Growing up can be very difficult. High school is filled with bullying and insecurity. No one understands you. And sometimes your parents are so caught up in their adult words, they forget what it’s like to be a kid. I grew up with parents who were former addicts and suffered from anxiety and depression. My home was often filled yelling, sounds of someone falling, and sometimes crying. My mother had beat her heroin addiction but not before it did any long term damage to her brain. She wasn’t very good at remembering events, holding conversations, or listening. I often came home from school talking about my day and feeling like I was talking to a wall. My father was somewhat different, he listened and was patient with me, but he could never hold a steady job because of his reckless past, which added to his depressive state. It was like a storm when they argued, it was painful to hear and to watch. Whenever something did not go right my mother panicked. Whenever my music was too loud, my mother panicked, whenever I was five minutes late to school, my father panicked. Their anxiety and depression began to take its toll on me. When we moved back to California, after living in Nevada for five years, I made the decision to move in with my grandparents.

Neither of my parents argued with me because they knew they could not create a healthy environment for me.

I lived with my grandparents until I moved to Santa Cruz for college. It might be hard to believe this but I never thought about how I felt about my parents. I mean I knew I loved them but I never sat down to think about if I liked them. My feelings for my parents did not come up until my peers began to talk about their parents with me, more specifically, how they did not like them. They had the same issues I did: their parents weren’t there for them. It was through these conversations that I realized how much I did like and love my parents.

I realized that my parents were humans first and parents second. Humans are selfish in nature. My parents were oftentimes selfish but they are good people. You would like them. My mom is very funny and my dad would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. I played around with the idea that maybe they just weren’t meant to be parents but now I dismiss the thought: they are parents and there is no changing that. Together, they made sacrifices I probably will never know about and sacrifices I do know about. In hindsight, I appreciate my parents for allowing me to leave and for supporting me throughout my life. They may not be perfect but they are mine.