What I’m really trying to say is  I feel like high school was a big burst of freedom in my life, but I have problems adapting to the amount of freedom. It's like going from prison to a beach in hawaii. I was so amazed at the simple fact that I could have my phone out during lunch, because at my old school, it was run by a bunch of strict catholics and I wasn't even catholic and as soon as something happened, they all tried to blame me for it. We had lunch for 20 minutes then a 20 minute recess, and sometimes recess before lunch. Never could we have our phones out, not even during the after school program where they babysat us. It was so strict, they had this fake holiday every year called mercy day AND IT WAS ON MY BIRTHDAY EVERY YEAR. I swear they made it up just to piss me off. Some kid wrote graffiti on the bathroom walls, and the teachers called every boy in the school up to the office and told them to write who they thought it was and why on a piece of paper. 5 out of 60 kids wrote that it was me, because they wanted to get me in trouble, not because i did it, but because they didn't like me. The teachers called me in the office and said that they knew it was me because 5 FRICKIN KIDS SAID SO. We had strict rules. Detentions were given out for anything.

Here's where the real story starts from my point of view.I'm in Language Arts class, and my teacher is lecturing us on something, but i'm not paying attention. I start zoning out and falling asleep when I hear a loud announcement over the P.A. system. “ Will every boy from 5th to 8th grade please report to the conference room NOW!” “This can't be good”, I say to my friend myles as we all head for the conference room. “No it can’t.”, he says back. We all arrive at the conference room confused and we see out principal and 4 staff members looking very upset as they usher us in. We take up the entire room with no space to spare, most of us are sitting on the floor, and then the principal starts showing us some pictures. They are pictures of the bathroom stalls, but they have graffiti on them. “Good god”, I think to myself someone wrote F*** the principal. We all look around. Me and my friend Vaughn exchange concerned looks. The room starts to hum as we all talk to each other about how dumb we all thought this was. “QUIET!”, Our principal yells. We all snapped back to the quiet and we are all edge. The staff members start handing out index cards to all of us and when everyone had one, the Principal yelled for silence. “Now , I want everybody to write the following on their index card, Dear Principal, I am deeply sorry about what has happened. Then we had to write if we saw anyone do this, or who we thought was the culprit. We all took out our pens and wrote. I thought to myself about how stupid this was.

“People could literally lie and blame the kids they don't like, and sure enough, I was called to the office 20 minutes after we were dismissed. It rang out in L.A. class while I was mid nap. I woke up to the loud words of, “David Williams report to the office NOW”, this made me regret not telling the teachers why this was a bad idea. “Maybe my enemies had all decided to report me like that”, I thought to myself, “maybe they're doing this to every student. “Maybe they're calling me in to tell me who really did it. When I got there, I was about 8 teachers sitting at a round table. “Grab a seat”, one of them said. “This doesn't feel right”, I think to myself. “Why are they all looking at me like this?”. Then the Principal held up a picture of the graffiti and said, “I have 5 papers that put you here”. “You’ve gotta be frickin joking”, I said in my head, careful to keep my cool. I said to the teachers, “how does 5 kids saying that I did this mean I did anything. They probably just want to get me in trouble.” “this is no form of real proof, and I don’t think it’s fair to accuse me like this.”, I said, “and I'm not the type of kid who writes these kinds of things. Now here's the part of the story that hasn't been relevant until now. You see, earlier that day, me and a few kids happened to be in the bathroom and we were all bored, so we started throwing a washable marker at the mirror, making small blue dots on it.  We found it fun compared to class. Now the graffiti was written in red permanent marker, so obviously us and the person who wrote it had very different intentions. But that's now the point.

The point is that the teachers tried to use that against me, just because I was reluctant to tell them about it, and of course my friends ratted me out. So basically my teachers didn't trust me and I didn't trust anyone, except for my only 2 friends. I really hated my middle school for 2 main reasons: I could barely trust anyone, and my teachers never trusted me. It took the help of my parents for me to win what my teachers turned into a whole court case.  

What I’m really trying to say is  I feel like high school was a big burst of freedom in my life, but I have problems adapting to the amount of freedom. It's like going from prison to a beach in hawaii. I was so amazed at the simple fact that I could have my phone out during lunch, because at my old school, it was run by a bunch of strict catholics and I wasn't even catholic and as soon as something happened, they all tried to blame me for it. We had lunch for 20 minutes then a 20 minute recess, and sometimes recess before lunch. Never could we have our phones out, not even during the after school program where they babysat us. It was so strict, they had this fake holiday every year called mercy day AND IT WAS ON MY BIRTHDAY EVERY YEAR. I swear they made it up just to piss me off. Some kid wrote graffiti on the bathroom walls, and the teachers called every boy in the school up to the office and told them to write who they thought it was and why on a piece of paper. 5 out of 60 kids wrote that it was me, because they wanted to get me in trouble, not because i did it, but because they didn't like me. The teachers called me in the office and said that they knew it was me because 5 FRICKIN KIDS SAID SO. We had strict rules. Detentions were given out for anything.

Here's where the real story starts from my point of view.I'm in Language Arts class, and my teacher is lecturing us on something, but i'm not paying attention. I start zoning out and falling asleep when I hear a loud announcement over the P.A. system. “ Will every boy from 5th to 8th grade please report to the conference room NOW!” “This can't be good”, I say to my friend myles as we all head for the conference room. “No it can’t.”, he says back. We all arrive at the conference room confused and we see out principal and 4 staff members looking very upset as they usher us in. We take up the entire room with no space to spare, most of us are sitting on the floor, and then the principal starts showing us some pictures. They are pictures of the bathroom stalls, but they have graffiti on them. “Good god”, I think to myself someone wrote F*** the principal. We all look around. Me and my friend Vaughn exchange concerned looks. The room starts to hum as we all talk to each other about how dumb we all thought this was. “QUIET!”, Our principal yells. We all snapped back to the quiet and we are all edge. The staff members start handing out index cards to all of us and when everyone had one, the Principal yelled for silence. “Now , I want everybody to write the following on their index card, Dear Principal, I am deeply sorry about what has happened. Then we had to write if we saw anyone do this, or who we thought was the culprit. We all took out our pens and wrote. I thought to myself about how stupid this was.

“People could literally lie and blame the kids they don't like, and sure enough, I was called to the office 20 minutes after we were dismissed. It rang out in L.A. class while I was mid nap. I woke up to the loud words of, “David Williams report to the office NOW”, this made me regret not telling the teachers why this was a bad idea. “Maybe my enemies had all decided to report me like that”, I thought to myself, “maybe they're doing this to every student. “Maybe they're calling me in to tell me who really did it. When I got there, I was about 8 teachers sitting at a round table. “Grab a seat”, one of them said. “This doesn't feel right”, I think to myself. “Why are they all looking at me like this?”. Then the Principal held up a picture of the graffiti and said, “I have 5 papers that put you here”. “You’ve gotta be frickin joking”, I said in my head, careful to keep my cool. I said to the teachers, “how does 5 kids saying that I did this mean I did anything. They probably just want to get me in trouble.” “this is no form of real proof, and I don’t think it’s fair to accuse me like this.”, I said, “and I'm not the type of kid who writes these kinds of things. Now here's the part of the story that hasn't been relevant until now. You see, earlier that day, me and a few kids happened to be in the bathroom and we were all bored, so we started throwing a washable marker at the mirror, making small blue dots on it.  We found it fun compared to class. Now the graffiti was written in red permanent marker, so obviously us and the person who wrote it had very different intentions. But that's now the point.

The point is that the teachers tried to use that against me, just because I was reluctant to tell them about it, and of course my friends ratted me out. So basically my teachers didn't trust me and I didn't trust anyone, except for my only 2 friends. I really hated my middle school for 2 main reasons: I could barely trust anyone, and my teachers never trusted me. It took the help of my parents for me to win what my teachers turned into a whole court case.  

When I first came to SLA it was very different. The people were a lot different, the work load was crazy, the strange rules, having an internship that I can’t get paid for, and a bunch of other stuff. The teachers seem like they’re all about teaching rather than raising a family or trying to be friends with the students. I don’t personally like it because not all students want to even be in school let alone...  I came from School of the Future where teachers acted like real people. People you could tell were going through their own struggles. Here at SLA it seems like the teachers are always happy and jolly which doesn’t seem real to me. It's like the twilight zone and the teachers are cheerful zombies.  I feel like some of them are hiding how they really feel or who they really are to the point that their personality doesn’t seem possible. Like if someone close to them died but the very next day they’d be at school and would still make us write 3 papers and make 2 videos about some unnecessary topic. I feel like their partly emotionless in the sense that there's no slowdown in the work output and they just push on, forgetting it ever happened. For example recently my aunt died and my cousin was really close to her. My cousin is a school teacher. She took off from work for about a week and when she came back she wasn’t assigning a crazy amount of work because she knew she still had to grade all of it and she knew she didn’t feel like doing a lot when she got home.  The people on the baseball team seemed like they actually wanted to be there to win rather than just be there...

I walked into Ms. Martin's health class not knowing anyone and sat at the end of the table by myself. I had to switch chairs with the one to the left of me because the chair I sat in had a bad back piece.It bent back way to far almost to the point where you would fallout. There were health related posters on the walls but nothing crazy, it was everything that you would expect to be in a health class. A few about the body, a few about what you should eat, and a few of the play 60 posters about how much exercise you should get a day. No one had a reaction to me being the new kid. They didn’t talk to me or anything. But luckily no one spoke to me because I don’t like to start talking to people until I’ve known them for at least a week like a break-in period. I don’t want to make friends with people I barely know. I like to watch how people react to day to day situations because I hate people that blow up or make a huge deal about little things.

Before I came to SLA I had already started High School Three times before at different schools. The first time I started was at a homeschool program called Claritas. It was absolutely awful. My family and I found out about the homeschool from a kid named Jacob who was on my summer baseball team. I hated him, he was a dick and a bad sport. He always had to have his way or else he’d throw a weird tantrum and rant about how you were wrong and he was right. But at school he was same way. One day the whole school played a game of kickball at recess. Jacob decided to be the pitcher. The school went from K-12. So it was a little 4th graders turn to kick the ball. So she got up and kicked the ball right back to jacob. So since he just has to win every game he plays no matter if it takes the fun out of it for others, he decides to peg the kickball as hard as he could at the little girl. Luckily he missed and the ball got lodged in the bushes. But he was a dick of a kid. But everyone else that went there seemed to have something off about them. One girl said she had never seen the matrix because her parents wouldn't let her since it was rated R. But rated R movies are drastically different now than in the 90’s. All of them listened to their parents word for word. No one had there own personality. They never wanted to step out from under their parents to see what the world was like. Everyone had a 10pm bedtime and everyone went to bed at 10 pm. Everyone was a bunch of squares and it got to point where some days I didn’t talk to anyone at all. And on some of those days when my dad came to get me and ask about my day that would be the first time opening my mouth all day so it would almost be glued together.  So I Ieft when they went on christmas break.

The next day my dad looked up another homeschool online. My dad found out about this homeschool called connexus by doing some research online. It was a much better homeschool than claritas. It was a homeschool program that you could either do it by yourself on the computer or go to a center close to you and have teachers teach the material like a regular school. At first I was doing it by myself but a couple weeks pass and some things on the website started to confuse me, so I told my dad I needed to go to a center instead. So me and my dad looked up the closest one and found one downtown. I was happy there was one downtown because when I needed money I could just go to my parents jobs and get money from them. The next day me and dad went down to the center for our meeting and told the people what I needed help with and they told us they could help starting tomorrow. They also told us that there were two times I could come in which were eight to eleven and twelve to three. For obvious reasons I chose the twelve to three schedule. I hate waking up early. So after we had the meeting my dad went to work and I went back home. The next day I went to the center and got the help I needed and also did my classes. The people at this homeschool were a lot more relatable than the last. They weren’t extremely competitive or crazy they were just all really chill, laid back people. About six of them were on house arrest but they didn’t seem like they would do anything to be on house arrest. I found out about a program called fruity loops. It’s a music making program, I used it in between classes when I was bored. I probably made about fifty beats that semester. Then the summer hit and baseball started up which is how I got into my next school.

The next school I went to was school of the future. I found out about school of the future from one of the coaches of my summer team. He said he worked at a school similar to mine since both schools mainly used laptops. He said I would be a great addition to the baseball team. So I happily said yes to joining future. But future was a real school with a building, windows, a lot of students, fights, lunchroom, everything a regular school has. On my first day I walked in and a guy told me to go sit in the gym. I sat in the gym by myself listening to music then after about 20 minutes the principal stood in the middle and told which grades where they needed to go, where to get there schedule, and from there the teachers took over. My teacher's name was Mr. Uthman, he was an african guy. He bought us up to the class and we did a couple ice breakers to learn each other's names. After we finished our ice breakers the period was over and we went to our next class. In every class that day it was just ice breakers. The people at future were okay. There were some I liked more than others to say the least. The rest of the year was a good year. My dad helped start a fundraiser for the baseball team and we were able to afford a batting cage in the gym. We also went undefeated in the regular season but lost our first playoff game.

I think I changed during the move to a new house. in my old house we looked and felt like rich people we had to kitchens a work out room tons of rugs and very big rooms but then we move not to far from my new house . when i saw what it looked like in compacted naverhood it looked like a very cheap house with the dying plaints  i started shacking below my legs when  that was also the same time I was moving to a hole new school which looked worse then the old one I was nervous because it was the first time in my life that I ever transferred to a new school in a city. I moved to a different city and went to a high school where I knew that I would struggle adjusting to the people around me and remembering their names.

I guess you can say I went through a phase during the early maturing stages of my life. Ideally I normally write about living in another country and not being able to identify where I grew up in because it was always somewhere different, yet at the same time I enjoyed the idea of being “different” because that’s what makes you standout from the norm right? However the thing that makes me different is the fact that different from everyone else with interesting lives I didn’t go through any hardships, or major drastic changes. And to add my parents always reminded me how perfect my life was and everything was basically laid out for me, which confused me because the words “perfect” and “fortunate” were the words used by parents so often that it really affects me the most. Anyways this perfect life style was actually the thing that caused the most mental damage to me because I was always messing up. Its funny cause this thought process is what my middle school teachers described as “suffering from metacognition”. However metacognition didn't just affect me in my classes, it was an ongoing thing in just bust everything I did.

The first time it came to light was in elementary school. I began my normally scheduled scan around the classroom. It was independent reading and everyone seemed so invested into their books for just fourth graders. I mean maybe I’m just slightly illiterate but even so there’s no way these kids are reading Harry Potter or Percy Jackson, those books probably weigh more than the kids themselves. Not to mention that I’m still struggling with the Magic treehouse….  The door opens… Everyone looks up from their books almost the same way a deer looks up when it knows it’s being hunted. It’s the school nurse,  I knew it was her just from the sound of the jingle from the lanard and the room keys because I practically live in her office due to a combination of being so clumsy and fragile. You would think that all my chubbiness would work as a protective shield from knee scrapes and bruises from gym class. Nope, Nurse Westbrook and I were with each other about four hours out of the school week. At one point it was so bad that as soon as I would enter her office she would already open the fridge with an ice pack ready without me even telling her what’s wrong. Even the office made jokes about it. Anyways, the nurse enter the room and my classmates stare as if it’s their first time meeting someone from the outside world. She smiles and strolls over towards my teacher who at the time was organizing the bookshelves. The nurse hands her a large pony folder, they chat for a moment, and uninterested as usual I continued in my struggle of reading the magic treehouse.  The two share a laugh like two moms watching their kids from a park bench. And just like that the nurse exits the room along with the interest the kids had in their books. Our teacher walks to the center of the room, folder in hand and brings the attention of the class towards her direction. She announces that we would all be called down to the office two by two in order for her to do check our height, eyesight and worse of all weight. I began to freak out finding looking for ways to get out of this activity. I knew it was not be any means supposed to show comparison of students but it truly felt that way.

I remember in 3rd grade going over my best friends Nick’s house everyday and playing split screen Online on Halo 3. It wasn't till Christmas of 2008 until I got my own Xbox 360, and became victim of the video game addiction. Unfortunately all of my memories on Xbox weren't positive. but although I stayed inside all day it was probably the fasted way I learned about the world. All I can say is that earth is full of extremely twisted people, and very reasonable people. And there's a very clear line between the two. It wasn't till I was 11 years old until I met my first "pro" gamer. He was 18 years old and his name was Michael, and at the time he seemed like the most intelligent and inspirational person in the world just because of his halo skill. He introduced me to the competitive world of eSports and basically taught me all my social skills in real life. From what I learned eSports is the exact same system as the MLS, NBA, NFL.... Just less physical work! Which invites way more people to compete. From that day I played with Michael just about every day of that summer of which I got my Xbox.

My friends were surprised that I still had social skills considering I haven't hHung out with them since I had my Xbox. It was really that bad. Especially once I found out that people considered me a good halo player... Life online was just so much better thant reality. It was like I was being worshipped by people older and younger than me. And I didn't even have to do anything except play the thing I was good at. A lot of people don't take things like that into consideration, when the first thing they think of when they picture a gamer, is some nerd or wimp that stays inside. Well, 50% of that may be true, but it’s not always in a negative directions. A lot of these gamers are very intelligent but just do not fully understand on how to apply their strengths to the real world. But becauses of this the “smart gamers” have more than enough time to structure their gaming hobby into a career making more money than any other regular job. To this day I don’t know how these gamers made it so far with what just appears like screaming at screen for hours. Until I realize how much work and sacrifice and dedication it takes to get that far with such an underestimated career, which for me could be considered “The dream job”.  

It is the second day of 5th grade, I am sitting at a table in a large classroom where everybody is talking about their summer and trying to make some new friends. At our table in the back of the classroom, I am talking with a girl named Adrienne, a girl named Avery, and a boy named Tyson. Tyson and Adrienne are talking about how to say forty. “Its pronounced forty” says Tyson. “No its pronounced fordy” says Adrienne. “Its fordy” I say. “What do you know” says Tyson. “I know it's pronounced fordy” I said. “Ooooooooo” says Adrienne and Avery.

From that day forward, Tyson and I had become best friends. We even live close to each other in West Philadelphia. Tyson always has my back and I always have his as friends should be. Another scene is when it was my birthday and Tyson had came to my house. It was on March 4th on a friday night and Tyson had called me to confirm my address and ten minutes later he showed up at my house. “Happy Birthday” says Tyson and his mom, “Thank you”, as I said trying not to smile too hard. At my house in West Philly it was my aunts, uncles, Nana, Mother, Father, brother, cousins, baby cousins, step-father and of course me. Me, Tyson, my brother Mike, and all of my cousins were playing video games. In 6th grade me and Tyson were never in the same classes. Tyson had became my best friend by always looking out for me and I would always do the same for him. Me and Tyson had became friends by just talking to each other and hanging out outside of school. It was one time when Tyson came over my house and  my mom said “Hey my other child”.  At that moment it just felt like Tyson had belonged there.  Tyson and I are inseparable, this one time he had moved to Maryland but we still communicated. When he had came back to Philly he had told me tha this time he will stay.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

No movement of the lips or eyebrows. I can always tell by the look on her face that my reaction isn’t enough. If I had said a nonchalant “Okay,” with wide eyes and a slight smile, she would’ve gotten the impression that I cared. Unbothered is the look I went for for. I couldn’t argue with her. There’s nothing to argue about. What are we arguing about? A basket of folded laundry that has been sitting in my room for about three days. The clothes will be put away eventually. I always do everything eventually. I feel that if she knows that I’m annoyed by her unannounced entrance into my room to talk about the laundry for the third time, she’ll feel that maybe my annoyance will get me to put it away to stop her from nagging. I didn’t put my clothes away and won’t until I feel like it.

I could tell this was the start of a week-long silent treatment. Day one: the argument. Usually something stupid occurs which causes her to yell at me. I give her the usual blank stare, which she doesn’t like. Day two is the start of the silence. We both make a mutual unspoken agreement that less interaction will occur between us. Day three is where my dad has to play monkey in the middle. He usually goes back and forth hearing one complain about the other. Day four: usually sitting at the table and being able to slice through the awkwardness with my butterknife. Day five would consist of the start of the comedown. Dad’s words would sink into minds and eventually settle the argument between us.

My mother and father are exact opposites of each other. My dad and I have always had a good relationship. My dad usually tries to see both sides of a situation, while my mom is strictly one-sided. We clashed when I didn’t agree with her and I tried to explain my point. My opinion was usually shut down by questions that favored her side. I would try to argue a point that was already deemed wrong, so I started to end every almost-arguement with “Okay.” My dad would always be stuck between us. He couldn’t side with me, and he didn’t want to side with my mom because he didn’t agree. At night, he would come in my room and talk it out with me. He would reveal what she was saying about me, and I would give my defense. At the end of our secret meetings, he would look me sternly in the eye and say, “But don’t tell your mom,” I knew I couldn’t say anything. We weren’t speaking to each other anyway.

All of this occurred when I was transforming into a outspoken overly-opinionated teenager. When I started to become my own person, I started to grow apart from my mom. If I differed with her on subjects, I let her know and she didn’t like that. Along with my opinions, I did the usual teenage defiant acts such as not cleaning my room, taking naps, and generally being lazy. I didn’t let it show that whatever she scolded me about affected me because of my ever growing teenage angst. Even though she’s my mother, I like to be able to stand my ground. I couldn’t let her walk all over me for something so small. I don’t overdo myself to where I am completely disrespectful, just enough to where I am annoyingly blunt. We are both extremely stubborn, which was the root of our problem. We are more alike than we’d like to admit.

It was warm and sunny outside on our drive to the bank. I was riding shotgun while she took the wheel of our hand me down Honda Accord. I was about twelve or thirteen years old. My preteen body was in full effect. Braces were plastered over my teeth and I was even skinnier than I am now. We were discussing our neighbors’ demon child. He was every parent's worst nightmare, so my mom was extra dramatic when she talked about him. I didn’t care enough to discuss him, but I didn’t make that fully known. Endlessly talking about someone isn’t going to change them. The topic has been discussed plenty of times before and I didn’t think we’d ever come to a happy ending. I don’t remember what words we exchanged, but all I remember is that after a few times of keeping my thoughts to myself, I decided to share my opinion. I didn’t speak in a hostile or sarcastic tone. It was only about a sentence. A moment of silence flooded into the car after I spoke. My chest tensed each second nearing her response.

Finally, she said, “Why are you such a little bitch to me, Maddy?”

There was no escape. I couldn’t jump out of the car. Home was too far by now. The neighborhood we were in wasn’t one that I would want to walk alone in. I just kept quiet. How is someone supposed to respond to that? I consider myself a great kid for not getting mad. I don’t really know why I stayed so calm. About a year or two ago, I confronted her about it. She denied it.

“I did not say that to you,” she laughed. I don’t know how she was so casual about something that was so significant to me.

“Yes, you did.” We both laughed about it, and I still laugh about it. I’ll never forget that though.

The October of my freshmen year in high school was the start of the end. My dad and I both knew it needed to stop. She treated me significantly different than my brother. I got a call from my dad when I was on my way home.

“I talked to your mom earlier. She said she’s going to start to be nicer. So, hopefully things will get better.”

At the time, I doubted it. Or at least I knew it would be hard for her. My dad and I both understood that after this long it would be extremely hard for her to retain her feelings. Life between us gradually changed. My mom loosened up and I noticed.

Now, my mom and I are like best friends. We’re constantly together. Like all mother and daughter relationships, yes, we do still have our differences. We’ve learned to let the small things go. I think our rough patch made us closer. It was a learning experience for both of us. We don’t discuss it now, but it still lies underneath the surface. I hope in the future we never find ourselves in that situation again.

When going into Freshman year, I was really doubtful about how the year is going to go. I hit the middle of November, that is when I was crushed. It was the week before Thanksgiving, I was ready for our annual Macsgiving! Macsgiving is a tradition where we would throw a big party with all of my dad side of the family’s friends at my grandpa’s house. It would be the 3rd year in a row and I was excited to see faces I haven’t seen a whole year! Thanksgiving was one of my favorite holidays as I get to talk to family friends and eat.  l helped my mom put cases of beer and soda into the basement to store until Thanksgiving day. I went upstairs and layed in bed, pulling up my school’s website to start my homework. The phone began to ring as I ignored the christmas ringtone until my mom picked up. “Kids! Get ready we’re going to the hospital to see your grandpa!” My grandfather was in the hospital for at least half a year and it was going to be the first time I’ll see him. I haven’t see him in forever which made me a bit happy and sad.

When we were in the car for awhile, I knew it wasn’t going to be typical Jefferson hospital that we usually always go to. A hospital appeared out of the side window that I wasn’t familiar with. My family and I walked into the ICU and turned through a few hallways to find my uncles and aunt in the room in front of us which of course was the room my grandpa was in. When I walked in it was unbelievable what I saw. My grandpa had so many tubes all around his body, his entire body was filled with fluid to the point where he looked swollen. Like he was stung by 100 wasps. I didn’t even recognize him anymore. From that short old wrinkly man that I loved being around, to the swollen man in the bed that I didn’t recognize.

To see my grandpa, I had to put on an entire suit, gloves, and hand sanitize my hands. I was very uncomfortable. It was so unreal just to see my grandpa that I haven’t seen in so long. What was the point of putting all this on? I’m just visiting, not doing an operation on him. I did those procedures and walked into the room. Just looking at him was going to make me fall to my knees and cry. Everyone was surrounded around him. I was standing in front where his feet was facing me. I touched and rubbed his leg. It was the first time I touched him in forever. It felt fat, like a sausage from a deli. I looked up to see him looking into my eyes. He had no expression. But I knew that he couldn’t make one either way. A flush of warmth flowed up fast through me and I began to have a burning sensation throughout my entire body. I rushed out of the room and I was gagging into a trashcan. I didn’t know if it was the clothes they made me wear that was making me hot and lightheaded, or the thought that I haven’t seen my grandpa in so long to where it hurts to just see him in the condition he was in. After I settled down for a few minutes, I walked back into the room and walked right beside him again. My family and really close friends came by to let him know we’re here for him. I knew what was happening but I kept it in the back of my head.

When I was still at home, my siblings and I were told that he was dying. From all the faces surrounding the room, I knew it was the moment where we we’re gonna let go. To lighten up the mood and the intense emotions in the room, my uncle said, “grandpa smile for grandkids” although it was in cantonese. He smiles showing all of his teeth as if the the dentist told him to open your mouth and bite down. I laughed and smile a bit and started tearing up a bit knowing that’ll be the last time I would ever see him smile. I watched as my aunt, uncles, and my dad stood by his side and held his hand. I walked out of the room with my mom, siblings, and family friends as we gave them their time to see their father for one last time. We walked down to right turns down the hallway right into the patient room. There was drinks and snacks on the table, yet I didn’t touch a single one even though my stomach was empty. I had a blank face for a good 10 minutes as if I was thinking about life in the shower. I couldn't believe it. Happy memories flashed through my head remembering all of the things I did for my grandfather when he needed me. I started over thinking and became angry at myself that I didn’t spend enough time with him when I always came over. I kept those thoughts inside and kept the blank face.

Ding! I looked up at the tv where Steve Harvey was hosting his tv show Family Feud. I watched it, yet I wasn’t paying attention as if it was playing on mute. I heard crying coming through the hallway and looked through the opened door to see my aunt on the ground sobbing. My aunts very close friend was right next to her, holding her hands trying to pull her back up. The only thing I could’ve think of is why. Why did it have to happen now. It was the week of thanksgiving and it was suppose to be the month of being with family and having thankfulness for each other. My heart was beating out of my chest as I kept watching my aunt sob a bucket of tears in the middle of the hallway. I didn’t know what to do as I turned away and look at my brother and sister. There was no expression on either of their faces. Not even my mom or our family friends. My eyes blurred as tears began to build up. It’s been a few minutes of sitting in silence after I hear one of my uncles talk to my aunt in the hallway. “He’s suffering! Just lying there having a machine breath for him. He can’t even talk anymore!” I hear my aunt try to respond, but the tears and sniffing was in full control. I didn’t turn my head out the door because I knew I would cry, unable to control myself. I slouched down into my chair and kept telling myself to stay strong. It’s okay…... be brave justin, grandpa is okay.

“Kids lets go. We’re going home now. “ My mom demanded that we’re going home. “Where’s dad?” My brother asked. “He’ll be home later.” We got up and walked down the hallway in silence. It was the first time I witnessed my entire dad’s side of the family so close and together. I watched as my aunt was still on the floor and my uncle trying to pick her up. My other uncle is facing the wall, leaning on it with his arm up and his head under his arm. My oldest uncle and my dad was still missing as they were still in the room of my grandpa. I turned back around as we exited the building, zipping up my jacket from the wind that tipped my to the right. The car ride was silent the entire time. When we got back home, it was 1 in the morning and I showered right away. The burning hot water hits my head and flows down my body as the entire bathroom begins to turn into a steam room. My mind was blank and I just stood there. When I got out, my dad came back home. My dad walks up the stairs to get ready to shower and we all come into his room and asks when is he going to heal. “He’s dead. We cut the tube, he was suffering. Its 1am, kids, go to sleep.” I walked into my room, slammed my face into my pillow, and cried myself to sleep.