t know where he would have ended up. My grandpa is one of my biggest influences because he taught me that everything happens for a reason, and that life always turns itself around and even when you think that nothing will ever get better, it will. During freshman and most of sophomore year I dealt with many problems at home which led to me making some very bad mistakes which I now regret, but in a way, it caused me to really understand that story my grandfather told me, and since then it had stuck with me that everything does happen for a reason and things do get better. One of my many goals in life is to be able to deliver that message that my grandpa told me to others. I want anyone who is going through a tough time to know that things do turn around and get better. So here’s to all of my classmate’s or anyone who may be reading this post: if you are going through a rough patch of life, remember that there is a plan for you, and that a little bump in the road shouldn’t stop you from reaching for your dreams and trying to accomplish anything you may want to do.