Life isn’t Easy

Zoe Rose Colegrove - 18 January 1998 - 11 October 2015
Zoë Rose Colegrove | Life Isn’t Easy | 18 January 1998 – 11 October 2015

 

Zoë  Colegrove

450031238
Ms. Domingues
English 12

September 4, 2015

Life isn’t Easy

Generally, I was confused. Why were my mom and dad not together anymore. I knew if I had asked, I would get vague answers, “We don’t love each other anymore.” Of course I knew that wasn’t true. I may have only been 5, but I knew that it was because my mom wasn’t the best to say the least. All I remember before that point were my parents fighting and my mom constantly being in the hospital, and out, and then back in again. Well, that and pill bottles, yelling about bills, and ambulances. I remember life not being easy.

Sure, it was an early age to “grow up”; I wasn’t mature physically, but mentally. I didn’t understand when kids would go home with their moms and dads; I understood going home to my mom passed out on the couch and having to wait hours for my dad to get home from work. I recall drifting from my friends and their joy-filled games simply because I just wasn’t having fun anymore. I remember this is the beginning of something which doctors would later call depression, then borderline personality disorder.

Many of my days were haunted by the fact that I knew my mom wasn’t ever going to be okay. My dad would often tell my brother and I to go to our rooms when we couldn’t wake her up. Weeks later, she would come back from rehab and and would be the mom my friends had and the mom I wish I had. But always, a couple weeks and pill bottles later, she would be back to her old self. My dad would always be there for us even though he was nearly killing himself working so much to keep us fed. But he made up by being twice the parent my mom could be.

I spent an awful long part of my life hiding my emotions. I didn’t want to make it any harder than my family by giving them more to worry about. I’d always just distract myself when things were hard to handle and just ignored my emotions completely. When people tell you that holding in your emotions is bad, they aren’t joking. It leaves you empty and exhausted. Depression is that horrible feeling you get when you’re awake at night remembering things you regret…except that feeling is every living, breathing moment of your life. I had gotten exactly what my mom had and was tearing apart her life over. Drugs make everything numb, but they also made her kids feel unloved. Why would someone try to kill themselves over and over when they have so much going for them? Maybe I’m wrong and she was just addicted and want to give it a reason.

So even though to this day my mom barely remembers who I am for the first few minutes I’m around her and I am constantly numb, but that doesn’t mean life can’t go on. It doesn’t mean that I or anyone else should spend their lives filling themselves with drugs instead of themselves to their full potential. But it also means that drugs, depression, or other mental issues aren’t a joke. People need to realize that they ruin people forever and that it makes their lives harder when others glamorize drug use or being depressed.

Life isn’t easy. If it was, everyone would do it.