"Never Let Life Kill Your Spark" by Michelle

"Never Let Life Kill Your Spark" by Michelle - February 2014 Scholarship Essay

Over the years I have experienced the same feelings and woes of every other teenage girl; a boy breaks up with you or you and your best friend are no longer talking but my life has also had some unique differences and struggles. When I was six, my parents filed for divorce, it was hard but I was six, I had no idea what was going on. As I have grown up and understood more of what caused all of that I slowly realized why my mother did what she did. My dad had a severe drinking problem and it caused our family to suffer and not be able to enjoy out time together so she did what she thought was best for herself and for me. In the beginning on high school I chose to make friends with the wrong people and I realized that I just was never happy. I started hating the world and was becoming very bitter at a very young age and I knew it needed to change.

I started to try and become more friendly with people and soon found myself in a completely new friend group and I was finally starting to become a happy person again. A few of my friends introduced me into a genre of music I had never explored before, rock. I really got into it and fell in love with a band called Crown the Empire. They have a song call, “The One You Feed” it seems like an odd song title at first but the song is all about being yourself and not making everyone else in your life happy all the time, sometimes you need to make yourself happy instead. The quote that I found most inspirational is, “never let life kill your spark”. During the fall of my senior year in high school, 2012, I suffered a few different losses in my life. I lost my grandpa to Parkinson’s disease after fighting for eight years and two short months after that I lost my father to heart failure and some other medical complications. This was a very trying time in my life and all I wanted to do was go in my room and cry. My father was not a huge influence in my life so my grandpa had become my male role model and losing both of them so close together was hard. The lyrics, “never let life kill your spark” is exactly what I needed to remember that life goes on. I am not defined by any one moment or any one person. Yes, I miss them both very dearly but I also know they would not want me to shut the world out and give up. I need to be myself and not let life get me down. I needed to find my spark and let it shine.