My Short Stay but the Longest While

Below is an autobiography I created for our Humanities class, Endurance. We are at our senior year, and we are reflecting on our past, to build our future. It was difficult for me to interpret all my experiences in life into a shorter telling, and still have this story arc for myself. I really wanted to focus on the main challenges I am facing. In this autobiography, we imagined what our future would look like and wrote it as if we had lived it.

MY SHORT STAY BUT THE LONGEST WHILE.

I was purple, from head to toe. I wasn't breathing, and I wasn't crying. There wasn't an explanation, and there was no time. So, what do you do with a purple baby? You smack it. In an instant, I had felt the first and worst pain of my life, but it was the reason I was alive.

My childhood wasn't the worst thing anyone could imagine, but there were things about it that had left me a mess. It was like spilled milk, you're not really supposed to cry about it. Since my parents divorced when I was a baby, I wasn't old enough to understand may parent's marriage failing. The most I could remember was a time when I walked in on both my parents arguing and my mother slamming her hands on the table with this very enraged look on her face at my father. I was maybe 4 at the time, and even that was after they already divorced.

The original plan for the divorce was to have me, my sister, and my brother live with our mom. As much as my father wanted to raise all of us he found it more important for all of us to grow up with a mother. Things were working out fine until my mother was having financial problems to a point where we were living in a garage. We were very happy children but it was concerning for my father and my mother. My father offered to watch all of us until my mother had more stability. My mother agreed to this and things were turning out well, until there was a disagreement with how much longer my mother wanted us to stay. This disagreement escalated into this entire court case that resulted in my father having full custody over my sister and I. Because my brother was only blood related to my mother, she could have full custody of him. The court had also decided that every summer, and alternating between seasonal breaks my sister and I are to visit our mother along with our brother. Even though we were separated and our parents separated, we were young enough to move on from it.

The entire divorce itself was never the problem; it was after the divorce that the problem's really started for me. It was the worst part of my childhood. My mother would always mention the horrible things my father did. Often claiming how he lied to her and took advantage of her. All of this being told to me without any proof and without a reason for me to know. I was very young, and felt an immense guilt for not living with her. She would place a lot of blame on my sister and I for the circumstances she created.

Because of the guilt that I felt, and my easily persuaded mind, every summer, I would consider the possibility of my father being this evil person who had wronged my mother. Obviously, this was my mother projecting her anger for my father onto me, but I wouldn't understand that for a long time. By the age of 13, I would try to imagine what my entire life would look like living with one parent over the other. I was convinced that I had a decision to make. I thought that there was a right and wrong choice to make.

I was confused, manipulated, and gaslighted to a point where I didn't want to trust either of my parents. It took me 7 years to slowly understand the truth. I still love both of my parents to this day; they only had the best of intentions and mistakes are made all the time. I am getting ahead of my story though; I want to go back a bit.

Freshman year was quite a change in my life. My only closest friend was no longer with me daily, and I wasn't attending a public school. Even though my water was calm, the ripples in the water started to come back. All my previous fears had gone, but new ones began to take form in other places.

My art was changing. There were not as many art classes available, so my practice was infrequent. Outside of classes, I did not know what to do with myself. I would develop concepts and begin projects out of spontaneity, but few would come to completion. I didn't think much of this, as other things started to take up my time, such as new friendships and learning about the world around me. I had met someone and found myself immediately attached to them. We completed school projects together, shared opinions and experiences, and created artwork together.

This friend struggled with a disorder that made them detach from the world around them. DPDR was something that was affecting them almost every day. I remember days when I had to ask a counselor to find them because I knew they would disappear between classes during an episode.

I did a lot of research about their disorder because I wanted to help them in any way that I could. I would ask several questions and tell them about information that I found to help them cope with episodes. My thoughts revolved around them for hours on end. I never understood why they would have these episodes or what it felt like to have them, so when they would try to describe them to me, I wouldn't believe them. I thought it was something that was in their control, or at least manageable.

At least, that was what I believed until I had one. It was everything they had described to me. My mind felt like sandpaper scraped against tin-foil. My vision was blurring in and out of focus. It was so unbearable I scratched my arm until it bled. After this incident, I talked with my school counselor, and we had both decided that I needed a break from my friendship. My behavior and mental state were at risk.

At this point, our friendship had gone on for months. All their thoughts and ideas felt like mine, and their habits hung around my neck, like a dead skunk. This friendship opened up parts of myself I didn't know I had, and the empathy inside me was exhausted. I had finally told them what I needed, which was space.

Our close friendship had paused, but we continued to live our lives. As much as it hurt to end so much of our time together, I needed this to grow. I began to feel more like myself, though I was never the same.

By my sophomore year, I had taken fewer art classes, and my drive was beginning to slow. My passion was corrupted with fear like poison from a snake bite. So much of my desire was gone, but I continued to ignore this mental block because important deadlines were coming up. A realization had dawned on me. I only had two years to reach a certain skill level needed to attend the best college school for animation. Whether it was true or not, I had convinced myself that this was the truth. This was a do-or-die task; I saw this as if it were an if, then statement in a long line of code. My clock was ticking and the sand was falling. A year was supposed to feel like a long time, yet it had flashed before my eyes.

In my 3rd year of high school, I returned to the same thought I had from my sophomore year. As if I had woken up from a dream, the sun was already here; It dawned on me that I only had a year to reach the skill level needed to make it in. The previous feeling of stress that was perfectionism was now an unfathomable level of perfectionism.

In the year 2020, near the end of junior year, a pandemic lockdown was initiated. Nothing was in my control. Assignments from previous terms trailed behind me like my shadow. I was still recovering from the surgery I had undergone and was finally left to face the very thing I had put to the side.

My passion was gone. The summer before my senior year left me with an endless cycle of depression, and I was completely burnt out. Along with the struggle of moving past the lingering pains of my parent's divorce, I didn't understand what I wanted for myself. I was losing motivation.

In my senior year, everything became a part of this long to-do list. I had inconsistent feelings of desire and no direction. Any art I created could only be done through tasks, or with other tasks. It was rarely out of my interest. More months passed, and this feeling continued to swell up like a bad bruise. Until it was in my face. The thing I had beat myself with, like a bat with nails, was standing in front of me. I hadn't reached the skill level, and I made no progress. Nothing had changed. What had felt like this extremely important to-do list remained as one. There was so much to do and little time. I had failed to do something I made impossible to myself. So, I didn't apply to the school.

As I neared the end of my senior year, I applied to three other art schools. All of which I admired but wasn't what I had planned for myself. My fourth college application was supposed to be for the same major, visual arts, but when I realized I was applying to Depaul University, I assumed that the classes were designed for more practical studies. I made a decision that would take a turn in my life. In a short but momentous decision, I applied to the University of Depaul to major in computer science.

Just before the start of applications opening up, I had taken several computer science classes. They were the only things that had fueled my drive for creative freedom. I overachieved in many of the projects; It wasn't for anyone else, or my future, and there was no penalty. I didn't have to prove myself to anyone, there was so much time, and an infinite amount of motivation. It was like love at first sight. A sudden passion and love for computer science.

Around a month later, each of my college application status' were updated. I was accepted into every school I applied to, including Depaul University. This was a huge deal, but of course, so much of the stress was still here. I had to ask myself the question, what did I want, and what did I need? I still wasn't sketching and to consider myself an artist was a lie to myself. I was not practicing or creating anything. I barely knew anything in computer science; I shouldn't jump into something I am not familiar with. What do I do with myself?

It was fairly simple. On National college acceptance day, May 1st, I committed to Depaul University to major in computer science. Despite all the years I spent learning, and developing my art and despite all the parts I enjoyed and all the things I wanted to one day achieve, I needed to walk away from it.

Maybe you've already caught on to what I'm suggesting. It's the same lesson learned again. Something that once relieved my stress was now the source of it. I needed a break, and the only way I was going to get one was by letting go of what I was attached to. This was a risk for me, but it saved my art career and opened all these opportunities I would've missed out on.

So many experiences that go beyond your average cliche college years, only need to be described in a few words. They were painful, eye-opening, and stimulating. Until my 3rd year in college, I lived with a surgically implanted bar. Every day since my surgery, I would feel the sensation of bones popping like the knuckles on my hands. There would be few times when I felt pain, but many times where I felt numbness in my arms. The sensations were always there and for a long time, I wasn't as flexible as I could be. In 2024, I had my metal brace removed, and recovered fairly quickly. Around 6 months after my surgery, I remember doing a handstand without any pain or pops in my bones. I didn't feel any numbness in my arms or my chest. It was satisfying to know that 4 years had paid off for my health, and that It was finally over.

A year later when I graduated, I became an intern to a software designer for IOS. I watched them and eventually learned to use xCode for my own software designs. I had a sustainable amount of income and moved to an apartment with my only closest friend from middle school. For 5 years, my programming skills continued to grow, and free time was more often. I studied the basic principles of animation and uploaded several thesis videos of my own. Though none of them blew up on youtube, I was content with making them for myself.

Around 2030 I was no longer developing software, and had committed to becoming an indie game designer. I developed several games over the course of the years, and grew a large following of 30k across my media platforms. It was only in 2038, when I had finally made a successful game, that blew up over thousands of twitch streams. 1.5 million copies were sold, and I was offered my opportunities from companies and other game designers. What had made the game so successful was the authentic 2d animation designs throughout the game. It brought the storyline together and made the gameplay very appealing.

Looking back now, I am very fortunate to have retired at such an early time. I made very hard decisions in my early years but many of them were what I needed in order for myself to succeed in the future. I can comfortably say that changing things in my life and moving on to new things by letting go of old attachments was what made me successful. I have few regrets in my life, other than my hesitancy to listen to myself and what I really wanted in life. Here is a drawing I made of myself in my teen years, in a time where I did not think I would find the peace that I have today.

ALL, (2021)Self Portrait at the Age, 17