Personal Narrative: The Challenger And The Columbia

Have you ever had something happen and you didn’t understand why? Sometimes things happen and we only see the bad. For example, the explosions of the Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003. In 1986, seven astronauts and a teacher died when the Challenger broke apart just after it launched. Seventeen years later the Columbia was destroyed on its trip back to Earth, killing all the crew members on board. Those two horrible disasters shook NASA as well as the world. We only think about the tragedy they were. We never hear about the good that came after the accidents. After both events, the space shuttle program investigated the accidents and then came back stronger than it was before. As a result, there has been over one hundred successful

He wasn’t the person he made me believe he was. He was verbally and emotionally abusive to me. I was always being put down and he made me think I couldn’t do anything right. When we were in public I had to act like everything was alright and he was a great guy. I didn’t want anyone to know what was going on, I didn’t know how to explain the whole situation. He would go hours without answering my calls and when he would answer he’d yell at me for calling him too much. He’d never hug me or hold my hand unless we were in front of people. When I would ask him if we could go on a date he would say he didn’t have the money, but he always had money for tobacco. When I would try to talk to him about how the things he did made me feel he’d yell at me and turn everything into my fault. For a while he had me believing everything was my fault. I don’t know why I put up with his abuse for so long. I feel like I should have tried harder to end things with him and it’s my fault that I didn’t. Every time I would try to break up with him, he turned everything around and made me feel like everything was my fault and made me feel sorry. He was so manipulative that it took me almost seven months to finally be able to break up with

I just can’t find the right words to say. I’m ashamed. How could I let that happen to me? Why did I put myself in that position? Why did I stay? I still have a hard time forgiving myself every now and then. The only person I ever told besides whoever reads this paper, is my current boyfriend, Nick. He was one of my best friends when I was younger and was always there for me. Which is why he feels bad that he didn’t know what I was going through and wasn’t there to help. I told him about everything that happened. I wanted to be honest with him and I felt like I should trust him with my past because I see a future with him. This will probably sound mushy but it’s the truth. I’ve never been more comfortable or happy with anyone and he treats me the way I should be treated. Without that unhealthy relationship I was in, I don’t know if I’d ever ended up falling in love with my best friend. Even though I went through a lot that year, looking back now I’m glad it happened. It shook me up a lot and I wasn’t in a good place mentally and emotionally, but I learned who I was as a person, and that I deserved someone who would treat me better than how I was being treated. Bad things don’t just happen for no reason. When we experience something that scars us, we change and become a stronger person. We can’t control what happens to us or around us, but we’re in control of what we