PS 2nd draft, how close am i?
Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 3:25 pm
The elevator line is a placeholder for now, but how is this shaping up? Is it boring to read, or interesting enough to at least finish? Honesty is what i'm looking for here, thanks guys.
I vividly remember the glassy look in her eyes as she clutched the manila envelope between her hand and chest. It worried me; I wanted to know why I was sitting at that table, why my brother and sister were also sitting at that table, why my mother was physically forcing back tears, and what horrors that envelope contained. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out, I still remember the pain in the words that never made it. When she finally did manage to mutter that first sentence, the only words that reached my ears were “acoustic neuroma”. The envelope reared back its ugly flap and produced an x-ray, laid gently upon the table. I suddenly couldn’t stop the “oh-my-god-this-elevator-is-falling-too-fast!” feeling from taking control of my insides as I realized: my mom has a brain tumor.
Thirty nine years old, and she was possibly staring her own mortality straight in the face. The doctors believed it was not malignant, but had yet to make a positive diagnosis. It was difficult to process what I’d just been given, almost as if I had ten pounds of emotions to stuff into a five pound sack. I felt a sadness wash over me, and a riptide of despair tug at my soul. I couldn’t lose her, not yet. More so, she couldn’t lose us. There was so much she had yet to see, to experience, to accomplish. So many years that she’d planned to spend with her family and friends, all put into jeopardy the moment she received that slightly transparent image showing a foreign mass near the inside of her right ear.
I couldn’t help but relate my mom’s situation to that of her own mother’s, who died of lung cancer at the age of 49. I was 7 years old, and to this day I feel as though I was cheated out of a grandparent. My mom and my grandma were both so young in my eyes; it was hard for me to accept how fragile a human life actually is. We all expect to grow old, get married, have kids, and retire, living the American dream along the way. But sometimes life has other things in store for us, things that we are helpless to control.
It turned me upside down, like an hour glass. If life was short, then I was going to do whatever I wanted until it was over. I didn’t register for classes the following semester; school lost its pole position on my racetrack of priorities. I couldn’t think about building a future that may not exist, I had to live in the now. I took a part time job at the airport marshalling planes onto the tarmac, with no intention of climbing the career ladder. I fled the positive influence of my mom, who was begging me to re-enroll in college, to move into a house with two friends who teetered the needle on the influence scale towards negative. Nothing productive came from 3 unmotivated and immature young adults living together in an unsupervised environment.
Every day grains of sand slid slowly through the bottleneck, piling in a pointed heap at the bottom. But what I perceived as the time I had on earth running out was actually the time I had to do something significant with my life, lest I end up waving orange flashlight cones at 727’s on the midnight shift for the rest of forever. I was capable of more, I wanted more. The eventual realization that there may never be a “later” drove me back into school, with a refound focus and drive to make something of myself. It was just a few classes at first, enough to get my feet wet; but within I couple semesters I was fully submerged by a 20 credit hour load and a direction that I’d never had, law school.
I have continued working throughout college to pay tuition, knowing that my effort both in and out of school will pave the way for a future I can be proud of. That hourglass feeling has never completely left me, only usurped by determination; the determination to do something meaningful with the time that I have instead of selfishly wasting it away. I want to carry that determination with me into law school, and out the other side; into a world in which I can help right the wrongs of society and create a safer environment for our children. Time permitting, I have no doubt that I will succeed.
I vividly remember the glassy look in her eyes as she clutched the manila envelope between her hand and chest. It worried me; I wanted to know why I was sitting at that table, why my brother and sister were also sitting at that table, why my mother was physically forcing back tears, and what horrors that envelope contained. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out, I still remember the pain in the words that never made it. When she finally did manage to mutter that first sentence, the only words that reached my ears were “acoustic neuroma”. The envelope reared back its ugly flap and produced an x-ray, laid gently upon the table. I suddenly couldn’t stop the “oh-my-god-this-elevator-is-falling-too-fast!” feeling from taking control of my insides as I realized: my mom has a brain tumor.
Thirty nine years old, and she was possibly staring her own mortality straight in the face. The doctors believed it was not malignant, but had yet to make a positive diagnosis. It was difficult to process what I’d just been given, almost as if I had ten pounds of emotions to stuff into a five pound sack. I felt a sadness wash over me, and a riptide of despair tug at my soul. I couldn’t lose her, not yet. More so, she couldn’t lose us. There was so much she had yet to see, to experience, to accomplish. So many years that she’d planned to spend with her family and friends, all put into jeopardy the moment she received that slightly transparent image showing a foreign mass near the inside of her right ear.
I couldn’t help but relate my mom’s situation to that of her own mother’s, who died of lung cancer at the age of 49. I was 7 years old, and to this day I feel as though I was cheated out of a grandparent. My mom and my grandma were both so young in my eyes; it was hard for me to accept how fragile a human life actually is. We all expect to grow old, get married, have kids, and retire, living the American dream along the way. But sometimes life has other things in store for us, things that we are helpless to control.
It turned me upside down, like an hour glass. If life was short, then I was going to do whatever I wanted until it was over. I didn’t register for classes the following semester; school lost its pole position on my racetrack of priorities. I couldn’t think about building a future that may not exist, I had to live in the now. I took a part time job at the airport marshalling planes onto the tarmac, with no intention of climbing the career ladder. I fled the positive influence of my mom, who was begging me to re-enroll in college, to move into a house with two friends who teetered the needle on the influence scale towards negative. Nothing productive came from 3 unmotivated and immature young adults living together in an unsupervised environment.
Every day grains of sand slid slowly through the bottleneck, piling in a pointed heap at the bottom. But what I perceived as the time I had on earth running out was actually the time I had to do something significant with my life, lest I end up waving orange flashlight cones at 727’s on the midnight shift for the rest of forever. I was capable of more, I wanted more. The eventual realization that there may never be a “later” drove me back into school, with a refound focus and drive to make something of myself. It was just a few classes at first, enough to get my feet wet; but within I couple semesters I was fully submerged by a 20 credit hour load and a direction that I’d never had, law school.
I have continued working throughout college to pay tuition, knowing that my effort both in and out of school will pave the way for a future I can be proud of. That hourglass feeling has never completely left me, only usurped by determination; the determination to do something meaningful with the time that I have instead of selfishly wasting it away. I want to carry that determination with me into law school, and out the other side; into a world in which I can help right the wrongs of society and create a safer environment for our children. Time permitting, I have no doubt that I will succeed.