Personal Narrative: Drowning

Drowning

We all go through a point in our lives where we experience unexpected obstacles, which we then have to face and overcome when they are unexpectedly thrown our way. This year by far has been the year with the most of those obstacles. I’m not just talking about getting a substandard grade on a paper or misplacing something valuable to me like a phone. These obstacles that have hit me this year have taking a gigantic toll on my life. They have made me see life different as a whole. Everything that happened actually effected different things in my life like my grades, my attitude, my friend group. Every aspect of my life has seemed to been crumbling and crashing down without me even trying. My life has been just like a house of cards,

My little brother started getting quite ill one day, he started throwing up all of the food that he was ingesting. We thought he just had a case of the stomach flu because it was going around at the time. We blew it off and just gave him some crackers and 7up thinking it would help move the sickness along. If anything he just started to grow sicker and sicker, it got to the point where he couldn’t eat or sleep, and had to stay home from school for about five days. One night he kept walking into my room because he couldn’t sleep and I tried everything to get him to fall asleep, but nothing seemed to be working. I stayed up all night as well just in case he needed me. At four in the morning he walked into my parents room and laid down to try and fall asleep with them, he suddenly woke up in pain saying he couldn’t move shrieking in pain saying that his shoulders and his back felt like they were broken. They rushed him to the hospital and again my mother said that I had to wake up later and still go to school. I obeyed her orders but still I wasn’t happy with how she handled the situation. My brother was in the critical care unit for about a week and a half and my parents spent all their time with him. My two other brothers and I had no idea what was going on because my parents wanted to tell us themselves. When they finally returned home they told us the heart wrenching news that my little brother was

I felt guilt and still do, guilt that he had to get it instead of me, that he didn’t do anything to deserve such a fate but I did. I felt guilty eating anything that he enjoyed eating and I stopped eating sugar for a long time. I tried to indulge on the sugar-free food that he consumed instead so that he wouldn’t feel alienated or alone when eating or drinking something sugar-free. I knew that things would never be the same, but I was honestly just glad that my little brother was still breathing and was able to come home. Again, the same feeling of drowning hit me in this scenario just like when my grandmother passed away, my head felt like it was underwater, I couldn’t breathe or hear anything. It felt as if there was a chain wrapped around my ankle holding on to me not giving me the freedom I needed to accept what has happened. This obstacle was the more prominent and difficult to get around this year and but I became stronger from overcoming this obstacle instead of letting it consume my