To most, Post-traumatic stress disorder is a phrase synonymous with war veterans and coping victims. But to me, PTSD simply sums up my childhood. My mother immigrated to the United States when she was twelve years old. An orphan of the Cambodian genocide, she was scarred mentally and physically by years of enslavement and inconsolable abandonment. My mother’s PTSD gave way to her everyday paranoia, and being raised by her has made growing up very challenging.
One time I came across failure. It all started when playing in a baseball game for Serra High School. Up to that game we had been undefeated in league play. As the game moved along it got more and more intense. Every batter and runner on base you could tell both teams were completely focused on winning that game.
On Wednesday, February 1, 2017, Chino Hills High School was out of power, resulting all the students got released early. I walked into the school campus about to sit at the normal table that I wait at. I usually get to school thirty minutes early because of traffic. I did notice something was off when I sat down. The area where I sat was a bit darker than usual.
Freshman year came along and I wanted to attend Sullivan High School. I wanted to come back to my hometown, I was just missing the people I started it all out with in the beginning. My dad and I had all of the paperwork finished already to go for me to attend Sullivan High School in August, but my mom refused and wouldn’t budge to let me go. She didn’t want me going to Sullivan, she wanted me to stay with all of my new friends I had made at Owensville. She thought my best bet would be to stay and proceed to go to OHS.
I entered Bishop Connolly High School in fear. I thought I would be drowned by homework, and I thought that I would find difficulty in finding friends. Those notions were not true. But aside from my fears for high school, I had an aspiration to become to closer to God. My family is religious, and I intend to carry the tradition to going to Church every Sunday and every Holy Day of Obligation, but there is more beyond going to Church.
When it comes to sports my family has many ties to Middletown High School South. In the Going as far back as the 1980’s when my Dad attended the same high school. He was a standout wrestler for the team and was given multiple scholarships to wrestle in college. My family name is everywhere within the trophy rooms and walls of Middletown South. I am the youngest of three children with two older sisters coming through high school before me.
We lived in the North Heights area of Amarillo, across the train tracks and I guess we would considered urban. Growing up in the 60’s we had neighborhood schools, I attended kindergarten at Miss Rosenberg’s Kindergarten, we graduated with white caps and gowns and I was really happy. She was a black woman with a Jewish sounding name, who was our leader who taught us the basic of learning. I attended North Heights Elementary School beginning in first through sixth grade Our high school, Carver High School was forced to close its doors to integrate and become a junior high school by the order the president of the United States. As I mentioned we had teachers that taught us, because they were like us, we didn’t experience a great deal of discipline
As a junior I moved from Ryan HIgh School to Braswell High School due to my zoning with the new school. Braswell High School was a brand new high school. I attended the first year it was open in which the highest grade level they offered was juniors. Most of the students moved from their old high schools to Braswell were devastated due to the strong school spirit at their previous schools. The administration at Braswell attempted to inspire new school spirit in all the students especially the junior class.
When I started Unity High School I thought that it was going to be boring school because my first choice was Skyline but my mom made me come to this school so I had to obey what my mom wants because she takes care of me and helps me with whatever I need help with so going to the school that she wanted me to go to was the least I could have done. I thought that high school was going to be difficult because the work that my brother would bring home when he was in high school looked really hard and I did not understand most of the work he needed to complete. But I realized that I need to be taught the material before I go on and do the work
I’m not an orator, nor am I a scholar. Though I do enjoy a good debate and engaging in intellectual conversations ; I feel like I am never “good-enough”. I always seem to find myself comparing myself to others. Whether it’s my grades or appearance. I never feel worthy.
Pacoima is a city with five or six active gangs. Here, the low-income neighborhood carries a sense of fear and despair that permeate the air. In the summer of 2016, after having mustered the right confidence, I took on a summer job at Hubert H. Humphrey Recreation Center - home to one of the city’s most deadliest gang, the Humphrey Boys. Ironically, that summer would be the park community’s turning point, hosting the safest, most loving, and consistent 2016 Summer Night Lights (SNL). At first, the despair stuck with me, and the job terrified me.
Now i know what my dad was talking about when i asked him “why was i leaving?”. There’s not a day i don't feel like going back especially to see my
I’ll never forget how I felt the first time I walked into Prairie Ridge High School. I was surrounded by approximately sixteen hundred other students and I knew exactly none of them. I had never been that alone before and when I walked through the cafeteria doors, I felt the first seed of doubt that maybe I should have stayed in Union, with my mom. At that moment, I wanted to turn around and run out of Prairie Ridge, hop in the car, and drive the four hundred miles back to my friends, my teammates, and the majority of my family. Instead, I took a deep breath and sat down.
My high school career has been like a big ole road trip from the east coast to the west coast. The beginning of the freshman year started out like being in California not caring what I was doing or how I was gonna get there. All I knew was that I wanted to make it to the end and graduate and go to college. I did not how I was gonna make the journey, all I knew was that I was eventually going to get there. My goal was to travel to the east coast somewhere and see what college I ended up at.
I put my pen and paper away then made my way to the sink to wash my hands, my dad doing the same. We ate dinner then continued on with the questions. I had asked my dad, “What adversities drove you to be who you are today?” I looked at my dad and saw the look of concentration on his face, eyebrows scrunched and eyes looking up. He then said quietly, “My dad.”
