An Experience That Can Change a Lifetime

Class assignment, Start with the sentence "I have experienced various things that have made me feel worthwhile, though I have never felt better than when..." and complete. This is mine.

           I have experienced various things that have made me feel worthwhile, though I have never felt better than when I made a discovery about myself after a large disaster had sprung itself upon me.  In the spring of May 2007, what started out as a normal day had found itself twisted into a cruel joke. 

           Asleep inside was my family and I in the early hours of the morning, in which not even the sun would peek its sleepy rays; my porch outside  was smoking and started to puff up black thin clouds, helping the climbing flames crawl higher toward the dark night sky. Thankfully, our first floor neighbors, Courtney and Meghan, had smelled the smoke and heard the crackle of the fire, and had taken it upon themselves to wake everyone in the condominium.

           Standing on the cold, wet pavement, I remember the rain pouring heavily and numbing me inside out, though it did little to quench the fire that ate at my home. The flames tore away at boards and nails, eating our furniture, and objects in my house. All that I could do was stand there helplessly, watching something destroy my home, waiting for the firefighters to come and save it like some damsel in distress.

                A few moments stand out in my memory that made a lasting impression on me; one was of my aunt, who had driven in the early morning hours. Before the light even shone, she was bundled with bags of clothes, blankets, and shoes for my family and I to use. After dressing and sitting in the car, listening to the deafening sirens and the orders to save my home, a firefighter took my arm to escort me up the winding stairs to my house to go rescue my cat that was huddled under a bed to escape the ongoing flames from earlier that morning.

              In the same instance, I saw my house, smoldering with dark smoke rising from the floorboards, the darkness covering almost everything its hands could envelop; though it did little to hide the fact that the very place in which I stood was destroyed and completely alien to me. I could no longer recognize the room in which I had peacefully laid my head but a mere few hours ago. The final moment landed on my shoulders as gracefully as a bag of bricks. I realized it was light outside, I was at my aunt’s home, and saw my older cousin getting ready for a regular high school day; this is the very moment in which it dawned on me; my house was gone, I had no possessions to my name, I had no place to neither live nor lay my head. 

            And upon realizing this, as I watched my mother and father, aunt and uncle, and grandmother laughing as they sat on the couches in the living room, it dawned on me. My house was gone, but my home remained. I had family, my life and health; everything I really needed was right there. It has been two years since May 2007, and since that day I have never taken that moral for granted.  I cherish my family and my life. This incident has changed my life and made me realize what I want from life.  I want to be happy with the choices I make, I want to have no regrets, and I want to live life to the fullest.  So all it takes is one little May to change a life