Zephyr
April 13th, 2009, 09:00 PM
My philosophy essay that I just wrote today on what the instructor thinks are the 4 great questions of life. And as requested by David, I'm posting it. No, you don't have to read it :P I'm just complying with his request = ]
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"What's in a name?", asked famous writer William Shakespeare in his timeless classic Romeo and Juliet. In fact, there is a lot behind everybody's name that we don't know about. The name often forms who the person was, is and will be in the future. A person's name will affect them all of their life, whether they know it or not because name tend to dictate who we are, where we're from and possibly where we may be going in life. My name is Stephanie Lynne Wodtli.
I suppose we'll start with my first name, Stephanie. Fairly common, not very interesting, it's ranked #41 in female name popularity in the United States. The name itself is derived from the French name Stephen, which means 'crown or garland'. Stephen is the masculine form of the name, and Stephanie is the feminine form of the name. It actually makes sense that it's my first name since I yield about 25% French heritage. I asked my parents why they named me Stephanie and I got two different responses. My mom said to me, "We named you Stephanie because we both liked the name.". My dad told me, "I wanted to name you Grace, but your mother didn't like it. Since I like long names, we agreed on Stephanie.". There was one interesting tidbit though. I was supposed to be a boy, but there was a mistake in the ultrasound reading. So my name was supposed to be, after my dad's granddad, since the initials 'JLW' have ran in the family all of the way back approximately 7 generations. I actually like that my parents named me Stephanie because it's so common that you have to get your own personality to stand out of the crowd, rather than having a rare or different name like Lashawnda or Apple that makes you stick out on a shallow level.
My middle name, Lynne, is simple enough to explain. I received my mother's middle name. And also, I have Lynne as my middle name because on both sides of my family, the middle initial of 'L' is family tradition. I don't know why, I don't know how, but that's just the way that it is. As far as I can go back on my family trees, the middle initial is 'L'. Lynne is still a common name yet though.
Now for the interesting part, my last name. Wodtli isn't something that you're likely to run across at all in your lifetime. If you ever run into anybody with the last name of Wodtli, it's a guarantee that I'm related to them. "How do you know that?" you maybe be asking. Well, let us start with the background. It all began in Switzerland near the turn of the century, coincidentally near the great immigration to America. My ancestors, like many others, wanted to come to America because it was the promised land of opportunity where the streets were supposedly paved with gold. In Switzerland, my great-great granddad's name was Frederick Woodtli. When Frederick came though Ellis Island, however, they dropped an 'o' out of Woodtli and it became Wodtli. Frederick came out west to Oregon, and found his, metaphorically speaking, place where the streets where paved with gold. He opened up a successful logging company in Sweet Home, Oregon, owned the land that is now Foster, Oregon as well as a good chunk of what is now Sweet Home and controlled the electricity in Sweet Home as well until the 1950's when the mill had to be shut down due to the construction of the manmade Foster Lake. So the site where the old Wodtli Mill was is now underwater. I like my last name because it always makes an interesting conversation piece. Just 4 or 5 weeks ago, I had met my friends Cody and Rudi from Canada in person for the first time, and the first things out of their mouths were, "I'm so excited to finally meet you!" and "How do you say your last name?!". I guarantee that's always one of the first things that people ever ask me, so I had them guess how to pronounce it before I told them, as I do with everybody that has ever asked me how to pronounce it. Everybody always stumbles over the consonants 'dtl' being all together and they never now which ones to say, which ones are silent or if they're supposed to make some sort of exotic sound that you wouldn't expect.
A funny bit is how people manage to spell my whole name wrong. It's gotten completely butchered, and i always find it entertaining. I believe the worst that I've ever gotten was along the lines of 'Steffani Lynn Wadtley' by somebody back in high school.
Where am I from? This is a good question. Where do I begin? I suppose I start at the beginning since you can only begin at the past and what I know of it before I was born. Some ancestry is always interesting to tell about since I know a lot about my ancestors compared to a lot of people out there. I can't say much since I wasn't yet even a twinkle in my daddy's eye or even he was a twinkle in his daddy's eye, etc.. My heritage consists of French, English, Scottish, Irish, Swiss, German, Syrian, Lebanese, Dutch... you might as well throw the toilet in there while we're at it. To put it bluntly, I'm an American Mutt. My mother's family is from the deep south. I have 2 ancestors that were confederate captains in the Civil War and one ancestor that was in the revolutionary war as well. Surprisingly enough, we're also President James Knox Polk's closest living descendants, as my several times great grandfather was President Polk's brother. Lastly about my mother's side, I just learned this last summer that our German ancestor was a stow-away on a ship to South Carolina because his parents were going to send him to military school and he didn't want to go. I found that rather amusing.
As for my father's side, I don't know much except what I already have established in the bit about my last name since a lot of what we don't know is with family members that we've never even met. Something more that may be interesting though is that my step grandma Patricia is President William Howard Taft's granddaughter, which makes my uncle Derrick related to President Taft by blood.
Now, time to talk about my lifetime. I was born June 19th, 1990 here in Albany, Oregon. For the first two years of my life, my family and I lived in Halsey, Oregon. I have an older sister named Jennifer, and my parents' names are Jeff and Donna. I don't recall much from living in Halsey. Of the few that I do remember though, one time I had locked myself in my mom and dad's room on accident, riding my old purple tricycle along the fence line and the day that we had moved. That day I remember standing up in the back seat of a red Chevrolet pick-up truck, my sister and my mom in the front seat. I was looking back at our old house, dad was out in the back yard with green shorts on, watching a burn pile. I remember watching Halsey disappear into the horizon. That was the summer of 1992, and we had moved to Sweet Home, Oregon.
The neighborhood that we had moved to was quaint and peaceful. There were plenty of other kids around to play with, but I was always either 'the weird kid' that nobody wanted to play with or simply left out because I was the youngest girl in the neighborhood, therefore couldn't be an asset to any physical games that were played. As a result, I spent a lot of time with my dad on his days off while my mom was at work all day. We used to ride our bikes everywhere, go metal detecting, drive around in the woods and work on restoring his 1967 Chevrolet Camero. Sometimes on these days I'd be left to my own devices around the house and I'd play imaginary games with myself , always off in my own little world where things were very odd, yet made sense to me at the same time. Dad was a huge influence to me when I was a kid. To be honest, I don't even remember much of my mom at all during my childhood since she was always caught up in work. One of the major things that dad taught me when I was young was that honesty is the best policy, and I've always been a solid believer in that.
Mom and dad were always more spiritual than religious, so we never attended church regularly and I never got pushed into religion. They preferred that I found my own way through life, come up with my own ideas and beliefs about the world. As a result, I've always been an Atheist.
I don't remember much between 1995 to 1997 besides school. In this time period I hated school. I have always been somebody who was sensitive and had rapid emotional changes so I was an outcast, as nobody wanted to be friends with the crybaby. My teachers were never of any help because they were very old fashioned, their way of the highway. I remember at the beginning of third grade, we were starting to learn multiplication tables and I had found my own way of doing it, but my teacher would mark everything wrong because I hadn't done it her way.
The year 1998 was a year of big changes for me though. My parents decided that they wanted to move again. It was still in Sweet Home, only two blocks from where we already were, but it was a completely different place to be. The kids in the neighborhood were either one year older or one year younger than me. This was the year that my dad had given me the advice of, "If you want to be friends with somebody, then just ask them.". This was the year that I started to flourish socially after my dad gave me that advice. That year I had made three friends all on my own, all I had done was gone to their doorsteps, rang the doorbell and asked if they wanted to come to my birthday party that I was going to have. Ironically, they had sides. It was CJ & Katie vs. Amber, and I was caught up in the middle between it since they hated each other. To CJ and Katie, Amber was a snob, and to Amber, CJ and Katie were annoying twits. Nevertheless, I had learned how to make friends and how to maintain those friendships despite them hating each other. We spent a lot of our time running around the tri-block area, playing imagery games, generally pretending to be catching Pokemon since that was the popular thing at the time.
The next year, fourth grade, was when I started to excel in school because I had a teacher who supported finding my own ways of learning stuff. I had gone from being behind to being one of the three advanced students in the class. The teacher, Mrs. Green, has been one of the most influential teachers that I've ever had to this day because she's the one who encouraged me to start thinking outside of the box to help with furthering my understanding of what I was being taught. She instilled in me my first ever feeling of having a passion to learn as well as a passion to explore life and take leaps of faith, be my own person if you will.
I was never talented enough for sports or other activities however. So bad, in fact, that I was the only person who didn't make it into the fifth grade choir that tried out for it. I even tried 6 months of clarinet lessons and ended up dropping out. It was during this time period when we figured out that I had tactile dysfunction, having an overactive tactile sense. We think that I've had it ever since I was little since all of the signs have been there for as long as I can remember.
At the start of sixth grade, my parents got a divorce. I started being antisocial and stopped talking to my friends and I blamed myself for everything that was happening. Over the next few years I started having visual and auditory hallucinations and struggled with self harm. My parents acted like I didn't exist. My mom would leave $20 on the counter every week and I would be left alone. I essentially lived alone, being given that $20 a week then being left to my own devices wile my mom would stay with her boyfriend all week long. When I got sick of one parent neglecting me, I'd move into the other's house. For 5 years this was my life. Throughout junior high and high school I attempted to commit suicide three times, obviously unsuccessful.
In high school is when I made my current batch of friends. My hallucinations worsened. Once to the point where I was out in the garage at my moms' house. I could see a Jesus image, he was threatening me, and I was throwing things at him. I don't recall all of it correctly, but my friend Tim had walked in on the whole thing and told me what was happening after I came to. Over that summer after my freshman year I developed insomnia and would go into fits of psychosis. By age 15, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, which fit hand-in-hand with my tactile dysfunction I just learned recently.
During my Sophomore year my mother got remarried. Since her previous fiancé was abusive, I was scared of this new guy being similar, so I moved in with my dad. This is the time period when I had my first boyfriend, Samuel. I gave Samuel anything he asked for because I was afraid of him leaving me since my family didn't seem to care about me. Eventually I had the courage to let go and broke up with him because I knew it was for the best. After my junior year of high school, my dad kicked me out of the house when he was belligerently drunk. My senior year of high school was pretty dull as well, all I ever did was work. I ended up graduating with honors.
After working and saving up over the summer, my best friend Sarah and I got an apartment in Albany. Sadly though, it didn't work out. After 3 months my Bipolar Disorder became unmanageable and I started self-harming again, which resulted in my getting fired, so I had to move back home with my mom and step dad this last November.
Since then, I've been attempting to recover. It's been constant medication changes and me having to suck it up and admit that I needed to go to therapy. I found a support group through the internet, and actually made a lot of great friends that way. Just four weeks ago, I got to go meet a couple of the guys that I met who were from Canada (Rudi and Cody), and we can't wait to meet again. I don't know where I'd be right now if I didn't have those two to talk to at times. They've taught me that it's never too late to start getting better and that I don't have to suffer in silence like I did for years when my family ignored my many cries for help. I'm starting to fill out job applications and already have some a few roommate potentials. Also, recently, my friend Lynn was hospitalized after catching on fire and having 3rd degree burns on over 50% of her body. She was somebody that I worked with as well. I got up the courage to go in and ask my former boss if it would be okay if I came in and took Lynn's place while she was in the hospital and donate 100% of the wages that I make towards her hospital bills, then leave once Lynn is able to come back to work. Laura, my former boss, was so touched that she wants me to do it, but has to call her boss first to make sure that it's okay and to clear up anything that may be illegal. I feel that I could be effective if I am allowed to do this because my Bipolar Disorder is much more in control now, and I'm the only one who can possibly fill Lynn's shoes since she was a supervisor and I was one step below her when I had gotten fired, and can still do that job with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back.
My future, unlike the past, is still somewhat of a blur at the moment. I do have a general idea of what I want to do with my life though. I'll start with the near future and elaborate into the future.
This summer I'm going out of country for the first time ever. Just to Canada to visit my friends Cody and Rudi, but it's still a big milestone though since I've never done it before. As of right now, as mentioned, I have three different roommate possibilities lined up. The first one is with my friends Tim and Jason. they want to get a 2-bedroom apartment in Corvallis with me. The second one is my sister Jennifer and she may be moving to Salem or Stayton since she's most likely going to get a promotion and be a store manager up there. The third is my friend Samuel, who wants us to move to Portland and be roommates. So far, what I have planned out, is to first get a job as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) and move in with Tim and Jason for a year while I finish up my general studies here at Linn-Benton Community College. After the year is out, I'm going to apply to Oregon Science and Health University for nursing. A year is a perfect time because Samuel wants to move to Portland in a years time as well, and we'd make very good roommates. He has his beauticians license and if I have my CNA, it would be secure jobs so we wouldn't have to worry about a lack of finances. If all goes well and I go through nursing school, I'll work as a nurse and save up some money for financial security. Sometime in the future after this, I have another fork in the road to choose a new life path. I want to either go back to school to be a surgeon or move to Australia or Canada like I've always wanted to do. ever since I was little I've wanted to move out of the United States and make that the 'great adventure' of my life.
Of course, like many others out there, I do wish to get married and have a family when I'm older. What I want is to have a child of my own, then adopt the rest. I'm a big supporter of adoption since there are many unfortunate children out there in the world living in orphanages. I want to give some of those children a second chance at life to have a loving, supporting family. After the kids are grown and gone, I think it would be fun for my future husband, who ever that may be, so spend out retirement traveling the world. Travel, in my opinion, is a wise investment. I'm one of those people who wants a colorful palette of life experiences.
Does my future sound idealistic? Somewhat. But you know what they say, "If you shoot for the stars, you'll at least land among them.". It's going to be a long and hard road full of twists, turns and rough spots, but not all of it. I believe that if I work hard enough, I can do well for myself and be happy in life. After all, it's not the destination that matters, but the ride that you take through life that makes it all worthwhile.
So I've sat here the last two to three hours writing this essay and it's just crossed my mind, 'What time is it?", which happens to be the final question of this paper. If you'd like a short answer, it's 5:40 PM on a Sunday evening, I could bid you farewell and say this is the end of the essay. However, I can continue to elaborate further and you can bear with me just a while longer while I explain what time it is.
Starting backwards, going from big to small: the earth is approximately 4.55 billion years old, the recorded history of human life on the earth is roughly 5,500 years, 2009 of those years are given an actual number depending on your belief system, it's currently the 21st century, the 10th year of the 21st century in the in the 4th month on the 12th day of the 17th hour, etc.. We live in what will supposedly one day be called The Age of Information. By this, it is referring to the drastic change in how we communicate and give information. These days you most likely will be required to have an e-mail address or a cell phone for a job, or just so that you can stay in contact with others. however, before around 1990, computers and cell phones were considered luxuries whereas now they tend to be considered necessities in first world countries as well as most second world countries. Today's world is a time of fast-paced living, Go! Go! Go!. It's a time of rapid changes. The people of the world are slowly getting rid of it's prejudices and biases of each other and becoming more accepting. The climate has drastically warmed up in the last 150 years.
I've had an epiphany just now and gone off onto another train of thought. It's a time of change. It always has been and it always will be. Everything is always changing, nothing is ever going to be set in stone except for what is in the past. You can't change the past, but you can change the future. The only constant is change. Change is the only inevitable. It's exactly like my graduating high school class's motto, "Nothing we do changes the past, but everything that we do changes the future.".
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If you read this entire thing... HOLY CRAP!
lol
It turned out to be 12 pages, title page included, double spaced with 12 point font, almost 4,000 words.
Not much when you think about it, but seeing as the minimum was 7 pages, I done good = ]
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"What's in a name?", asked famous writer William Shakespeare in his timeless classic Romeo and Juliet. In fact, there is a lot behind everybody's name that we don't know about. The name often forms who the person was, is and will be in the future. A person's name will affect them all of their life, whether they know it or not because name tend to dictate who we are, where we're from and possibly where we may be going in life. My name is Stephanie Lynne Wodtli.
I suppose we'll start with my first name, Stephanie. Fairly common, not very interesting, it's ranked #41 in female name popularity in the United States. The name itself is derived from the French name Stephen, which means 'crown or garland'. Stephen is the masculine form of the name, and Stephanie is the feminine form of the name. It actually makes sense that it's my first name since I yield about 25% French heritage. I asked my parents why they named me Stephanie and I got two different responses. My mom said to me, "We named you Stephanie because we both liked the name.". My dad told me, "I wanted to name you Grace, but your mother didn't like it. Since I like long names, we agreed on Stephanie.". There was one interesting tidbit though. I was supposed to be a boy, but there was a mistake in the ultrasound reading. So my name was supposed to be, after my dad's granddad, since the initials 'JLW' have ran in the family all of the way back approximately 7 generations. I actually like that my parents named me Stephanie because it's so common that you have to get your own personality to stand out of the crowd, rather than having a rare or different name like Lashawnda or Apple that makes you stick out on a shallow level.
My middle name, Lynne, is simple enough to explain. I received my mother's middle name. And also, I have Lynne as my middle name because on both sides of my family, the middle initial of 'L' is family tradition. I don't know why, I don't know how, but that's just the way that it is. As far as I can go back on my family trees, the middle initial is 'L'. Lynne is still a common name yet though.
Now for the interesting part, my last name. Wodtli isn't something that you're likely to run across at all in your lifetime. If you ever run into anybody with the last name of Wodtli, it's a guarantee that I'm related to them. "How do you know that?" you maybe be asking. Well, let us start with the background. It all began in Switzerland near the turn of the century, coincidentally near the great immigration to America. My ancestors, like many others, wanted to come to America because it was the promised land of opportunity where the streets were supposedly paved with gold. In Switzerland, my great-great granddad's name was Frederick Woodtli. When Frederick came though Ellis Island, however, they dropped an 'o' out of Woodtli and it became Wodtli. Frederick came out west to Oregon, and found his, metaphorically speaking, place where the streets where paved with gold. He opened up a successful logging company in Sweet Home, Oregon, owned the land that is now Foster, Oregon as well as a good chunk of what is now Sweet Home and controlled the electricity in Sweet Home as well until the 1950's when the mill had to be shut down due to the construction of the manmade Foster Lake. So the site where the old Wodtli Mill was is now underwater. I like my last name because it always makes an interesting conversation piece. Just 4 or 5 weeks ago, I had met my friends Cody and Rudi from Canada in person for the first time, and the first things out of their mouths were, "I'm so excited to finally meet you!" and "How do you say your last name?!". I guarantee that's always one of the first things that people ever ask me, so I had them guess how to pronounce it before I told them, as I do with everybody that has ever asked me how to pronounce it. Everybody always stumbles over the consonants 'dtl' being all together and they never now which ones to say, which ones are silent or if they're supposed to make some sort of exotic sound that you wouldn't expect.
A funny bit is how people manage to spell my whole name wrong. It's gotten completely butchered, and i always find it entertaining. I believe the worst that I've ever gotten was along the lines of 'Steffani Lynn Wadtley' by somebody back in high school.
Where am I from? This is a good question. Where do I begin? I suppose I start at the beginning since you can only begin at the past and what I know of it before I was born. Some ancestry is always interesting to tell about since I know a lot about my ancestors compared to a lot of people out there. I can't say much since I wasn't yet even a twinkle in my daddy's eye or even he was a twinkle in his daddy's eye, etc.. My heritage consists of French, English, Scottish, Irish, Swiss, German, Syrian, Lebanese, Dutch... you might as well throw the toilet in there while we're at it. To put it bluntly, I'm an American Mutt. My mother's family is from the deep south. I have 2 ancestors that were confederate captains in the Civil War and one ancestor that was in the revolutionary war as well. Surprisingly enough, we're also President James Knox Polk's closest living descendants, as my several times great grandfather was President Polk's brother. Lastly about my mother's side, I just learned this last summer that our German ancestor was a stow-away on a ship to South Carolina because his parents were going to send him to military school and he didn't want to go. I found that rather amusing.
As for my father's side, I don't know much except what I already have established in the bit about my last name since a lot of what we don't know is with family members that we've never even met. Something more that may be interesting though is that my step grandma Patricia is President William Howard Taft's granddaughter, which makes my uncle Derrick related to President Taft by blood.
Now, time to talk about my lifetime. I was born June 19th, 1990 here in Albany, Oregon. For the first two years of my life, my family and I lived in Halsey, Oregon. I have an older sister named Jennifer, and my parents' names are Jeff and Donna. I don't recall much from living in Halsey. Of the few that I do remember though, one time I had locked myself in my mom and dad's room on accident, riding my old purple tricycle along the fence line and the day that we had moved. That day I remember standing up in the back seat of a red Chevrolet pick-up truck, my sister and my mom in the front seat. I was looking back at our old house, dad was out in the back yard with green shorts on, watching a burn pile. I remember watching Halsey disappear into the horizon. That was the summer of 1992, and we had moved to Sweet Home, Oregon.
The neighborhood that we had moved to was quaint and peaceful. There were plenty of other kids around to play with, but I was always either 'the weird kid' that nobody wanted to play with or simply left out because I was the youngest girl in the neighborhood, therefore couldn't be an asset to any physical games that were played. As a result, I spent a lot of time with my dad on his days off while my mom was at work all day. We used to ride our bikes everywhere, go metal detecting, drive around in the woods and work on restoring his 1967 Chevrolet Camero. Sometimes on these days I'd be left to my own devices around the house and I'd play imaginary games with myself , always off in my own little world where things were very odd, yet made sense to me at the same time. Dad was a huge influence to me when I was a kid. To be honest, I don't even remember much of my mom at all during my childhood since she was always caught up in work. One of the major things that dad taught me when I was young was that honesty is the best policy, and I've always been a solid believer in that.
Mom and dad were always more spiritual than religious, so we never attended church regularly and I never got pushed into religion. They preferred that I found my own way through life, come up with my own ideas and beliefs about the world. As a result, I've always been an Atheist.
I don't remember much between 1995 to 1997 besides school. In this time period I hated school. I have always been somebody who was sensitive and had rapid emotional changes so I was an outcast, as nobody wanted to be friends with the crybaby. My teachers were never of any help because they were very old fashioned, their way of the highway. I remember at the beginning of third grade, we were starting to learn multiplication tables and I had found my own way of doing it, but my teacher would mark everything wrong because I hadn't done it her way.
The year 1998 was a year of big changes for me though. My parents decided that they wanted to move again. It was still in Sweet Home, only two blocks from where we already were, but it was a completely different place to be. The kids in the neighborhood were either one year older or one year younger than me. This was the year that my dad had given me the advice of, "If you want to be friends with somebody, then just ask them.". This was the year that I started to flourish socially after my dad gave me that advice. That year I had made three friends all on my own, all I had done was gone to their doorsteps, rang the doorbell and asked if they wanted to come to my birthday party that I was going to have. Ironically, they had sides. It was CJ & Katie vs. Amber, and I was caught up in the middle between it since they hated each other. To CJ and Katie, Amber was a snob, and to Amber, CJ and Katie were annoying twits. Nevertheless, I had learned how to make friends and how to maintain those friendships despite them hating each other. We spent a lot of our time running around the tri-block area, playing imagery games, generally pretending to be catching Pokemon since that was the popular thing at the time.
The next year, fourth grade, was when I started to excel in school because I had a teacher who supported finding my own ways of learning stuff. I had gone from being behind to being one of the three advanced students in the class. The teacher, Mrs. Green, has been one of the most influential teachers that I've ever had to this day because she's the one who encouraged me to start thinking outside of the box to help with furthering my understanding of what I was being taught. She instilled in me my first ever feeling of having a passion to learn as well as a passion to explore life and take leaps of faith, be my own person if you will.
I was never talented enough for sports or other activities however. So bad, in fact, that I was the only person who didn't make it into the fifth grade choir that tried out for it. I even tried 6 months of clarinet lessons and ended up dropping out. It was during this time period when we figured out that I had tactile dysfunction, having an overactive tactile sense. We think that I've had it ever since I was little since all of the signs have been there for as long as I can remember.
At the start of sixth grade, my parents got a divorce. I started being antisocial and stopped talking to my friends and I blamed myself for everything that was happening. Over the next few years I started having visual and auditory hallucinations and struggled with self harm. My parents acted like I didn't exist. My mom would leave $20 on the counter every week and I would be left alone. I essentially lived alone, being given that $20 a week then being left to my own devices wile my mom would stay with her boyfriend all week long. When I got sick of one parent neglecting me, I'd move into the other's house. For 5 years this was my life. Throughout junior high and high school I attempted to commit suicide three times, obviously unsuccessful.
In high school is when I made my current batch of friends. My hallucinations worsened. Once to the point where I was out in the garage at my moms' house. I could see a Jesus image, he was threatening me, and I was throwing things at him. I don't recall all of it correctly, but my friend Tim had walked in on the whole thing and told me what was happening after I came to. Over that summer after my freshman year I developed insomnia and would go into fits of psychosis. By age 15, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, which fit hand-in-hand with my tactile dysfunction I just learned recently.
During my Sophomore year my mother got remarried. Since her previous fiancé was abusive, I was scared of this new guy being similar, so I moved in with my dad. This is the time period when I had my first boyfriend, Samuel. I gave Samuel anything he asked for because I was afraid of him leaving me since my family didn't seem to care about me. Eventually I had the courage to let go and broke up with him because I knew it was for the best. After my junior year of high school, my dad kicked me out of the house when he was belligerently drunk. My senior year of high school was pretty dull as well, all I ever did was work. I ended up graduating with honors.
After working and saving up over the summer, my best friend Sarah and I got an apartment in Albany. Sadly though, it didn't work out. After 3 months my Bipolar Disorder became unmanageable and I started self-harming again, which resulted in my getting fired, so I had to move back home with my mom and step dad this last November.
Since then, I've been attempting to recover. It's been constant medication changes and me having to suck it up and admit that I needed to go to therapy. I found a support group through the internet, and actually made a lot of great friends that way. Just four weeks ago, I got to go meet a couple of the guys that I met who were from Canada (Rudi and Cody), and we can't wait to meet again. I don't know where I'd be right now if I didn't have those two to talk to at times. They've taught me that it's never too late to start getting better and that I don't have to suffer in silence like I did for years when my family ignored my many cries for help. I'm starting to fill out job applications and already have some a few roommate potentials. Also, recently, my friend Lynn was hospitalized after catching on fire and having 3rd degree burns on over 50% of her body. She was somebody that I worked with as well. I got up the courage to go in and ask my former boss if it would be okay if I came in and took Lynn's place while she was in the hospital and donate 100% of the wages that I make towards her hospital bills, then leave once Lynn is able to come back to work. Laura, my former boss, was so touched that she wants me to do it, but has to call her boss first to make sure that it's okay and to clear up anything that may be illegal. I feel that I could be effective if I am allowed to do this because my Bipolar Disorder is much more in control now, and I'm the only one who can possibly fill Lynn's shoes since she was a supervisor and I was one step below her when I had gotten fired, and can still do that job with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back.
My future, unlike the past, is still somewhat of a blur at the moment. I do have a general idea of what I want to do with my life though. I'll start with the near future and elaborate into the future.
This summer I'm going out of country for the first time ever. Just to Canada to visit my friends Cody and Rudi, but it's still a big milestone though since I've never done it before. As of right now, as mentioned, I have three different roommate possibilities lined up. The first one is with my friends Tim and Jason. they want to get a 2-bedroom apartment in Corvallis with me. The second one is my sister Jennifer and she may be moving to Salem or Stayton since she's most likely going to get a promotion and be a store manager up there. The third is my friend Samuel, who wants us to move to Portland and be roommates. So far, what I have planned out, is to first get a job as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) and move in with Tim and Jason for a year while I finish up my general studies here at Linn-Benton Community College. After the year is out, I'm going to apply to Oregon Science and Health University for nursing. A year is a perfect time because Samuel wants to move to Portland in a years time as well, and we'd make very good roommates. He has his beauticians license and if I have my CNA, it would be secure jobs so we wouldn't have to worry about a lack of finances. If all goes well and I go through nursing school, I'll work as a nurse and save up some money for financial security. Sometime in the future after this, I have another fork in the road to choose a new life path. I want to either go back to school to be a surgeon or move to Australia or Canada like I've always wanted to do. ever since I was little I've wanted to move out of the United States and make that the 'great adventure' of my life.
Of course, like many others out there, I do wish to get married and have a family when I'm older. What I want is to have a child of my own, then adopt the rest. I'm a big supporter of adoption since there are many unfortunate children out there in the world living in orphanages. I want to give some of those children a second chance at life to have a loving, supporting family. After the kids are grown and gone, I think it would be fun for my future husband, who ever that may be, so spend out retirement traveling the world. Travel, in my opinion, is a wise investment. I'm one of those people who wants a colorful palette of life experiences.
Does my future sound idealistic? Somewhat. But you know what they say, "If you shoot for the stars, you'll at least land among them.". It's going to be a long and hard road full of twists, turns and rough spots, but not all of it. I believe that if I work hard enough, I can do well for myself and be happy in life. After all, it's not the destination that matters, but the ride that you take through life that makes it all worthwhile.
So I've sat here the last two to three hours writing this essay and it's just crossed my mind, 'What time is it?", which happens to be the final question of this paper. If you'd like a short answer, it's 5:40 PM on a Sunday evening, I could bid you farewell and say this is the end of the essay. However, I can continue to elaborate further and you can bear with me just a while longer while I explain what time it is.
Starting backwards, going from big to small: the earth is approximately 4.55 billion years old, the recorded history of human life on the earth is roughly 5,500 years, 2009 of those years are given an actual number depending on your belief system, it's currently the 21st century, the 10th year of the 21st century in the in the 4th month on the 12th day of the 17th hour, etc.. We live in what will supposedly one day be called The Age of Information. By this, it is referring to the drastic change in how we communicate and give information. These days you most likely will be required to have an e-mail address or a cell phone for a job, or just so that you can stay in contact with others. however, before around 1990, computers and cell phones were considered luxuries whereas now they tend to be considered necessities in first world countries as well as most second world countries. Today's world is a time of fast-paced living, Go! Go! Go!. It's a time of rapid changes. The people of the world are slowly getting rid of it's prejudices and biases of each other and becoming more accepting. The climate has drastically warmed up in the last 150 years.
I've had an epiphany just now and gone off onto another train of thought. It's a time of change. It always has been and it always will be. Everything is always changing, nothing is ever going to be set in stone except for what is in the past. You can't change the past, but you can change the future. The only constant is change. Change is the only inevitable. It's exactly like my graduating high school class's motto, "Nothing we do changes the past, but everything that we do changes the future.".
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If you read this entire thing... HOLY CRAP!
lol
It turned out to be 12 pages, title page included, double spaced with 12 point font, almost 4,000 words.
Not much when you think about it, but seeing as the minimum was 7 pages, I done good = ]