Gregory Carson
Professor Rayan
ENC 1101/1048
2 Feb. 2015
When I Realized I Was Accepted by My Family When I realized I was accepted by my family, I was 40 years old. I grew up with my mother and father, and I have four brothers and two sisters. I am the youngest of seven and always felt I was treated differently from the rest of my siblings. The older children were able to go to the movies and football games, and I was never allowed to go with them, so I became jealous and envy of my siblings. My father was a preacher and my mother was a missionary; therefore, they were very strict on me because I was the youngest. We all had to attend Sunday school and church every week. We were all taught the same values of life; however, I did not feel I was treated the same as they were. As a result of being treated differently, I became rebellious, isolated myself, and eventually became destructive. When I got into senior high school I began to rebel against my family because my parents gave me more freedom to do what I wanted. I was trusted more to use better judgment; nevertheless, that did not work in my best interest. The decisions I made were not agreeable to my parents, nor my siblings; therefore, I had a need to stop listening to them. I stayed away from my family and became close to some of my friends at school. I felt part of something when I was around my friends, but not while I was around my own family. I started sneaking out of the house at night to meet my friends; meanwhile, I was getting into trouble with my parents. As a result of that, my siblings were starting to lecture me about what I should not do. I began to resent them even more because I wanted them to stay out of my life. They pushed constantly, and it distanced me further and further away from them. When I stopped going to church and Sunday school, it led to my freedom being taken away, so they placed me under a microscope. Because I became limited to where I could go, it became a reason to isolate myself from everyone. What I did not realize then, because I wanted my own space, was that I was going to feel alone. Not having anyone to converse with eventually lead me to become very bored. As a result of being alone, I became a depressed individual. I realized being around my friends kept me from being depressed, although my parents did not want me to be around them at all. It took me graduating from senior high school before I was no longer monitored about where I was going or what I was doing. The whole time I was on lock down, it felt like my life was over, and there were times I wanted it to be. After high school, I attended Polk Community College and that is when my life began to change in a destructive way. I met new friends my first day of school, and they all liked to go to bars