I'm Not 17

I'm used to people telling me "Kid, you're only seventeen. You have your whole life ahead of you". Maybe I do, but I'm not seventeen. I'm much more older inside, in my mind.

At fourteen I exiled myself to take care of my grandmother for what seemed like the longest year of my life. I was forbidden of having a life outside my house, so I had to sit and watch how all I ever wanted and I worked for so hard banished in front of my eyes just because my dad wanted it that way. I didn’t complain. I don’t regret it. But I’m going to take a stand and say that it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t reasonable. While he was out there with another woman after work I was taking care of my grandma, doing my homework and crying in solitude, in silence.

You might be thinking that taking care of an old lady is nothing. Wrong. It was something. Something really big. She was a tough woman who‘s will had to be done as she pleased, and her Alzheimer didn’t make it any easier I might add. I loved her just as much as I love my mom, and having to watch her decay wasn’t easy. She had always been a strong woman through all her life; she had loved and lost many times, her soul mate committed suicide, she lost a daughter on Mother’s day, my mom’s dad left her for another woman, she grew up in poverty and many other things that couldn’t break her.

That year was the exception. Elisa Torres (or Alicia, as many people knew her) crumbled like a dying rose, all in front of my eyes. I’m not saying that my mom wasn’t there because she was. Unlike my dad, she believed in me and i thank her deeply for that. I’m just saying that I had to carry part of her burden along with mine. I felt I had to be strong for the both of us. She had to take care of me, but I had to take care of her too.

Then, after a long year spent between the hospital, the school and my house it happened. I had to cradle my grandma’s death along with my mom’s broken heart and my dad’s departure while trying to get back the life I had lost, all at the same time.

At the funeral I didn’t shed a tear, although I remember crying once at the hospital when it has just happened. I couldn’t let myself cry, much less in front of my mom. I had to be strong. I was her corner stone, but little did she know that her corner stone was about to fall apart.

After that then it was me who spent more time hospitalized than at the house. A bacteria had made a house in my stomach and it wasn’t about to give it up without two years of war. I missed almost half my graduation year, but after slapping my ADD in the face a few times I managed to get up to date and take all the tests I missed in order to complete the school year. Boy was that hard! I had to make huge sacrifices to get things done in time, but my dad rejected to see it that way. He was always pressuring me and calling me irresponsible, which wasn’t true at all. When the big day came my efforts paid off, I was surprised and very pleased to graduate with the highest grades of the whole class.

When I got to tenth grade the bacteria started bugging me again so I decided to complete the year at home, teaching myself (which is much harder than it sounds, believe me). Then I tried to start eleventh grade at a new school, but the damned bacteria didn’t let me so I did it at home too. When it came to senior year it was hard to make a choice; on one side I wanted a graduation, and on the other I knew that the education I had been getting (at my house) wasn’t enough for a private school and that if I went to public school then I wouldn’t get what I needed (in education of course), so I made up my mind and decided to do it by myself once again.

Those were the two key moments in my life, but a lot happened in between. Friends came and went, some stabbing my back in the process. I’ve loved, lost, used and been used. I’ve done things I never thought I would ever do. I’ve done things I wish I could take back a million times and things that I’ll never talk about with anybody. I’ve been to a very dark place and back. I've fallen and gotten up when nobody thought I could. I've walked through the fire without getting scorched to ashes but still to this day my heart lays broken and it seems like I’m not able to gather all the missing pieces.

On the other side, meanwhile all this was happening I never refused anyone a helping hand. I’ve changed peoples life’s, then I sat and saw them walk by with their shiny new selves while I was still being forced to stand still. I never complained. I never regretted it. But to this day I wish that they would, at least, thank me. All they ever do is criticize me and my “unorthodox” ways for the reason that I tell things like they are, with no sugar coating. Is that fair? That people see your faults and not your rights? No, it's not fair. That's life

Now I thank God that, instead of getting bitter, I learned how to be a better person and how to enjoy the little things in life. After all I've been through I can proudly say that I enjoy every drop of rain, every ray of sun, every dawn, every dusk and every thing as if it was the first because I'm aware that, in a flash things can change dramatically and it could be the last. This, my friend, is living.

I’m done. I just needed to get it out of my chest. Now tell me, am I really seventeen?