The Hardships of Growing Up essays

The Hardships of Growing Up essays It's 2:00 p.m., and as I sit here, the respirators, monitors and beeping noises are slowly driving me insane. I am desperately trying to find something that will take my mind off of him. After reading the hospital's visiting procedures innumerable times, I find that my attempts have yielded no encouraging results. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see his cold, lifeless body lying there. In all the times that I had seen him, not once did I ever conceive of ever seeing him like this. It is difficult to understand how life can sometimes be so callous even to the young. I keep replaying over in my mind the summer days that we had just spent laughing and poking fun of one another. Never could I have imagined we would end up here. Though in life he and I were mere acquaintances, in death he would unquestionably leave a lasting imprint in my own life. Despite all of the academic lessons I had been taught throughout school, nothing had prepared me for this one, one of life's lessons. Last week, my first dilemma was what I was going to wear the next day. Sometimes it takes something so major, so traumatic to make one realize how trivial our everyday gripes and complaints are. Watching a friend fight to live and to hear him cry, "I don't want to die," turned my life and priorities upside down. We as teenagers never discern the idea of dying or going through any true painstaking experience. Our ideas of trauma consist of breaking up with significant others or not having a date to the prom. We take everyone and everything for granted. Youth can be construed as a sanctuary, misleading us into thinking that tragedy is a far-fetched notion, leaving us unprepared to face any devastating experience. We think we are young and therefore immortal. We have our entire lives ahead of us and never fathom the notion that any one of us will die. Those were the same ideals I had held, up until last week when I saw my once vivaciou...