I Don’t Know Where I Would Be If It Wasn’t For The People Who Love Me
This was written a few years back when I still couldn’t seem to figure out how to get this life thing right… I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for the people who love me…
May 29th, 2013
Today is another beautiful day in the city of Cambridge, Ontario, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping-Hahahah I lied, I hate this city, I despise having to live here. My family, (which is my two sisters, Kelsey and Darcy, my Dad, Mike, and my, Mom, Kim) and I moved here about three years ago now from Mississauga, which is where we spent all the rest of the years of our lives, my sisters and I at least. Born in Rexdale right outside of Mississauga, grew up in a town called Malton. My parents were tired of the “crime” they heard on the news constantly, and seen in the neighbourhoods close to us, so they wanted to get away from the City.
Little did they know back then that we would get into more trouble in this small city of Cambridge than we would’ve if we stayed there and went to the strict catholic school that my friends went to. My friends from Sauga told me that if they skipped they had to fill out a thirty page work booklet and get graded on it. Us, if we skip, a machine calls the houses of the kids who skipped, always at the same time everyday therefore it’s easy for me to know when to make sure I have the phone so my parents don’t hear the call. Our school rarely seems to care at all. Kids get away with hell there.
My parents friends, from our trailer park, a little ways up north in Wasaga Beach, suggested Cambridge as a nice little city to move to. They lived there their whole lives and loved it and thought we would too. It’s about 3 and a half hours away from our home town.
My parents checked it out, brought us to check out some houses and within the week it felt like they were signing papers to their new home.
Now we’re stuck here. Although my parents won’t fully admit it at times its obvious that it is this city that brought our moods down altogether. As time went on, the misery grew. I’ve been the cause of a lot it.
My parents really are the best parents a kid could ask for but no parent in the world has all the answers or has any sort of rule book to parenting. It is different for each child, and each scenario and I couldn’t even begin to imagine the self doubt they allow into their minds when making decisions for their children. You want to do what is best for them but most of the time no one knows what is best until afterwards.. Mostly all based on trial and error.
The guilt of making the wrong choice must eat parents.. I don’t get how humans are able to endure so much because if I am ever strong enough to have kids I really am not so sure I can deal with the guilt of knowing I put my child in a situation I could have prevented them from. By lets say.. Telling them to be tough, to stick up for themselves, but then they end up getting beat up and humiliated. I know it’s all life and there’s nothing we can do but learn from our mistakes but damn, I do not know if my heart is capable enough to deal with certain heartaches.
I beat myself up enough for the bad decisions I make for myself, I would be destroyed if I had to live with the guilt of knowing I made a decision that potentially hurt another person. Especially if it was my own child. Damn parents are strong, respect to the good ones out there for real.
So anyways, now we’re stuck here where my parents thought it was the best thing for us, which probably was the worst thing for us. Met some people, got caught up in some things I know I otherwise would stay away from had I been with people who cared..
But I guess we learn from mistakes.. I’m learning every day..
I see my friends every once in awhile, but we keep in touch. Not as much as I like, which I am the only one to blame for that so I can’t really complain. But, I have known them forever so, things aren’t any different when I see them, despite how long it has been it always seems like no time has passed at all.
Antonnia, Precilla, and Briana are my only real close friends, I met ’em way back in grade two and now I am sixteen so it’s nine years and counting. I hope.. because I don’t have many friends and don’t make them easily. I have always been known as the quiet, shy girl, not very outgoing but not disliked for it, I was nice and no one had a problem with me from what I know, I just never knew how to talk to people I guess.
I once read my Mom’s journal that she wrote through the younger years of my sister Kelsey who is a year older than me, and I. He talked about how I was always a quiet shy kid, never wanted to hang out with the other kids and in public settings I would hide by his side. He wrote that he was afraid that I was too weak and that he hoped I toughened up or else I was going to have a hard time in this world. Haha, she was right. A mother always knows, I guess.
For a reason I could never fully express, I have always felt a bit out of place and uncomfortable you could say. I feel like if I continue to write I will eventually learn to express myself in ways that will help me learn things about myself and why I feel the way that I feel.
My friend short stories for a magazine I forgot the name of, just for fun mostly and he told me it’s a great form of release to write fiction or non-fiction. So, I decided to try it out. Plus I’ve always liked writing. Writing helps brings up ideas and feelings I never knew I was thinking until the pen starts moving. The words start flowing and before I know it hours have passed and I have thirty pages filled out before me, expressing things I never knew I felt. It is my favourite way to find a sense of peace in my life. I think I need it to be okay these days.. I really have no one to talk to. I mean not really talk to.
I guess it is no one else’s fault as to why I felt insecure and out of place a lot of the time, everyone was nice to me, even too nice to me as if they felt sorry for me. I had anxiety before I even knew what anxiety was.
I remember having so many thoughts in elementary school, but each school day I went through it in silence unless I was around my close friends. I remember when the class would have to read from the text book, everyone having to read their own small section. I would count the kids ahead of me and count the sections so I knew which part I would have to read out loud and I would just sit there not focusing on anything other then practising my piece.
When our desks were arranged in groups and it came time to work in a group I was silent until I got spoken to, despite the hundreds of thoughts and ideas flowing around my head. I did not want to be the center of attention, I didn’t want to be looked at, or for anyone to hear what went on in my mind.
What if it was out there, or weird or people looked at me like I was stupid?
What if I said the wrong thing? Sometimes I even knew my answer was right, and sometimes even better than what everyone else was spewing out but for some reason I just could never bring myself to speak up.. I honestly do not know exactly why. I know it must have been a lack of confidence in a way, not thinking I was good enough to be listened to. But I dont know where that feeling came from.
Moving to Cambridge changed the way I looked at everything. It was also growing up that changed my views but mostly it was the people I met, the situations I was in and are still in.. All in such a short period of time. We have only lived here for two years..so far.
Being shy is hard enough let alone doing it in new city with new people. I was starting high school knowing not a single person except my sister Kelsey who was in grade 10. I was fearful to say the least. I realised people were nice to me, then as I started to really realise, it was only guys who we’re trying to get close. Didn’t find out till later that half of them had the wrong intentions. At least intentions opposite of what I had in mind. I learned I can’t really have guy friends. Nor could I have girlfriends because I never knew how to get along with girls. They all seemed to be indifferent to me.. I didn’t seem to be into the same things most girls were into. A couple girls I have never seen in my life have brushed me in the halls. I remember one girl who had the same backpack as me, brushed me and mumbled something under her breath as I passed her.
I always just keep my head down and am too scared to say anything. I hate how weak I am.
I am hoping as time goes on and I experience life more things will get better…
So, I don’t know exactly what it is about Cambridge that got us all down but it happened. We are all out of comfort zones and over time it took an affect on us. I see the way my parents mope around wishing they got more out of life. They live through us, want us to follow our dreams and be everything they weren’t. They seem to have the idea that it doesn’t matter if they didn’t make it big, as long as their kids did something grand, it wouldn’t matter. We would be their greatest accomplishment.
It is a lot to be expected of you at such a young age. But I can’t tell them that because it makes it worse. If me and my sisters are sad or upset about anything, my parents are sad and upset. So, a lot of the time I try to hide my feelings so they don’t feel so sad. They just want their daughters to be happy, care free, living life.
They moved us here to a small town for a better, more full life. They didn’t know that some of us would meet some of the worst people we have ever encountered and that life would take a change for the worst opposed to the better. But no parent knows, and I do not blame them. Although when I am angry I do, which I hate myself for because I honestly do not blame them, I know how much they love us and I would never in my rational mind think that anything they try to do for us is out of anything but the true, untainted love they have for us.
“We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this—through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication—we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbor, a sanctuary away from crippling turmoil and pain, but yet low enough, and permeable enough, to let in fresh seawater that will fend off the inevitable inclination toward brackishness.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
Art by:
