Coming of age

Garrett Bakarich

     As the years pass me by, as I count up from ever since I could count, there are moments where I realize that I haven't been doing things the right way, where I learn a little about the world and myself, these moments are important milestones in the journey that is life. As far as the English department is concerned, these milestones are called coming of age, but I prefer the title screwing up, but somehow that seems a little politically incorrect, oh well.

     The first milestone worth mentioning was a realization I had in seventh grade that I didn't have to kill myself over my academics and that life would be more fun if I lived a little. Consequently my report card was a little less satisfactory but that' all part of the story. The second realization I had was in eighth grade, about how I had to balance my relationship with my girlfriend and the other aspects of my life. This one caused problems all across the board.

     Both stories have the same significance in my life, both have the same moral, the realizations that I must find balance in my life. The idea that everything is interconnected and that the smallest things can have the biggest effects. Even though I would prefer not to read the second milestone to the class, it proves a concept that is the most important lesson I've learned to date.

     The first story is set in seventh grade, it was the beginning of the year, and I was excited and ready for the new year. Like in the last year, my school work was extremely important to me, I spent every minute of my after school time doing home work, and making sure it was done perfectly. One night when I had and extra ordinary amount of work, and two tests, I was feeling overwhelmed. Even though the task was impossible, I tried, and failed. I didn't get all the work done in time. At the moment it was a huge deal, because I had almost never not completed an assignment before that.

     The following day, I felt terrible, expecting the fire and brimstone to begin falling any moment, just kidding, but I was really worried what would happen. But as I went through my day, nothing bad happened, it wasn't the end of the world. That night I didn't try so hard on my homework, it was less stressful Almost enjoyable, in comparison that is. But from then on I realized that it wasn't worth the extra few points on my homework to kill myself over it. That life would be more enjoyable if I loosened up, and it worked.

     The story begins in the beginning of eighth grade when I met my girlfriend, we then started a relationship. The beginning part of the story really isn't the important part, its just stupid love stuff that nobody wants to hear about. If I were to write every detail it would be exceptionally boring. So in short, the day I began my relationship was the day I began to spend almost all my time with her. This one choice literally defined my eighth grade year. This choice made that year everything it was, both the good and the bad.

     The extensive amount of time I was spending with my girlfriend first started to affect the other aspects of my life after about two months of the relationship. The first mistake I made was choosing to spend the time, the second mistake I made was to ignore the signs that I was making a mistake. I ignored them because I was happy, with the relationship at least, and I didn't want to accept that something was wrong. I thought that the relationship was perfect, but if life teaches you one thing, its that the truth isn't always what it seems, or what you want to hear. The ways in which my life was affected were that since I was so much time with my girlfriend, I started to neglect my friends. I started barely seeing them through out the day. And how did it affect my academics? My grades started to drop, slowly but surely, slow and steady wins the race they say, but this was a race that I needed to win, but my life was slowly falling behind, I was losing the race.

     As the situation progressed, so did my problems, my relationships with my friends seemed to grow distant, my grades plummeted, but still, I ignored the signs, I was still happy. Maybe that was a good thing, maybe it wasn't, I truly don't know. The point in witch I hit “rock bottom” I guess it would be called, even though that term usually refers to a drug or alcohol addiction, was when my girlfriend made a similar realization and put forth the idea to reconnect with the other aspects of our lives, and thus get some separation, I I agreed id would be a good idea. But it was only then I realized how far I had really drifted away from the rest of the world. This may sound overly dramatic, and that's because is is slightly, even so, it was a big deal, to me at least.

     The way I chose to remedy this was to simply redistribute the time among all three fields, although seemingly easy it turned out to be difficult. Although difficult, I eventually evened out my life, although balance, it hadn't recovered. It took a while to return to normal, but somethings never did, my relationship with my girlfriend was different after that. This event showed me that life needs balance, or else it just doesn't work.

     These two milestones in my life taught me three things, one, was that life is a lot better if you live a little, two was that the smallest event can cause the biggest effect, and lastly that in life, in order to be happy, one must find a balance, no matter what aspects of your life you consider, they must be balanced. These events taught me important lessons on life, and helped to form me into the person I am today.