Clarity

Youthful experiences shifting into later realizations

I was too young to understand, to allow the depth of my new circumstance into my undeveloped mind. But the ideal in which I truly missed then was the impact on my mother and father. As I toddled from my bedroom with merely two years of experience behind me, I was unveiled to an image of my mother quietly sobbing to avoid disturbing her child's slumber. Yet the weight of the harsh, youthful exposure lay dormant in my mind.

The car ride from school to a different household every day became an accustomed episode. Bearing my pink suitcase, filled with clothing packed from one house to the other seemed routine, although I was unsure why kids at school lacked their own little packs filled with garments for the next day.

This lack of understanding, the blissful ignorance of childhood assembled a barricade between the harsh realization of my family's reality and my simplistic, youthful mentality. An authentic recognition of my situation failed to surface for an additional fourteen years. Beginning sophomore year, subconsciously something was igniting. My parent's divorce impacted me in a way that later encouraged the finding of my identity. As we mature as students and young adults, we are naturally exposed to increasingly unrefined experiences. Though these encounters seemed to uncap themselves all at once. I suddenly saw my parents as candid human beings, no longer with the filter of a childish mind. The lens was removed. Flooding my psyche with brutal realities of what my upbringing appeared to be, my wall was broken. These unprocessed new affairs I confronted resurfaced the adversity in my childhood I was formerly unaware of. It was not a specific event, nor anything recognizable as the cause for the accelerated revelation of the world I had discovered, but the natural growth and experience of aging. I was overwhelmingly encompassed in a tornado of reality. It seemed unfair; my evolved world was nothing of how I processed it as a child, and new maturity brought new understanding. The ignorant delight of my youth was surrounded by the harsh validity of entailments I was once inattentive to.

By virtue of youth, I had never encountered such a clear realization for this heavenly body in which I was living, that like all matters, contained flaws. I was unsure how to cope. Soon I was shadowed by a dark storm cloud, unfailingly by my side. I had heard of depression and anxiety but was deficient of empathy towards those suffering until now. A barrier in my mind was reassembled, though this time not of childish immaturity: one between happiness and the rest of my mentality.

Half a year went by, but I was no longer living my own life, merely existing in it. Watching it pass by like a film, each moment was a picture, strung together in a flipbook to slowly capture my life. More experiences and maturescence arose as I grew further throughout the year. This contrasting realization was not one of the world's faults and human nature's realities, but how to accept them. I learned to focus my sight ahead and to conceive the adversities in life, yet grow from them. The harsh realizations of life's realities had built me, trained me to accept flaws without letting them turn into that dark cloud. Building resilience towards hardships and finding authentication in self-discovery broke the barrier once again. Too young to understand before, now accustomed with a strength that would have otherwise remained in a subliminal hibernation. These walls that appear in everyone's life are more unstable than they seem, each individual holding the ability to remove the last brick of worry holding the blockade up. I was taught to not only survive through adversity but thrive past it. The afflictions in my upbringing led to who I am today, gifting me the ability to prosper, a skill I would be left incomplete without.

Reviews

[Chris Shaw]

Stuff that children experience as children can often come back and bite them as adolescents or young adults. It can be painful, but also a lesson in self discovery. Strength grows out of adversity. I enjoyed the read. Well written and conveyed lines.

Chris

[Wild Rose]

I liked this and put it into my reading list