Nick Martins

                                                                        Harder Paths

I was around the age of eleven or twelve in this period of time. I lived in a two bedroom house with my mother, father, and my dog “Peanut”. We had gotten kicked out of our old apartment residence due to the rent amount gradually increasing past $1,000 each month. “Ha! You guys must be poor,” said my neighbor. People assumed we were just too poor to afford certain things, believe it or not. Life was so much better back then. A lot of people say that things were easier for them as a kid, but I personally think I have it different than most of the other kids at school. Back when I was younger, my parents made a great amount of money each month. Enough to pay for food, rent, bills, taxes, and still have plenty of money to spend on things I wanted, places I wanted to go, or things I wanted to do. Money wasn’t even considered a problem for us back then, until around 2009. My mother, Jane, doesn’t have legal papers, a green card, or a driver’s license, or able to even get one. My father was successfully able to obtain all his legal papers, certifications, and documents. He is able to legally work for a corporation, keep his driver’s license, and do anything else a natural-born American could do.  Our family originated from Brazil, which is where most of our ancestry was born. My mother and father both lived in Brazil before moving to America. They both moved here for the same reason; to start fresh. Things in Brazil were bad for the time being. My mother thought things could be way better in America, but it turns out she took the wrong path.

Imagine waking up one day, feeling a cool breeze and a refreshing scent of pine. You close your eyes to take in a breath thinking to yourself, “I have everything I could ever want.” Suddenly, you hear abrasive noises. You open your eyes and suddenly your whole setting has turned around completely. Stress overflows your body, everything you’ve seen vanishes away from you. Life turns upside down and you struggle on a budget for the rest of your life. This is basically what had happened to my family.

“I’m going to buy a moped,” my mother said. This is what started the downslide of our financial life. She decided to get a moped since she could legally get a bike license but not a car license, but a few weeks after she got it she broke her Tibia. The moped landed on her leg and caused irreversible damage to it, and she had to stay 3-4 months in the hospital. And to top it off, she couldn’t work for a year straight. To this day she still limps slightly on that leg and will continue to do so for the rest of her life. The bills came in like a snowstorm during the winter. Rapidly piling onto the table, in through our mailboxes, and back where they were sent from. To this day, she still continues to pay for minor things involving her accident, plus three recent stays for a diagnosis of “Blood Pallet Release,” which basically means she would cough up blood cells from her organs. All of that piled up together, and combined with a son to take care of, our debt swooshed down the drain. We haven’t had much money since.

My mother’s personality and feelings changed after the incident. She began to grow stubborn, overprotective, and bipolar. All of her friends had helped chip money in to pay for all the hospital bills running us down our knots. She ended up talking trash behind every single one, and as each and every friend found out, each and every friend left. My mother to this day only has two American “best friends” to this day. A year after all of the commotion, my parents divorced. I stay with my mother, and visit my father every other weekend. That’s how it’s been since that day and it still continues to flow that way. I was shocked when this was happening at first. I didn’t know how to react to it. It all just happened way too fast for me. I now tend to have a better relationship with my father than my mother. My mother has an irreversible personality that I can’t stand anymore. She acts bipolar a lot as well. She acts like the sweetest angel on earth when she’s around her friends or my friends, but when it’s just her and me in the house, I’m like her punching bag. She will find any reason to scream at me and stay angry at everything I do or say. She also stays on top of me whenever I do something. “Privacy is a right, not a privilege,” I think to myself quite a lot. She is always asking me questions about something I’m doing, always barging in on me when I keep my door closed (my door stays closed all the time), and never bothers to let me keep my own stuff protected. Say I’m playing a video game and there is a female character in a cut scene. She walks in to see the female character on my TV. She instantly starts asking things such as, “What are you watching?” “Are you watching something pornographic?” “Give me that controller!” “I’m grounding you for this.” She instantly takes her own path in her mind, assuming things that aren’t true or even in play, and she really goes deep down into her mind when that happens. The thing with her is that she thinks everything she does, says or feels is right, almost as if she were a Goddess. If you’re willing to help her once, you’re going to have to help her again and again and again because she’s going to stay dependent on you for things she can’t or won’t do. If you do decide to help her, you’d have to stop anything you’re doing whether it’s from being at the hospital as your wife is giving birth, or if your child has died in a car crash, you have to leave it all just to attend to her. She basically uses people to stay alive.  My father agrees that her personality is too much for people to handle, and I think that she’ll die unhappy, which is pretty sad. You can’t satisfy her at all no matter what. You could buy her a Lamborghini, and then tell her you don’t want to teach her how to make a cake and she’d instantly forget everything you’ve ever done for her, as if you were a devil according to her. I’ve had to take small part time jobs just to help pay for her hospital bills, yet she doesn’t even consider me her son, hence a human being. My father, on the other hand, is the only person I can really look up to and thank. He raised me the proper way with proper learning. He actually understands what I like, what I do, and what I’m saying.  He supports me in every decision I make, no matter what it would be. I can talk to my dad about any problems I’m having in life, any heat I need to get off my mind, anything I need to get off my chest. Most of my hobbies, interests, and passions come from my father as well. We can both easily bond knowing that we love the same things and disagree on the same things. I love my mother, I thank her for partially raising me, but as harsh as it sounds, I still have a faint feeling of hate for her.

Growing up this way may seem like a horrible living experience, but I’ve actually gained a lot more knowledge, courage, respect, responsibility, and interests. Sometimes a harder experience has better outcomes. I’m considered more mature than a quarter of my freshman grade. I’ve learned so many things I probably wouldn’t have ever learned taking this route. I’m honestly glad life is like this for me. I’ve gained maturity, I’m able to do things on my own, and I’ve learned to adapt to my surroundings and environment. After going through most of the hard things in my life, I can take it a bit easier. After I leave school, I go home, and the first thing I do is my homework or study. I play video games or do whatever I like afterwards until I feel sleepy. Everything feels much easier for me than it was before If you ever have a choice to take an easier way, or a harder way in life, always go for it. Because remember, as hard as it is in the beginning, you will always get something others don’t at the end. Be strong!