The day I realized I was becoming more like my mother was anything but an "Oh no” moment. It occurred when I was 16 years old when I got in a terrible ski accident three days before Christmas. I had to be in the hospital for a week, four of those days being in intensive care. I fractured my collarbone, hipbone, and skull. I had to get a spleenectomy because my spleen was in three pieces and I was hemorrhaging. For about two and a half weeks after my accident I was seeing double.
With all of this damage to my body, I had to miss a month of school. I had to go to physical therapy a few times a week so I could gain my strength back and my drive to train for varsity tennis tryouts. I had to force myself to have the willpower to practice the piano so I could get ready for the UIL competition that was coming up. I had all of these obstacles, and yet, I didn't let anything get in my way. I ended up improving my grades during that grading period. I scored a "1" in UIL which allowed me to proceed to the state competition. My coach saw the drive I had in me and moved me up to the varsity team the following fall.
I like to think that I inherited all of this strength from my mother. When my mother was only 26, she had her first brain tumor. She had to go bald for the first time in her life. She had to learn how to properly walk again and do basic things that one could not imagine not having the ability to do. At the time she had no health insurance. Though the surgery put her in debt for many years, she got through it and even bought a pair of diamond earrings during the process that I inherited for my 20th birthday.
After this brain tumor, she got another one in her early thirties. When I was eight years old she got diagnosed with breast cancer and had to go through the brutal process of chemotherapy and lose all of her hair again. When I was twelve, my parents and I were in a terrible car accident and my mom shattered her tibia. She had to have pins in her leg for months and would later have to get a knee replacement. Every surgeon we talked to said it was the worst break they had seen in their lives; the first two we talked to said my mom may have to lose her leg.
She got through all of these things. How she did, I do not know. But I do know that she has a hell of a fighting spirit. After my accident, I'd like to think that I have at least a fraction of my mom's spirit. For various reasons, things have been hard for me lately, but my outlook is what solely gets me though everything. I think that through my mom I have inherited this mindset that says "An obstacle? To hell with it, I'm gonna make that obstacle sorry that it ever burdened me.”
Like my mother, I'm strong. Like my mother, I'm independent. Like my mother, nothing will get in my way of achieving my goals. The accidents, the heartbreaks, the poisons of burden that try to block my way; nothing is going to bring me down.
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