She's Smart and Stupid. She's Put Together and a Mess.

She is so scared and confused as we ride the light rail. She keeps talking about the irrational idea that the light rail will fall of the tracks and kill us all. She’s always been extremely irrational with her fears. I watch her attempt to understand the map, trying to navigate it on her own, but she gives up and gives the map to me. I don’t understand. She always seems to understand anything that anyone gives her. Why can she not follow simple directions to get to her destination? It’s easier than anything we are learning in school. The directions aren’t even confusing and yet they confuse her to no end. I mean she passed with an A in Physics.

                

I navigate us through the roads and we reach our destination. There are three doors that lead into the same building, but only one of the doors lead into the correct area of the building. We end up trying all three because she can’t remember which door leads to the correct area. She can pass all of her classes, yet she can’t remember a simple path through a building. Oddly enough, she remembers the number of the floor she is supposed to go to as if it was imbedded in her mind. We travel up to the seventeenth floor of the building.

                

I still don’t know what her appointment is for. Her mother is a nurse and usually tends to all of her illnesses that she gets so frequently. Why are we in the middle of Downtown Seattle for an hour long appointment?

               

  I wait for her as her appointment goes on.  She comes out seeming slightly exhausted from the appointment. She is hurried to talk about any other subject that she can. She can’t be that sick, or else all of our family would know. 

               

  My Aunt says before she takes me home, we have to put in some prescriptions. That’s when it dawns on me. She was at the Psychiatrist. But, why? She never seems to show any sign of having a psychological illness. She is responsible and she gets good grades. What could possibly be wrong with her? I try to get her to talk about what her appointment was for just to hear explain what it is, but she keeps avoiding my question, making jokes and changing the subject.

              

I may never know what is exactly wrong with her, but I do know that I can see her fear of everything outside of academics. She is kind to the point that she would bring me a warm drink on a cold day, but she can’t do anything besides school on her own. Her life is absorbed by something. Something that she isn’t quite ready to talk about with the world.

Personal Statement Rough Draft

              

               There were electrons, neutrons, and protons building fortresses and warring around me. I was weeping because of the pain I felt from watching them hurt each other. I was hallucinating due to a hundred and four point one fever, but at the time, it seemed entirely real to me. My mother decided it was time to take me to the Emergency Room, and for my sake, it was the right decision. The war continued to pop in and out of my reality as I rode to the Emergency Room just down the street from my home. It seemed to take an eerily long time to drive there, but when I arrived they rushed me to a private room where the doctors began testing me for various illnesses. The results came back and the doctor said I was dying from dehydration due to vomiting from an allergic reaction to antibiotics that were wrongfully prescribed to me and a high fever from mononucleosis. He told my mother that if she would have let me sleep through the night, I would have more than likely passed away in my sleep. The doctor gave me fluids and I was on my way home, but my troubles were not over yet.

                I stayed home from school for almost two and a half weeks and even after I started back to school, I had to come home early because I was morbidly weak. For the next year and a half, I was ill at least once a month, so I could hardly participate in anything outside of school. I was extremely disheartened because the thing I loved most about doing things outside of school was making people feel loved and I was tired of not being able to communicate because of illness, and I was running out of homework to do for my classes and wasting away watching television.

 I began searching for something that would fulfill my need to interact with people and that is when I found video games. I had always had a love for video games, but I decided to take my love to a new level and venture into the world of online gaming. I ended up finding the video game League of Legends. Within the first week, I had used my education of the Spanish language to communicate with other players, I had made new friends across the globe, and learned about various mentalities of people. I had always been interested in the different ways people act and why and this game helped me understand a lot of this and helped me become more empathetic to people of all backgrounds. Every day that I was unable to go out of my home, I would get online and talk with the people I had made friends with over Skype as we played. At that point, I played the game to get to know others.

I made one particular friend that I met and played the game with for hours at a time changed my life. This boy I met had had a very difficult life. He explained every difficult detail to me in confidence and I would listen to him for as long as he needed to talk. I always tried my best to make him feel loved and to know that I would never judge him for his past. He ventured on to join the military and we talk every chance we can. He is what made me realize the importance of empathy and the importance of giving people of all backgrounds a chance at friendship. Without him, I think I would still be living a disheartened life.

Altogether, I cannot believe the journey I went through. I never would have thought that I would be at this point in my life today. It all started out with me being deathly ill and progressing to a life with purpose. It all made me realize that I want to get a college education to make a difference in society in any way I possibly can. If I can make one person’s life better with everything I do for the rest of my life, that would be worth everything to me.