Everyone grows up whether they like it or not at some point in their life, some sooner than others. I’m sure most people realize at one time or another that they wouldn’t exactly enjoy growing up, but it’s necessary in order to have the freedom and necessities that people cherish. When they’re grown up, being able to be successful and do things on their own could end up taking them very far and life, and I’m sure many people wouldn’t even know where to begin if their parents weren’t there for practical guidance and nurturing.

Most people usually take gradual baby steps into the life of adulthood, while others like me were thrust into the real world. I was taken by storm into the real world when I was a freshman in high school three years ago. My parents seemed to have the perfect relationship, the type you see in movies and on TV shows, the happy contempt families with not a worry on their minds, but I guess all of that seemed to change when my mother figured that it would do the family good to divorce my father. This wouldn’t have bothered me too much except for the fact that my mother moved right along with her life, starting a new family with these “strangers” that my sister and I were not familiar with at all, leaving my sister, father and I to fend for ourselves. As some could imagine, this also meant no more family vacations, holidays or birthdays together, and essentially my entire extended family had been split in half. Most people tend to cope with family matters like this very well, but not me. This had destroyed me emotionally for many years as the divorce was dragged along for almost four years until my mother and father finally came to an agreement. I didn’t want anything to do with either side of my family anymore, so in a last effort attempt my father took me on a road trip to upstate Rochester. He had told me before I left that I would be driving the entire four hundred mile trip to enhance and perfect my driving skills to help me