A Taste Of Whats To Come...

I want to keep all the blogs current, to the way I'm actually feeling at the time of post, this way the blog stays up to date. In all honesty, I haven't written an editorial in some months now, because I haven't had a form of distribution (until now). So being that this is your first visit to the blog, I figured why not give you a taste of one of my past pieces, this you'll know what to expect. Please feel free to comment...whether you have a similar story...or you just want to relate, or just to start discussion. This is my college admissions essay...and besides the colleges I've sent it to...only three people have ever read this:

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the fabric used to conceal the incision they created as I slept. I felt no pain, so I knew they were wrong; I knew this was no tumor my rear cranium had been pregnant with. This was the embryo of my first-born epiphany. This was no tragedy. This was a gift. This was no threat to my health. This helped me get well. This gave ink to my ballpoint.

The nurses said they had never seen anyone in my situation up and about so soon and they offered me any drug you could think of, “just to be safe.” Throughout my stay in the hospital, I received one phone call from my aunt and a visit from my two brothers. After two days of witnessing my roommate being pampered by his friends and family, the only thing I was sick of was my so called friends and relatives being too “busy” for me, so after two days of hell I demanded to be discharged from the facility.

For a week or so all I did was lay in bed, day after day, forlorn and bored out of my mind. I quickly grew tired of being so furious at everyone I had done so much for who “couldn’t” find the time to give me a call or spare a dollar to buy me a card, and those who simply didn’t remember to care. After a while I was angrier with myself for not having anyone there for me. The only people I didn’t hate at this point were my mother, my two brothers, and my two close friends, who visited me frequently to keep me updated with all school affairs, and God for sparing my life.

As I lay there, thoughts were streaming in and out of my mind. I thought about every time I sold myself short and how I would’ve been remembered if my surgery had gone wrong. I realized that my life amounted to barely anything and the thought of being a failure was far scarier then the thought of being deceased. I set off to be like the great forefathers; who had paved their way through history, carving their names in every textbook across high schools in America. I recalled once reading that all of the Enlightenment Philosophers kept in-depth journals, so I began to write. I began milking my life like a cow using the paper as a bucket, writing down anything I felt worth the ink.

Amongst my journals I recorded some of my inner most thoughts.

I wrote about the last time I saw my father. I remembered the scene vividly: My mom slowly rolling her window up until my father finally slid his fingers out of the way of danger. I was positioned in the back seat of our worn down Toyota surrounded by black garbage bags containing all our possessions. I looked back at him and our home for the last time ever through a little opening between the bags that I was able to create using my six-year-old arms.

I wrote about being at my grandfather’s wake confused, still not yet seven-years-old. I didn’t understand the significance of my grandmother breaking down before her ten kids for the first time. I examined the room, observing nothing but somber faces until one of my oldest cousins approached me and said “You’re not crying…you don’t love grandpa!” I can’t guess how long I thought about those words.

I wrote about my first and maybe even my only best friend ever, who moved away as we started junior high school, leaving me without any real friends to pass time with. I wrote about how shy I was and how hard it was for me to be myself. I hated smiling in my school pictures because for years I was teased by my older cousins and brother and found myself uneasy in my own skin.

After elementary school I became tired of being the smart kid who got straight A’s, the kid who only the other smart kids talked to and of not being acknowledged by any of the kids who were into sports as much as I was. I was so determined to bond with these kids, only to regret it five years later in my junior year of high school.

I wrote about how it doesn’t make sense to me that they want us to learn so we could fill in the right bubbles with lead residue, and why we couldn’t just learn to perform the trades we wanted to practice like they did in previous societies.

I wrote about how for so long basketball was my life, and how every practice I proved I was the best player on my third grade team, but once game time came I was unable to perform. I was scared to play with so many foreign eyes beaming down on me. “WHY DIDN’T YOU JUMP ON IT GREG!” my coach would yell, as he scolded me for not diving on a loose ball. Nearly a decade later I would hear those same exact words from my junior varsity football coach after I opted not to recover a fumble. I knew I was good and that I was better than most but for some reason I couldn’t…something was holding me back.

So I kept writing. After a while it became natural, and I didn’t even realize I was still writing. After a week or two, the staples in my head began falling out just like the doctors said they would and I didn’t even detect it because I was too engulfed in my scripts. I even forgot how angry I was that my friends had abandoned me. By now I wrote down almost everything. I wrote about my aspirations. I wrote about how I would have a magazine one day and everyone who ditched me — from my friends to my father — would read my name in vain as I soaked in the rain of success. I wrote about how adversity struck me and inspired me like the apple struck Newton and how I needed to taste failure to acquire a thirst for success.

Two weeks had passed and my pen ran out of ink, but there were still pages of my marble notebook that needed to be filled. I was determined to get myself out of my bed and finish filling the pages of this notebook. I knew that the notebook needed to be filled, and that no matter how many pens and pencils I had at disposal I couldn’t fill the rest of that composition notebook until I had more to write about. I got back on my feet, peeled the bandage off the back of my head — which had practically fallen off by now anyway — ate a hearty breakfast, hopped in the shower, got dressed and informed my mom that I was going back to school again that morning.


-The Ant From Aesop