Second Chance by Natalia

Second Chance by Natalia - July 2023 Scholarship Essay

Summer 2018 wasn’t much different from any of my previous summers in the beginning. I went to camp and hung out with my friends. The only thing different was that I was going to start a 3 week summer class at the end of the summer for college. The night before my class started, I heard noises from the room next to mine, my sister's room. Out of nowhere she ran out of the house. Unaware what was happening, me and her friend ran after her. The friend in the meantime explained that my sister wanted to kill herself. Not sure why the friend didn’t say something beforehand. Before she ran out the door, but there we were running towards the end of the block to the busy road. My sister stopped. She was waiting for the light to turn green to step forward. The two of us were behind. Not knowing if we will make it. My sister's friend was thankfully faster than me and pulled her back onto the sidewalk right as the cars started to pass by. My sister eventually went to a hospital and a rehabilitation place where she stayed for about 2 months. During that time the only thing I cared about was if she was ok and if she's getting better.
It wasn’t until the two months were up that I realized how all this was affecting me. My only sister tried to kill herself in front of me and I was acting like my emotions and mentality didn’t matter. After all I wasn’t the one that tried to do it. I wanted to be strong and keep my own feelings to myself. Until one day when I had my own mental breakdown. I didn’t see it coming even though years later it's pretty clear it was inevitably going to happen. The entire time I was focused on my sister going through something traumatic and didn’t realize that what I went through was traumatic too. I spiraled down into the abyss. I couldn’t handle my everyday life which at the time was college. I dropped out. I thought it would be a year. That year turned into three. I thought I'd find a way to make a living off of an unrelated job to college. Eventually I had a realization and determination to go back to college. College, the place I thought I'd never go back to as I decided to tie it with the remembrance of one of the worst moments of my life. It wasn’t until I was determined to go back that I realized when I left college, I associated it with the trauma I had. It was because the timeline of events lined up with school events. I had put college and my trauma together and wrapped it up with a bow and left it behind a door that said 2018 in my mind. I left them there stuck together. It wasn’t until March of 2022 that I decided to do some Spring cleaning. I learned that sometimes we need something to blame for our problems but eventually we have to face the truth. I learned that the need is more important than the want. I wanted to graduate college the first time around but the need overshadowed my want. After all, if I hadn't listened, I would have finished what my sister started. Now I am lucky that my needs and wants happen to align. I was given a second chance to follow my dreams to make them a reality.