Andrew Ciufo

Ms. Staff

11-9-17

Realization

Have you ever felt stuck in a setting that you can’t escape from? In life, many people say that this is caused from remaining in the same place for years upon years. Generally, a new experience is composed of many pieces and fragments, many of which give you direction for the future. This same situation occurred to you this past year. Every day gives you the urge to leave your house to start a new life, and this is exactly what you do. Courage, determination, confidence; all factors that led you to where you are today. What other people don’t know is the “strangers” who helped you along your vigorous journey and the factors you came to realize throughout this time.

You’ve completed your first full week at your new home and can’t stop thinking about your friends, family, and everything about your “old” home. To cope with this, you gather 5 photos from your past times and while gazing at them, you realize how much you appreciate the people and things from your old life. One of these pictures illustrate you and your brother hugging right before you dropped him off for college. It seems like just yesterday you and he were 4 and 7 years old playing football on the lawn. What isn’t shown from this photo is the fact that he attended Phillips Academy as a PG in 2016. This being true, he prepared you mentally for weeks for your future endeavors you had yet to experience, such as having an open mind set. At the time, you didn’t fully understand the importance of this advice. Now, after having finished your fall term at Phillips Academy, you finally comprehend and appreciate the guidance he put forth.

While flipping through these pictures, you find a drawing you created, only a couple weeks back. The photo is a yellow cancer sign with a black “#38” in the top right corner. All at once, the emotions come rushing back as you hold this picture with tears in your eyes. Your mind travels back to the wake, to the funeral, to the grief you saw in his parents’ faces, to the days upon days you spent together, and to the overall determination and positive mind set your friend had. You remember feeling guilty that you weren’t present to support his family the day it all happened. While all these feelings come flying back to you, you pause and realize the importance of your own family. How could you have hated your parents at one point in your life? How were you so ungrateful to them? All these years you wanted to just get away from them and be free from anyone that held you back against your desires, but being apart from the most important people in your life make you sincerely regret the wasted time spent thinking about this.

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The third picture you come upon is a picture of what has come to be your second family. Prior to your arrival, you pictured yourself being an outcast, like a newly admitted citizen into the United States. However, you knew you were going to have that special connection the instant you arrived when these strangers whom you have never met were waiting for you outside the dorm to introduce themselves and help take your bags in. Within the first week of you living at this foreign place, you come to realize that the 13 other kids in your dorm would become 13 of your closest friends within the next year. After completing just one term, you learn that you were correct. They are here every day for you to help you, cheer you up, and just talk whenever you need. You appreciate these individuals every day because without them, you would be nothing.

The next photo you discover is a picture from your last baseball game as a Patchogue-Medford Raider. Now, at this point in time, all of you friends on the team are seniors, while you’re the only junior in the “clique”. This being said, you soon realize that this is the last time you will ever step foot on the field with the people you have been playing with since 7th grade; your best friends, your brothers, your family. As you are sit in your dorm room a few weeks into school, you come to the conclusion that you are mentally going through a hard time. You are overwhelmed with your social life at your “new” home. During this time of struggle, you venture back to the moment you told your teammates about your decision to come to PA. You recollect how supportive and proud of you they were, and this made you much more confident in your commitment. They assured you that this move will benefit your future, no matter how many ups and downs you have, and that it is acceptable to be in an environment you aren’t comfortable in.

Another way you learn to cope with this unsettling feeling is by journeying back into your own personal writing and notice any trends or changes within your writing style. As you do this, one factor stands out to you is the theme of “realization” in most of your pieces of writing. You ponder this for quite a while and then understand why. Similar to the point of realizing the importance of your family since you’ve been away from your real home, you notice that being separated from aspects of your life can actually have positive impact on your life. People tend not to appreciate certain parts of life when they are used to the factor being present around them each and every day. As you are adapting more and more into your new environment, this theme becomes more and more prominent. The more you realize this, the more you will begin to realize and appreciate the little things in life.